Joachim Patinir, in full Joachim de Patinir, Patinir also spelled Patinier or Patenier (born c. 1485, Bouvignes or Dinan, Namur, Belgium – died October 5, 1524, Antwerp), was a painter ... the first Western artist known to have specialized in landscape painting. Little is known of his early life, but his work reflects an early knowledge of the painting of Gerard David, the last of the Early Netherlandish painters. He may have studied under Hieronymus Bosch, the painter of fantastic allegories and landscapes.

Patinir seems to have made a practice of supplying landscape settings for figure compositions painted by other Flemish masters, but the only known example of his collaborations is the Temptation of St. Anthony (c. 1520–24), in which Quentin Matsys painted the figures. He did not, however, paint pure landscape pictures, and all his work has a nominal religious subject. Its novelty, anticipated in a different vein by Bosch, lay in the fact that the religious motif in such works as Flight into Egypt (1515–20), St. Christopher (c. 1515–24), and Landscape with St. Jerome (1516–17) was much reduced in scale and immersed in the phenomena of the natural world.

The basic elements of his landscape style — the high viewpoint overlooking vast tracts, where earthy brown foregrounds merge into woodland and meadow greens and again into the hazy blues of distant mountains — do not differ from those of his predecessors, particularly Gerard David. Yet the picturesque melancholy with which he invests the woods and rivers and the great ghostly rocks that jut up abruptly in the middle distance of such paintings as his Baptism of Christ (c. 1515–20; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna) and his Crossing the Styx (c. 1520–24; Prado) strike a personal note that won Patinir instant success and many imitators. Patinir's favourite subject was the Rest on the Flight into Egypt, which he depicted in many versions.

From October of 1916 through January of 1917, Rudolf Steiner gave a series of nine lectures known as the Art Course. These lectures were given the title of: The History of Art. Click here to discover what Steiner said about Joachim Patinir in the sixth lecture, or in the entire lecture series.