Landscape with Minerva Expelling Mars to Protect Peace and Plenty

The allegory of Minerva expelling Mars to protect Peace and Plenty — associated with Rubens's celebrated version but common across seventeenth-century Flemish painting — allowed de Momper to combine his landscape specialty with mythological content that elevated the genre's status. Such allegories were politically charged in the Spanish Netherlands context, where the dream of peace after decades of religious war gave the subject urgent contemporary meaning. De Momper's contribution to the tradition would have situated the allegorical figures within one of his expansive landscape settings, making the political allegory visible within a specifically Flemish natural world.

The integration of mythological figures into de Momper's landscape format likely involved collaboration — the figures probably by a specialist — while his landscape setting provides the allegorical depth of field. The contrast between the turbulent foreground action and the tranquil landscape beyond embodies the allegory's peace-through-virtue theme.