Under the direction of his father Pieter Claesz., Nicolaes Berchem began his artistic career in Haarlem at the age of fourteen. He acquired the surname *Berchem* while a young pupil in the studio of Jan van Goyen. After studying with Cornelis van Poelenburgh and Jan van Goyen, well-known Dutch landscape painters, Berchem adopted a classicizing manner and joined the second generation of Dutch Itali
