His early landscapes were often Northern Mannerist versions of the established world landscape type, though with close views of trees already narrowing the panoramic view. Beginning in the 1590s Coninxloo introduced a new approach into Flemish landscape painting, with close-up views of forests reminiscent of Albrecht Altdorfer and the Danube school nearly a century earlier and almost or entirely shutting out a distant view. While earlier forest landscapes had used forests as the backdrop for human activity, van Coninxloo turned them into the subject proper by submerging tiny human figures in elaborate compositions of trees on a hugely exaggerated scale. A "Forest Landscape" of 1598 in the Liechtenstein Collection is the first work to take this approach to its extreme: the sky is only visible in a few patches between branches and a single tiny human figure reclines under a tree. This painting achieves great intensity and atmospheric quality through its fine shades of brown and green and its accentuated handling of light.