Created and developed by Paul Bril and Cornelis van Poelenburch from 1600 onward, the genre of the “Italianate landscape” entered its classical phase in the 1630s with the advent of Swanevelt and his friends and contemporaries Pieter van Laer and Claude Lorrain. His paintings became very popular and the Barberini family, Pope Urban VIII and the Vatican offered him commissions, like in the monastery of Monte Cassino. Along with Lorrain and others, he also painted landscapes for Philip IV of Spain's new Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid.