Kaart van Damme en de Spaanse grensforten bij Sluis

Lobberecht executed the work in oil on canvas, employing a smooth surface with fine detail characteristic of cartographic painting. The palette consists of deep greens for the terrain, earthy browns for roads and buildings, muted blues and grays for the star-shaped citadel and fortifications, pale blues for water and sky, and creamy whites for highlights. The light falls evenly across the scene without strong shadows, facilitating clear reading of topographical information. The massive star-shaped citadel with multiple bastions dominates the lower left, rendered with geometric precision, while a river or canal cuts horizontally across the middle ground, branching into smaller waterways. Roads in pale orange-brown traverse the countryside, connecting settlement clusters. The upper right reveals a coastline with ships on silvery water. The overall effect is of a precise, decorative military survey that balances cartographic utility with aesthetic refinement. The painting's substantial dimensions, 132 by 204.5 centimeters, allow for extensive detail while maintaining legibility of the complex fortified landscape.

The painting was commissioned in 1660 by Don Diego Durquein, governor of Damme, as recorded in the cartouche inscription. Lobberecht completed the work in May of that year, signing it as a sworn land surveyor of the land of Flanders. The inscription explicitly states that the map was made at the request of the noble governor and shows the fortifications as they then lay. The work entered the collection of the Groeningemuseum in Bruges, where it is now held as part of Musea Brugge. It has been documented photographically by Hugo Maertens for the Art in Flanders database and is available through LUKAS - Art in Flanders. The painting is identified in the museum's inventory as 0000.GRO0231.I and has been reproduced commercially through Bridgeman Images. No extensive exhibition history is recorded in the available sources, though its presence in the Groeningemuseum collection ensures public access.

Jacques Lobberecht worked as a sworn land surveyor in Flanders during a period of intense military engineering activity along the fragmented border between the Spanish Habsburg Netherlands and the Dutch Republic. The year 1660 fell during the uncertain peace following the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), when frontier fortifications remained crucial to territorial defense and claims. The painting reflects the specialized genre of cartographic painting that flourished in the Low Countries, where artistic skill served military and administrative needs. The Groeningemuseum's holding of this work places it within a broader collection of Flemish art that documents the region's urban and landscape heritage. Scholarly attention to Lobberecht has been limited, with the artist primarily known through this signed and dated work rather than through a substantial documented oeuvre. The painting's value lies in its testimony to the intersection of artistic practice, military surveying, and civic patronage in the Spanish Netherlands.

Kaart van Damme en de Spaanse grensforten bij Sluis survives as the primary documented work by which Jacques Lobberecht is known, serving as a key artifact for understanding the practice of land surveying and cartographic painting in 17th-century Flanders. The painting's public domain status, confirmed by its CC0 dedication through Wikimedia Commons, has facilitated its wide dissemination in digital form, including high-resolution reproductions. Its availability through the Art in Flanders database and commercial licensing via Bridgeman Images has extended its reach beyond specialist audiences. For historians of cartography, military architecture, and Flemish art, the work provides concrete evidence of how frontier territories were visualized and claimed through painted maps. The detailed inscription preserves information about Damme's urban fabric and governance that would otherwise be lost, while the depiction of the Spanish border forts offers rare visual documentation of fortifications in a contested zone. The painting remains in the permanent collection of the Groeningemuseum, accessible to researchers and the public as a tangible record of 1660s Flanders.