Facescapes

Koller West, from Switzerland, sells on 18 March 2016 a "Flemish, 17th century" pair of landscapes in the form of the face of a woman, estimated at 1,200 to 1,800 Euro. Well, I don't know if they sell it, it is listed at The Saleroom as Koller lot 6430, but the online auction catalogue at Koller jumps from lot 6429 to 6431. Still, it is an interesting piece, so here goes.

This kind of "anthropomorphic" or "mimetic" landscape is typically Flemish from the 16th and early 17th century, and relatively rare, so this is / would have been a very cheap example.

A very, very close example to the one for sale here was sold as a pair at Christie's in 2004: that pair fetched $45,000!

Another pair with the same images can be found in the Royal Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels.

The faces are sometimes over-elaborate, but the paintings are filled with tiny fun details, e.g. the necklace of the woman being made from a flock of sheep. 

Comparing images based on online images is tricky, but these seem to be museum quality pieces that should have been estimated at 20,000 Euro instead of 1,200 Euro. Perhaps that's why they have been removed from the auction catalogue (for now at least)?