The only sign of humanity is the tiny cityscape which is carefully blended into the background, so as not to take too much of the focus away from the plentiful trees and shrubery which make up the rest of the scene. There is also a bright, uplifting sky which draws in light and allows us to appreciate the bright colours of the remaining additions.
Albrecht Altdorfer uses the common practice of sectioning off part of a view with elements in the foreground, in this case tall trees. This enabled him to provide a border to the left and right hand sides and then concentrate on why lied within. Most of his landscape paintings were vertically designed, where as his drawings for some reason were horizontal. The light in the background also helps to draw focus to the bare mountains to the left hand side, with foliage covering most of the rest.
Some of what we see here is similar to the work of artists who followed on several centuries later, underlining the impact of Altdorfer. We can see the work of the Hudson River School, for example, even though their landcape paintings were produced across in North America. Without this German's contributions, landscape art may never have reached the point that it has today, so we have a lot to thank for his perserverance all those years ago.
