Jan Asselijn Dieppe after 1610 - 1652 Amsterdam

Although this drawing was previously given to Willem Schellinks, the soft, atmospheric handling and delicate wash, as well as the specifically Roman subject matter, argue strongly for an attribution to Schellinks' teacher, Jan Asselijn.  In some of the sketches that Schellinks made from life in preparation for the large topographical drawings executed for the Atlas van der Hem (such as the view of Chatham from the West, sold, Amsterdam, Sotheby's, 11 November 1997, lot 135), there is a rather similar softness and atmosphere, but Schellinks never evokes the Italian light quite as sensitively as does Asselijn. 

The Ponte Mollo, or Milvian Bridge, on the outskirts of Rome, is a location frequently depicted in paintings and drawings of the period.  Asselijn himself made a splendid drawing, now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, from a viewpoint close to the end of the bridge, and based a canvas, now in San Francisco, on this drawing (see Anne Charlotte Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, p. 72, figs. 62-3).  A detailed profile study of the bridge by Cornelis van Poelenburch is in the Uffizi (see Steland, op. cit., p. 145, fig. 145), and in about 1635-40 Claude Lorrain made a panoramic drawing showing almost exactly the same view as in the present study (see Marcel Roethlisberger, Claude Lorrain, The Drawings, 2 vols, Berkeley/Los Angeles 1968, cat. no. 167).   Although no dated works survive from Asselijn's time in Italy, other evidence suggests that he was there between around 1636 and 1644.