Pieter Stevens Mechelen (?) circa 1567 - after 1624 Prague (?)

For a number of years either side of 1600, the Court of the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II at Prague was an extraordinary artistic centre, attracting leading artist from all over Europe.  Some, like Jan Breughel and Roelandt Savery, visited for only a relatively short period, but others settled permanently in Prague;  Peter Stevens was appointed court painter to the Emperor in 1594, and seems to have remained in Prague until his death some time after 1624.  Prior to his arrival there, it seems, however, that the artist also travelled to Italy.  A series of drawings in the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Vienna, depicting ruins and aqueducts in and around Rome and Naples, were attributed to Stevens by An Zwollo in 1968, and several of those drawings are dated 1590 or 1591 (see An Zwollo, 'Pieter Stevens, ein vergessener Maler des Rudolfinischen Kreises,' Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 64, N.F. XXVIII, 1968, p.131). 

The present drawing contains motifs clearly derived from the artist's Italian journey (including buildings loosely based on the Castel Sant'Angelo and the Pantheon), but combines them into a fantastical capriccio, set within the sort of rugged mountainous landscape more typical of Stevens' drawings from his Rudolfine years, which, like so many landscape works produced by artists of the Prague school, generally reflect very strongly the wild Bohemian scenery. Zwollo has therefore proposed that this drawing was executed very shortly after Stevens' arrival in Prague, circa 1594-5.