Willem van Nieulandt II

Purchased from Palser Galleries, March 1937 (as Paul Bril)

Fixed in all four corners to old backing sheet. Verso cannot be examined completely, but narrow strip of paper, presumably from old mounting, can be seen fixed around edges on the back. Repaired tear, left side, towards top, and some surface dirt, but general condition of sheet good and fresh, and colours and ink in good fresh condition.
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NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This drawing is copied, with minor differences, from a drawing by Matthijs Bril, in the Louvre¹, one of a series of nine Roman views that Bril made at some point between his arrival in Rome around 1574 and his early death in 1583.  These drawings (eight of which are in the Louvre and one in a private collection), were extremely influential in the development of landscape in Rome at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th century, a story in which Bril's younger brother Paul played a crucial role.  

Paul Bril kept the drawings together after his brother’s death, writing on the back of one of them ‘dit is een van de beste desenne die Ick van matijs broeder nae het leeven hebe’ (‘This is one of the best drawings after life that I have of my brother Mattheus’),² and he must have given them to various of his pupils to copy.  The present composition is also known through a copy by Jan Breughel the Elder, in the British Museum,³ and through what appears to be a copy of that copy, at Chatsworth.⁴

Willem van Nieulandt, who was in Rome around 1602-4, clearly also knew Matthijs Bril’s drawings of Roman views, making prints after four of them, though not one of the Septizonium.  Built by Emperor Septimus Severus (193-211) on the south west slope of the Palatine, the Septizonium was conceived as a purely decorative façade to conceal the building behind.  It was demolished in 1588 by Pope Sixtus V to provide material for the construction of his family chapel in Santa Maria Maggiore and other projects, and therefore cannot have been known at first hand by Jan Breughel or Willem van Nieulandt.

^1. F. Lugt, Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord, Ecole Flamande^, Paris, 1949, I, no. 361

^2. Ibid., no. 356

^3. Inv. Oo,9.11

^4. M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings, Turin/London/Venice 2002, vol. II, no. 1170