Paul Bril

Anonymous sale, Brussels, Galerie Fievez, 6-7 March 1926, lot 21;
Heim Geirac collection, Paris;
Private collection, Lille;
With Galerie de Jonckheere, Paris, 1998, from whom acquired by the present collector.

Fort Worth, Kimbell Art Museum, From the Private Collections of Texas, 22 November 2009 - 21 March 2010, p. 126, no. 13, reproduced.

F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre: Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du nord. Ecole Flamande, vol. I, Paris 1949, p. 25. no. 405;
G.T. Faggin, "Per Paolo Bril", in Paragone, vol. 16, no. 185, 1965, p. 31, n. 15;
F. Cappelletti, Paul Bril e la pittura di paesaggio a Roma 1580-1630, Rome 2005-06, p. 248, no. 63;
R.R. Brettell, C.D. Dickerson III, From the Private Collections of Texas, exhibition catalogue, Fort Worth 2009-10, pp. 126-9, no. 13, reproduced in colour.

The following condition report has been provided by Catherine Hassall, an independent restorer who is not an employee of Sotheby's. The copper support is completely flat. There are tiny damages around the edges and a few pin-sized retouchings, but otherwise the painting is in superb condition. The picture has been recently cleaned, and has a clear, even varnish.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

This exquisite painting, preserved in pristine condition, is an exceptional example of the small-scale landscapes produced in Rome at the turn of the century by Paul Bril, an artist of Flemish origin who, along with his compatriot Jan Brueghel the Elder, was the most important northern artist working in Italy at the time. Bril brought a new, finely detailed style of ideal landscape painting to Rome that would be of enormous relevance throughout the ensuing century and that would help to form the styles of other itinerant artists in the city such as Adam Elsheimer, Goffredo Wals and Claude Lorrain.

Bril had begun painting small-scale landscapes on copper and panel in the 1590s but up until such time he was best known in Rome for the large commissions he undertook for ecclesiastical institutions and for the decoration of the palaces of the upper classes. One of the most impressive of these is the fresco cycle for Santa Cecilia in Trastevere that he painted in 1599. In 1601, the same year he painted the present copper, he received his largest private commission to date, a series of large canvases featuring properties of the Mattei family (four examples of which survive in the Palazzo Barberini). Bril remained in Rome for the rest of his life and was made principal of the Accademia di San Luca there in 1620. His landscapes were collected throughout Italy, and his most illustrious patrons outside Rome included Cardinal Federico Borromeo in Milan, Cardinal Carlo de' Medici in Florence and Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga in Mantua.

There is a related drawing in the Musée du Louvre, Paris, which was presumably executed by Bril prior to the present work (fig. 1).¹  As with most of his drawings it is a pure landscape excluding any narrative detail, other than a few hens just off the path to the left. The composition is further recorded in two prints made in the 17th century, one with a narrative (The Prodigal Son feeding the Swine by Lucas Vorsterman),² and one without staffage which was probably made after the drawing (by Aegidius Sadeler).³

This painting will be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné on the Bril currently being prepared by Drs. Luuk Pijl.

1.  Pen and brown ink and blue and brown wash with white heightening; Paris, Musée du Louvre; see Brettrell et al., under Literature, p. 126, fig. 1.
2.  See Hollstein, XLII, pp. 92-3, no. 14.
3.  See Hollstein, XXII, p. 95, Add. I.