Roelandt Savery

Attached to old backing in three corners. Lightly foxed throughout. Dark stain, verso, slightly right of centre, which shows through to recto a little. Drawing otherwise good and fresh. Unframed.
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This refined, atmospheric landscape, which is previously unrecorded, fits very well with some of Roelandt Savery's earlier drawings, executed around the time of his first visit to the Prague court of the Emperor Rudolf II, circa 1603-4.  We are very grateful to Dr. Joaneath Spicer for kindly confirming the attribution, and for identifying the view depicted.

During the period immediately following his arrival in Prague, in 1603, Savery made a number of very precise pen drawings recording the city and its surroundings, such as the famous view of The Charles Bridge from Kampa Island, now in the Prague National Gallery.¹ Inspired by the rugged Bohemian landscapes through which he passed during his travels, he also made various splendid drawings of mountain landscapes, in both chalk and pen.  Occasionally, as here, he incorporated real topographical views and elements into a kind of landscape capriccio. The dramatic fortifications in the background are those of the famous Hradčany, residence of Emperor Rudolf II, in the middle of Prague, including towards the right a beautiful view from below of the unfinished Cathedral of St. Vitus (which only much later acquired the spire and west towers that it has today).

Particularly close to this in conception are the drawings in the Albertina,² in Leipzig,³ and formerly in the Perman Collection,⁴ and especially another, sold in 1965 as by Jan Brueghel but subsequently published as Savery by An Zwollo.⁵  Also very comparable are signed and dated drawings of 1605 and 1609, in Berlin and Stuttgart respectively.⁶  The drawing is therefore a fascinating and significant addition to the small corpus of early landscape works, actually made on the spot, at the Court of Rudolf II in Prague, by this highly important draughtsman.

The watermark, a variant of the Arms of Ravensburg, is also very similar to one found in Savery's famous series of "naer het leven" figure studies of peasants and soldiers, and in a few of his early landscapes, notably two drawings in the Lugt Collection and the Hermitage.⁷ 

1.  Inv. No. K37.440. See E. Fučíková, Die rudolfinische Zeichnung, Hanau 1987, no. 50 (reproduced)
2.  Vienna, Albertina, inv. 8339.
3.  Inv. 417.  See Prag um 1600, exh. cat., Essen, Villa Hügel, 1988, p. 385, cat. 254 (reproduced)
4.  Sold, New York, Sotheby's, 25 January 2002, lot 43
5.  Sold London, Christie's, 30 November 1965, lot 59, 172 by 241 mm; see A. Zwollo, in Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorische Sammlungen in Wien, 64 (N.F. XXVIII), 1968, p. 119, fig. 235.
6.  Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin, inv. KdZ 4461; see J. Spicer-Durham, 'The Drawings of Roelandt Savery,' diss. Yale University, 1979, cat. C11 F11; Stuttgart, inv. no. 1727.  See E. Fučíková, op. cit.,  no. 48 (reproduced)
7.  See Spicer-Durham, op. cit., vol. II, p. 388, and cat. nos. C3 F4 and C7 F8.