Bartholomeus Breenbergh

J. van Haecken (L.2516);
Prof. Einar Perman, Stockholm

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden, Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, no. 21

M. Roethlisberger, Bartholomäus Breenbergh Handzeichnungen, Berlin 1969, p. 29, no. 44, reproduced fig. 44 (mistakenly as in Dresden)

Hinged to the mount at the upper margin. Overall in good condition. Small repaired tear lower left - a piece of paper has been added to the verso. Crease in the sheet upper left. Otherwise medium remains fresh and strong.
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Breenbergh arrived in Rome around 1619, perhaps two years after Cornelis van Poelenburch but long before artists of the next generation such as Both, Swanevelt and Asselijn.  There he met -- and appears to have worked with -- that great pioneer among Northern artists working in Rome, Paul Bril.  In his drawing style, Breenbergh was initially influenced by Bril, but soon cast out on his own path, focussing more on dramatic effects of light and shade, and thereby setting the scene for much of what was to come in subsequent Dutch Italianate art.  A fine, fully signed view of the interior of the Colosseum, similar to this in conception but larger in scale, is in Kassel.¹

In a communication of 2003, Professor Roethlisberger noted that in his 1969 publication, he reproduced the present drawing as being in the Dresden Kupferstichkabinett, and stated that another drawing of the same view was in the Perman collection.  There is, however, no record of the existence of any such drawing at Dresden, and Roethlisberger's catalogue number 44 should therefore be taken as referring entirely to the present drawing.  

1.  P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth, 17th-century Dutch artists in Italy, Amsterdam 2001, pp. 70-71, fig. G