BARTHOLOMEUS BREENBERGH | An Italianate landscape with ruins

Breenbergh moved from Amsterdam to Rome in 1619, where he came under the spell of the Italianate landscapes of Cornelis van Poelenburgh. He was one of the founders of the Roman society of Dutch and Flemish painters – the Bentveughels. Scholars have proposed differing dates for this painting. Roethlisberger compares it both to works dating from circa 1630, when Breenbergh was back in Amsterdam, and to the end of his Roman period in 1627; in a letter dated 12 August 1994, Malcolm Waddingham proposes an earlier date of circa 1625. The right-hand part of the ruin appears in a signed drawing by Breenbergh, which Roethlisberger also dates to circa 1630.(1)

1 See Roethlisberger 1981, p. 53, cat. no. 111, reproduced fig. 111.