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Lot Essay
Cruyl left Ghent for Rome in 1664 and remained there until 1670, making his living like several of his Dutch and Flemish contemporaries as a draughtsman and engraver of local landmarks. His first series of eleven etchings entitled Prospectus locorum urbis Romae insignium was published by Rossi in 1666 and included a view of the Piazza Navona featuring the faade of Sant'Agnese.
The present sheet differs from the print in its northeastern viewpoint and its focus upon the faade of Sant'Agnese while it was still under construction. The raw brick arch above the doorway was replaced by Bernini with a triangular marble pediment during his completion of the faade in 1666. This ended the nine years of sporadic construction which followed Borromini's dismissal by Pope Alexander VII in February 1657.
Cruyl's fascination with Baroque construction inspired him to make several drawings for another print in this series, that of Saint Peter's Square showing Bernini's colonnade under construction, D. Bodart, Les Peintres des Pays-Bas Mridionaux et de le Principaut de Lige Rome au XVIIe Sicle , Rome 1970, pp. 345-6.
A comparable drawing by Cruyl of the same period of the Pantheon is at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, R. Ward, Drer to Matisse, Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exhib. cat., Kansas City, 1996, no. 21, illustrated. Drawings of the same period, of the Piazza Colonna and the Piazza Barberini, are in the Cleveland Museum of Art, A. Barrocco, Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome, exhib. cat., Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1999, nos. 2-3, illustrated.
The present sheet differs from the print in its northeastern viewpoint and its focus upon the faade of Sant'Agnese while it was still under construction. The raw brick arch above the doorway was replaced by Bernini with a triangular marble pediment during his completion of the faade in 1666. This ended the nine years of sporadic construction which followed Borromini's dismissal by Pope Alexander VII in February 1657.
Cruyl's fascination with Baroque construction inspired him to make several drawings for another print in this series, that of Saint Peter's Square showing Bernini's colonnade under construction, D. Bodart, Les Peintres des Pays-Bas Mridionaux et de le Principaut de Lige Rome au XVII
A comparable drawing by Cruyl of the same period of the Pantheon is at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, R. Ward, Drer to Matisse, Master Drawings from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, exhib. cat., Kansas City, 1996, no. 21, illustrated. Drawings of the same period, of the Piazza Colonna and the Piazza Barberini, are in the Cleveland Museum of Art, A. Barrocco, Life and the Arts in the Baroque Palaces of Rome, exhib. cat., Kansas City, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1999, nos. 2-3, illustrated.