View of Tervuren Castle from the north, with soldiers in the foreground

The drawing depicts Tervuren Castle near Brussels. The moated castle was originally built in the 13th Century by the Duke of Brabant and later became a royal residence and hunting lodge for the governors of the Habsburg Netherlands. Demolished in the 18th Century, the castle had captured the imagination of many artists and many depictions of the building survive in paintings and drawings. The same view of the castle from the north appears, for example, in the background of a painting, The Archduke Albert and Archduchess Isabel Clara Eugenia at Tervuren Castle, made in Jan Brueghel the Elder’s workshop and now in the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid (fig. 1; inv 1453) and in an illustration of the atlas Brabantia Illustrata by Jacques LeRoy published in 1705.

Another version on vellum by Crussens was published by Charles Dumas (op. cit., no. 21, ill.).

Fig. 1. Studio of Jan Brueghel the Elder, The Archduke Alberto of Austria and Isabella Clara Eugenia. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid.