Bartolomeus Breenbergh* (1598-1657)

An Italianate Landscape with the town of Acquapendente, near Rome, and Shepherds and Washerwomen by the Banks of a River

Details

Bartolomeus Breenbergh* (1598-1657)
An Italianate Landscape with the town of Acquapendente, near Rome, and Shepherds and Washerwomen by the Banks of a River
oil on copper
13 x 21in. (33 x 53.5cm.)

Provenance

Anon. Sale, Christie's, New York, Jan. 11, 1989, lot 195.

Literature

G. Jansen and G. Luijten, in the catalogue of the exhibition, Italianisanten en bamboccianten, Museum Boyman-van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1988, p. 83, under no. 45, fig. 17.

Exhibited

B.A. Dunker and R. Daudet, Paris, 1773.

Engraved

B.A. Dunker and R. Daudet, Paris, 1773.

Lot Essay

The present painting was probably painted shortly after Breenbergh's return from Rome to Amsterdam circa 1630. It can be compared with a Landscape with the gathering of Manna in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, dated by Marcel Roethlisberger to circa 1630-2 (see M. Roethlisberger, Bartholomeus Breenbergh, The Paintings, 1981, pp. 59-60, no. 136), and with Mercury and Herse, which was withdrawn from sale, Sotheby's, London, Dec. 12, 1990, lot 41 dated by Malcolm Waddingham to circa 1631.

Roethlisberger (op. cit., p. 57) describes the engraving of the present lot as after 'a fine painting by Breenbergh from the early 1630s, perhaps of medium size'.

We are grateful to Prof. Roethlisberger for verbally confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs.