Figures near Roman ruins

Breenbergh presumably stayed in Italy from 1619 to 1629. Though close in style to that of Cornelis van Poelenburgh, his refined technique and use of light when imitating the Italian sun surpasses that of his contemporary. As pointed out by Roethlisberger (loc.cit.), '... the delicate, pale handling appears in a few drawings of 1629/30 (R128, 131) as well as in some of Breenbergh's repetitions of 1639/40 after his Roman drawings (R141, 146). This sheet might still belong to the end of his Roman phase'. The ruin in the foreground also appears in a picture by Breenbergh, which Roethlisberger (op.cit., no. 110) dates to circa 1630 (fig. 1): the distant ruin to the right shows the apse of the temple of Venus and Roma in the Forum Romanum.