The Ruins of the Colosseum, Rome

In a letter dated 20 July 1991 Professor Marcel Roethlisberger has tentatively agreed with the attribution, pointing out that the strong handling of the wash in this drawing is typical for Breenbergh, and that it would seem to date from the artist's time in Rome before 1625. Roethlisberger compares it to other drawings by the artist formerly in the Perman Collection, Stockholm, and in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, M. Roethlisberger, Bartholomäus Breenbergh, Handzeichnungen, Berlin, 1969, nos. 44 and 53, also of the Colosseum. Breenbergh's drawing of the walls of the Porta S. Paolo in Rome at Christ Church, Oxford (Roethlisberger, op. cit., no. 49) is again closely comparable in the handling of the wash.