PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)
PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)
PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)
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PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)
4 More
This lot is offered without reserve.
PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)

Allegory of the months of January/February, with a view of the Piazza del Popolo, Rome, during Carnival; and Allegory of the months of November/December, with woodcutters in a forest

Details
PAUL BRIL (BREDA 1553/4-1626 ROME)
Allegory of the months of January/February, with a view of the Piazza del Popolo, Rome, during Carnival; and Allegory of the months of November/December, with woodcutters in a forest
the first signed with the artist’s device, a pair of spectacles, on the shop sign (upper right)
oil on panel
30 1/2 x 41 in. (77.5 x 104.1 cm.), each
(2)a pair
Provenance
Acquired in Rome by William Smith in 1626 on behalf of,
Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (1585-1646), by inheritance to his wife,
Alethea Howard, Countess of Arundel (1585-1654), recorded in an inventory made after her death, in 1655, by descent to her son,
William Howard, 1st Viscount Stafford (1614-1680), Stafford House, London, by descent in the family to ,
Edward Howard, 9th Duke of Norfolk (1686-1777), Norfolk House, London, by descent in the family to,
Sir Bernard Marmaduke Fitzalan-Howard, 16th Duke of Norfolk (1908-1975); his sale, Christie’s, London, 11 February 1938, part of lots 88 and 89, as Abel Grimmer (220 and 175 gns., respectively).
with Arthur Tooth & Sons, London, until 1943.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby’s, New York, 15 January 1993, lot 26, where acquired by the present owner.
Literature
‘Inventory of Pictures, Drawings and Objects of Vertu Collected by Thomas and Alethea, Earl and Countess of Arundel’, ms. Amsterdam, 1655, no. 130; see M. Hervey, The Life, Correspondence and Collections of Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, Cambridge, 1921, p. 479.
‘A Catalogue of Pictures, Prints…being part of the old Arundel Collection…belonging to the late Earl of Stafford at Stafford House, Westminster’, ms., 1720.
‘Catalogue of All and Singular Pictures found in Norfolk House, St. James Sq., at the Decease of Edwd, the last Duke of Norfolk’, ms. London, 11 November 1777, nos. B. 1 and B. 16, as Joos de Momper and Jan Brueghel I.
Connoisseur, CIII, January 1939, p. xi, illustrated (November/December).
P.F.J.J. Reelick, 'Documentatie: Jodocus de Momper of Paulus Bril', Oud Holland, LXIII, 1948, p. 120, where erroneously described as a copy of the painting in Amsterdam.
(Possibly) D. Howarth, Lord Arundel and His Circle, New Haven, 1985, pp. 56, 231, as part of the ’21 paesi fiamenghi di pittori moderni’ shipped from Rome to London in 1626.
S. Melikia, ‘Old Masters Brush off the Recession’, in The Herald Tribune, 23-24 January 1993, p. 7.
Special notice
This lot is offered without reserve.

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Lot Essay


This pair once formed two of six paintings illustrating the months of the year which were purchased by William Smith, agent of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel, in Rome in 1626. The panel depicting the months of January and February shows herdsmen bringing cattle to market, peasants warming themselves near a fire and Carnival, including in the center of the composition the popular race of the Berber horses in the Piazza del Popolo and along Via del Corso. That illustrating the months of November and December depicts woodcutters as well as herdsmen with goats and swine being fattened and slaughtered for winter provisions. The complete set probably formed a portion of the ’21 paesi fiamenghi di pittori moderni’ which Smith shipped from Rome to the Earl in London in that year. In the 1655 inventory of the Earl’s collection drawn up after the death of the his wife, Alathea, they are given to 'Paolo Fiamengho'.

Three of the four remaining paintings are known today. The one depicting the months of March and April was sold Sotheby’s, London, 30 November 1983, lot 65 (fig. 1); that for May and June was last offered Christie’s, London, 5 July 1985, lot 4 (fig. 2) and the months of July and August were most recently sold Christie’s, New York, 30 January 2014, lot 208 with an attribution to an artist in the circle of Paul Bril (fig. 3). The composition of September and October with peasants picking fruit is known through one of a series of six prints executed by Aegidius Sadeler in 1615 in the same direction as the paintings but with slight differences (fig. 4). Each print references Bril as the composition’s inventor. Given the size and number of the panels in this series, it is possible that Bril may have executed them with the help of one or more assistants in his Roman studio, which included the likes of Willem van Nieulandt, Sebastiaen Vrancx and Jan Brueghel the Elder. However, as the first panel in the series – which is signed with the artist’s spectacles device – and the 1655 inventory both attest, they no doubt would have left the studio as works by the master himself.

In 1598, Bril produced a series of twelve drawings depicting the months of the year. The months of March through August are in the Louvre, while September is in the Print Room in Leiden. A drawing identified as January and another of October recently surfaced on the art market (for the drawings in the Louvre, see L.W. Ruby, Paul Bril: The Drawings, Brussels, 1999, pp. 85-88, nos. 23-29; for the recently rediscovered drawings, see L.W. Ruby, in In arte venustas: Studies on Drawings in Honour of Teréz Gerszi Presented on Her Eightieth Birthday, A. Czére, ed., Budapest, 2007, pp. 87-89, no. 25, both illustrated). The activities presented in some of these drawings (eg. July/August) can similarly be found in this series of paintings and Sadeler’s prints. While the recently rediscovered drawing of men cutting wood in a landscape has been identified as the month of January based on the description of the sheets in an inventory when they were in the collection of Everhard Jabach (see Ruby, loc. cit.), the subject of the panel depicting November/December suggests it may instead be the lost drawing for one of these two months.

Allegorical depictions of the months of the year set within landscapes originated in the medieval tradition of illuminated manuscripts, but in its format of six paintings each representing two months Bril’s series closely parallels Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s celebrated series painted in 1565 for the Antwerp painter Nicolaes Jonghelinck (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Lobkowicz Palace, Prague and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). The present paintings are probably datable to the first decade of the seventeenth century.

A painting after November/December of somewhat smaller scale (58 x 78 cm.) is on loan to the Museum Gouda from the collection of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. no. SK-A-2672).

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