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Lot Essay
Three other drawings by Brueghel for Sadeler's series of engravings are known, two views of Baiae in the British Museum, London, (A.M. Hind, Catalogue of Drawings by Dutch and Flemish Artists in the British Museum. II. Flemish School, London, 1923, p. 93, nos. 4 and 5) and a view of the Tomb of Agrippina now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (M. Winner, op. cit., no. 123). Brueghel was in Naples in 1590, but Winner suggests that the drawings themselves can be dated stylistically to 1604, perhaps based on earlier studies from life. This dating fits neatly since Brueghel visited Aegidius Sadeler, who engraved the series, in Prague in that year.
The drawing in the Ashmolean bears Pierre Crozat's number '13', and the stamp of J.D. Lempereur, indicating that it followed the present drawing in Crozat's portfolio and was also one of the trois vûes de Pozzole qui ont été gravées par Gilles Sadeler, dans sa suite des ruines de Rome listed in the 1741 Crozat sale catalogue. The two drawings in the British Museum are part of the Sloane bequest, which was presented in 1753 and forms the core of the collection.
The drawing in the Ashmolean bears Pierre Crozat's number '13', and the stamp of J.D. Lempereur, indicating that it followed the present drawing in Crozat's portfolio and was also one of the trois vûes de Pozzole qui ont été gravées par Gilles Sadeler, dans sa suite des ruines de Rome listed in the 1741 Crozat sale catalogue. The two drawings in the British Museum are part of the Sloane bequest, which was presented in 1753 and forms the core of the collection.