(Antwerp or Breda 1553/54–1626 Rome)
A wooded river landscape with bandits,
oil on canvas, 91 x 130 cm, framed

We are grateful to Luuk Pijl for confirming the attribution of the present picture to Paul Bril and workshop. A copy of his certificate is available. He dates the present painting to circa 1626.

This fine landscape painting was executed in Italy in the late 1620s. The composition and the handling of the trees, foliage and sky are characteristic for the later works of Paul Bril, painted after 1620.

The composition and subject of the present painting is known through another version of identical size. The other rendition, in an unknown collection, was brought to Pijl’s attention in 1995 by the Italian scholar Giorgio Faggin, who published his important and seminal article on Paul Bril’s cabinet paintings in 1965 (see ‘Per Paolo Bril’, in: Paragone, XVI, 1965, 185/5, pp. 21-35, figs. 13-40). Both versions are of equal merit.

The subject of the two paintings with a traveller being robbed and stripped by bandits is exceptional. No other painting, drawing or etching with this subject by Bril is extant. We do find a similar subject occasionally in the work of the later generation of Italianate painters. For example, in Jan Both’s beautiful Landscape with bandits in the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston (see F. Duparc, Souvenirs D´Italie. Peintres hollandais de l’Age d’or, Musée des beaux-arts de Montréal, Montréal 1990, pp. 90-91). However, in Both’s rendition of the theme the victim has already been stripped of his coat and other goods and is carried away by bandits. The subject illustrates obviously the perils of travel. The figures are stylistically different from those we usually encounter in Bril’s landscapes. They are by an, as yet, unidentified hand.

Unfortunately, we have scant information how the Bril workshop in Rome functioned. However, Bril remained very prolific until the very end of his life; in fact, three other canvases are dated 1626, the year of his death. Throughout his career he was visited by young painters from the North and some, like Bartolomeus Breenbergh, worked for several years in his studio. Bril clearly worked with several accomplished assistants during his monumental decoration programmes in the Vatican and elsewhere. It is not unlikely that Bril’s successful workshop was taken over by his son Cyriaco after his death.

The most influential landscape painter of his time, Paul Bril was born in Breda in 1553 or 1554. He trained in Antwerp with the unknown Damiaen Ortelmans and, as a young teenager, supplemented his income by painting landscapes on the inside lids of harpsichords. He travelled to Rome in 1576, where he joined his elder brother Matthijs, who was involved in fresco painting. After Matthijs’ premature death in 1583, Paul succeeded him on several Papal commissions in the Vatican and in various churches and villas in and around Rome. Paul Bril was principe of the Accademia di San Luca and a member of the society called Virtuosi al Pantheon. He died in 1626 leaving a large oeuvre of wall decorations, etchings, drawings and paintings. His work paved the way for Claude Lorrain who would become the most important landscape painter in seventeenth-century Europe.

It was not before Bril was in his late thirties that he started to paint the jewel-like cabinet pictures for which he became renowned. Bril’s work is firmly rooted in the Flemish landscape tradition of Patinier, Herry met den Bles and Pieter Brueghel. Furthermore, the early work by Hans Bol should be mentioned as a significant source for Bril’s work. The prints made by Cornelis Cort after designs by Girolamo Muziano were another significant source of inspiration. Bril’s early work was characterised by strong colouring and great attention to minute detail. In later years Bril’s landscape developed towards a more monumental rendering of elements and overall compositional scheme as the present painting clearly shows.