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| PAUL BRIL (Breda 1553/54 - 1626 Rome)
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| A wide Wooded and Mountainous Coastal Landscape with Brigands abducting Theagenes and Chariclea
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oil on canvas
41 3/8 x 58 ¼ in. (105 x 148 cm.)
Literature:
To be included (and reproduced in colour) in the forthcoming catalogue raisonné of works by Paul Bril currently being prepared by Dr. Luuk Pijl .
Recently discovered, this painting is an important addition to the oeuvre of Paul Bril. Its attribution has been confirmed by Dr. Luuk Pijl, who, having inspected it in the original, considers it ‘one of this painter’s best works’ and will include it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of works by the artist. The attribution has also been confirmed on the basis of a photograph by Dr. Luisa Wood Ruby, Curator in the Frick Collection, New York, and author of the catalogue raisonné of Paul Bril’s drawings.
The subject depicted comes from the late ancient Greek novel Historiae Aethiopicae by the Syrian Heliodorus. The story tells of the love affair of the Greek Theagenes and the Ethiopian Chariclea, a princess and priestess of Apollo. Theagenes has abducted Chariclea but when fleeing the couple is taken captive by pirates, whose chief wants to take Chariclea for himself. However, at a feast on the Nile delta, the pirates end up quarrelling and kill each other (the scene in the middle distance). Theaganes is wounded in the fight, and when a band of brigands comes upon them, the couple is taken captive, while the robbers plunder the ship. A second group of brigands appears and, having driven the first band away, takes the young lovers to their nearby village (the main scene in this work). After numerous vicissitudes, the story ended happily with the marriage of the couple.
Although virtually unknown today, the Historiae Aethiopicae was popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A French translation appeared from 1547 onwards in several editions, and an important edition with engravings by Crispijn van de Passe appeared in Paris in 1624. The subject was thought to be suitable for palatial decorations; in the king’s apartment at Fontainebleau the story was depicted by Ambroise Dubois in 1609/10, and in 1625 Abraham Bloemaert was commissioned by Frederik Hendrik of Nassau, Prince of Orange, to paint the story on the occasion of his marriage with Amalia van Solms. Bloemaert’s Theagenes and Chariclea among the slain Sailors, now in Potsdam, Sanssouci, shows the scene on the beach, which is rendered in Bril’s painting in the middle distance (see M. Roethlisberger and M.J. Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and His Sons, Doornspijk, 1993, I, no. 424, and II, fig. 594).
Noting stylistic similarities with works Bril painted during the last years of his prolific life, such as the fine Landscape with Nymps and Satyrs in Oberlin, dated 1623, and the Landscape with the Temptation of Christ in Birmingham, dated 1626, Dr Pijl has suggested a date of around 1625 for the present painting. As Pijl further notes, the Colnaghi picture demonstrates that Bril was a master of observation. Many details are meticulously rendered, from the plants and trees to the sunset and harbour in the distance. The alternating zones of dark and light give the landscape a clear structure and also provide a convincing suggestion of depth. Although Bril often relied on Northern and Italian figure painters for the staffage in his landscapes, the figures in the present work are stylistically entirely in keeping with his own way of figure painting. They are unusual large in size: no other painting with figures of this scale is extant, which makes the painting even more important among Bril’s late works. The literary source and the sylvan mood make this type of painting interesting in connexion with the formative years of Claude Lorrain. Claude, who appeared in the early 1620s in the Roman art scene and would become the most important landscape painter in seventeenth century Europe, took this type of work as a point of departure for his own magical works.
Paul Bril was born in Antwerp in 1554. After his training there he left for Lyon (1574) and settled in Rome by 1582, where he spent the rest of his life. In Rome from 1590 on, Paul Bril created small landscapes on copper which made a synthesis of: the late mannerist landscapes invented by Gillis III van Coninxloo and continued by Martin de Vos; Jan Breughel I’s velvet adoption of the same source; Saedeleer engravings; and Joos de Momper alpine landscapes. Most figures in Bril’s landscapes were painted by fellow artists who were also often northern residents in Rome: Elsheimer, Rottenhamer and Rubens. These small landscapes were, for Bril, a huge artistic and commercial success both in Italy and in Flanders. He worked in Rome for important patrons, including different Popes (Grégoire XIII, Sixte V and Clement VIII) and cardinals (Sfondrato, Borromée, Scipion Borghese, and del Nero, Matei.) and members of their family.
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P. and D. Colnaghi and Co., Ltd - 15 Old Bond Street London W1S 4AX, United Kingdom Tel: +44-20-7491 7408 Fax: +44-20-7491 8851 contact@colnaghi.co.uk
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