Van Nieulandt

Pen and brown ink, grey and brown wash, framing lines in pen and brown ink.
Inscribed Roma 1602 in pen and brown ink and G. Batta in black chalk, watermark of a crowned eagle.
226 x 150 mm (8 14/16 x 5 15/16 in.)

This unpublished drawing by Willem van Nieulandt the Younger depicts a view of the Quirinal Palace in Rome from a street framed by vegetation on both the left and right sides. The drawing, dated lower left Roma 1602, is executed in pen and brown ink with brown and light blue wash¹. It shows an identical view—with some differences and from a slightly more advanced viewpoint—to that made by Sebastien Vrancx², now preserved in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth and also dated 1602 (Fig. 1).

Willem van Nieulandt II, a painter of Antwerp origin but raised in Amsterdam where his family had likely settled for religious reasons, seems to have trained with Jacob Savery and then Roland Savery before leaving for Rome in the autumn of 1601. There he joined his uncle Willem Nieulandt the Elder (1569–1626) before entering the workshop of Paul Bril (1553/1554–1626), himself established in Rome since 1574 at the home of his elder brother Matthijs (Antwerp 1550 – Rome 1583)³. During his stay in Rome, Willem van Nieulandt produced numerous views and landscapes, following the common practice of his compatriots. After a short period in Amsterdam, he settled in Antwerp where he was admitted to the Guild of Saint Luke in 1606, while also working as an engraver and writer, poet and playwright, and member of several literary and artistic societies. From 1629 onward, he moved to Amsterdam where he remained until his death.

In Rome, the observation of ruins and ancient monuments overrun with vegetation and intermingled with more modern buildings inspired many of his drawn and painted landscapes, which became his specialty even after his return to Antwerp. His drawings of Roman motifs provided him with a useful repertoire for composing his paintings, in which he staged contemporary figures within views of Rome that were often somewhat fanciful. Van Nieulandt structured his compositions in several successive and oblique planes, placing a repoussoir motif on one side—often a ruined wall covered with rocks and vegetation, as in this drawing. His perspective, more empirical than mathematical, creates a graceful sense of artificiality and theatricality, further enhanced here by the unreal quality of the two rapidly sketched figures. His combination of pen and brown wash with a fluid and elegant grey-blue wash, as well as the freedom of his pen in rendering vegetation, are typical of his hand and appear in many of his sheets.

In Rome, Van Nieulandt was one of the most faithful pupils of Paul Bril, through whom he likely met Sebastian Vrancx, eleven years his senior, who had been in Rome since 1596. Like Vrancx, Van Nieulandt often drew inspiration from models created by Paul Bril; he engraved a series of eighteen prints of Roman Ruins, through which he disseminated his master’s manner. But some of his works can be more specifically compared to those of Vrancx, and the two artists seem to have worked, if not together, then at least after each other. Van Nieulandt quotes Vrancx several times in his engraved output, and several views of the same places exist by both artists, sometimes with slight differences in the figures or a few additions, but always clearly from the same viewpoint. Our drawing and the Chatsworth sheet testify to this relationship, which Michael Jaffé has studied in relation to Vrancx’s drawings⁴. Jaffé also notes that this View of the Quirinal Palace stands out from Vrancx’s usual views—and, we may add, from those of Bril’s circle—because of the absence of ancient ruins. It is almost a view of modern Rome. We are very grateful to Peter Schatborn for his assistance in writing this entry.