Paul Bril (1554 – 7 October 1626) was a
Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
painter and printmaker principally known for his
landscapes
A landscape is the visible features of an area of Terrestrial ecoregion, land, its landforms, and how they integrate with Nature, natural or man-made features, often considered in terms of their aesthetic appeal.''New Oxford American Dictionar ...
.
[Nicola Courtright. "Paul Bril." Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online. Oxford University Press. Web. 26 September 2016] He spent most of his active career in Rome. His Italianate landscapes had a major influence on landscape painting in Italy and Northern Europe.
[Paul Bril, Landscape with Diana and Callisto]
at the Louvre Museum
The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is the world's most-visited museum, and an historic landmark in Paris, France. It is the home of some of the best-known works of art, including the ''Mona Lisa'' and the ''Venus de Milo''. A central l ...
Life
Paul Bril is believed to have been born in
Antwerp
Antwerp (; nl, Antwerpen ; french: Anvers ; es, Amberes) is the largest city in Belgium by area at and the capital of Antwerp Province in the Flemish Region. With a population of 520,504, although his birthplace may have been
Breda
Breda () is a city and municipality in the southern part of the Netherlands, located in the province of North Brabant. The name derived from ''brede Aa'' ('wide Aa' or 'broad Aa') and refers to the confluence of the rivers Mark and Aa. Breda has ...
. He was the son of the painter Matthijs Bril the Elder.
[Paul Bril]
at the Netherlands Institute for Art History
The Netherlands Institute for Art History or RKD (Dutch: RKD-Nederlands Instituut voor Kunstgeschiedenis), previously Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie (RKD), is located in The Hague and is home to the largest art history center i ...
Paul and his older brother
Matthijs Matthijs (also Mattijs, Mathijs and Matijs) is a Dutch form of the masculine given name " Matthew". It can also be a surname. Notable people with the name include:
Given name
;Matthijs/Matthys
* Matthijs Accama (1702–1783), Dutch painter
* Matt ...
likely started their artistic training with their father in Antwerp.
[ Paul may also have been a student of the Antwerp painter Damiaen Wortelmans who was specialised in the decoration of harpsichords.][
Matthijs moved to Rome probably around 1575. Here he worked on several ]fresco
Fresco (plural ''frescos'' or ''frescoes'') is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaste ...
es in the Vatican Palace
The Apostolic Palace ( la, Palatium Apostolicum; it, Palazzo Apostolico) is the official residence of the pope, the head of the Catholic Church, located in Vatican City. It is also known as the Papal Palace, the Palace of the Vatican and the V ...
. It is believed Paul joined his brother in Rome around or after 1582.[
When Matthijs died in 1583, his brother likely continued his work, picking up many of Matthijs' commissions.][''Jan en Kasper van Balen'' in: Frans Jozef van den Branden, ', Antwerp: J.-E. Buschmann, 1883, p. 184–190] Paul's earliest known works date from the late 1580s. He established his reputation with commissions from Pope Gregory XIII
Pope Gregory XIII ( la, Gregorius XIII; it, Gregorio XIII; 7 January 1502 – 10 April 1585), born Ugo Boncompagni, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 13 May 1572 to his death in April 1585. He is best known for ...
in the Collegio Romano
The Roman College ( la, Collegium Romanum, it, Collegio Romano) was a school established by St. Ignatius of Loyola in 1551, just 11 years after he founded the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). It quickly grew to include classes from elementary school t ...
. His success was assured after Pope Sixtus V
Pope Sixtus V ( it, Sisto V; 13 December 1521 – 27 August 1590), born Felice Piergentile, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 24 April 1585 to his death in August 1590. As a youth, he joined the Franciscan order ...
became his principal patron. Bril was part of a team specialized in landscape painting and thus participated in almost every assignment which entailed decorative landscapes, such as in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore
The Basilica of Saint Mary Major ( it, Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, ; la, Basilica Sanctae Mariae Maioris), or church of Santa Maria Maggiore, is a Major papal basilica as well as one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome and the larges ...
, the Vatican Palace and the Scala Santa
The ( en, Holy Stairs, it, Scala Santa) are a set of 28 white marble steps that are Roman Catholic relics located in an edifice on extraterritorial property of the Holy See in Rome, Italy proximate to the Archbasilica of Saint John in Lateran ...
.[ Another important early commission was the fresco cycle in the ]Santa Cecilia in Trastevere
Santa Cecilia in Trastevere is a 5th-century church in Rome, Italy, in the Trastevere rione, devoted to the Roman martyr Saint Cecilia (early 3rd century AD).
History
The first church on this site was founded probably in the 3rd century, by Pop ...
in Rome of around 1599.
Pope Clement VIII
Pope Clement VIII ( la, Clemens VIII; it, Clemente VIII; 24 February 1536 – 3 March 1605), born Ippolito Aldobrandini, was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 2 February 1592 to his death in March 1605.
Born ...
also became his patron and gave the artist a commission for a monumental seascape on the Martyrdom of St. Clement. Paul Bril completed this commission in the Vatican Palace’s Sala Clementina
The Clementine Hall, called the ''Sala Clementina'' (The Clementine Salon) is a hall of the Apostolic Palace near St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City. It was established in the 16th century by Pope Clement VIII in honor of Pope Clement I, the th ...
in collaboration with the brothers Giovanni Giovanni may refer to:
* Giovanni (name), an Italian male given name and surname
* Giovanni (meteorology), a Web interface for users to analyze NASA's gridded data
* ''Don Giovanni'', a 1787 opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, based on the legend of ...
and Cherubino Alberti
Cherubino Alberti (1553–1615), also called Borghegiano, was an Italian engraver and painter. He is most often remembered for the Roman frescoes completed with his brother Giovanni Alberti during the papacy of Clement VIII. He was most prolif ...
(1600–02/3). In 1601 Paul received another major commission, to paint a series of large canvases featuring properties of the Mattei family
200px, Cortile Mattei di Giove
The House of Mattei was one of the most powerful noble families of Rome during the Middle Ages and early modern era, holding high positions in the papal curia and government office. The family amassed significant a ...
.[ Paul further painted landscape frescoes in the Casino dell'Aurora of the ]Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi
The Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi is a palace in Rome, Italy. It was built by the Borghese family on the Quirinal Hill; its footprint occupies the site where the ruins of the baths of Constantine stood, whose remains still are part of the base ...
in Rome.
His patrons were among the most influential people in Rome and included members from the Colonna
The House of Colonna, also known as ''Sciarrillo'' or ''Sciarra'', is an Italian noble family, forming part of the papal nobility. It was powerful in medieval and Renaissance Rome, supplying one pope (Martin V) and many other church and politica ...
, Borghese
The House of Borghese is a princely family of Italian noble and papal background, originating as the Borghese or Borghesi in Siena, where they came to prominence in the 13th century and held offices under the ''commune''. During the 16th century, ...
, Mattei and Barberini
The House of Barberini are a family of the Italian nobility that rose to prominence in 17th century Rome. Their influence peaked with the election of Cardinal Maffeo Barberini to the papal throne in 1623, as Pope Urban VIII. Their urban palace ...
families in Rome as well as Cardinal Federico Borromeo
Federico Borromeo (18 August 1564 – 21 September 1631) was an Italian cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, a prominent figure of Counter-Reformation Italy.
Early life
Federico Borromeo was born in Milan as the second son of Giulio Cesare Borrom ...
in Milan
Milan ( , , Lombard: ; it, Milano ) is a city in northern Italy, capital of Lombardy, and the second-most populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of about 1.4 million, while its metropolitan city h ...
, Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici in Florence
Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...
and Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga
Ferrante I Gonzaga (also Ferdinando I Gonzaga; 28 January 1507 – 15 November 1557) was an Italian condottiero, a member of the House of Gonzaga and the founder of the branch of the Gonzaga of Guastalla.
Biography
He was born in Mantua, the ...
in Mantua
Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard language, Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and ''comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the Province of Mantua, province of the same name.
In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture ...
.[
In 1621, Paul Bril became director of the ]Accademia di San Luca
The Accademia di San Luca (the "Academy of Saint Luke") is an Italian academy of artists in Rome. The establishment of the Accademia de i Pittori e Scultori di Roma was approved by papal brief in 1577, and in 1593 Federico Zuccari became its fir ...
, the artists' academy in Rome. This was a clear sign of the high esteem in which he was held by his fellow artists in Rome as he was the first foreigner to hold this position.[Paul Bril]
at Hadrianus, accessed on 29 May 2018
He had many students including his son Cyriacus Bril, Luigi Carboni, Balthasar Lauwers, Willem van Nieulandt II
Willem or Guiliam van Nieulandt, sometimes Nieuwelandt (1584–1635) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, engraver, poet and playwright from Antwerp.
Biography
His father Adrien van Nieulandt the elder was born to a family of artists of Flemish orig ...
, Pieter Spierinckx, Agostino Tassi
Agostino Tassi (born Agostino Buonamici; 1578 – 1644) was an Italian landscape and seascape painter, who was convicted of raping Artemisia Gentileschi in 1612.
Because he aspired to nobility he modified the details of his early life. Though ...
and Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom.[ Karel Philips Spierincks may also briefly have been his pupil.][Silvia Danesi Squarzina, A 'Hagar and the Angel' by Carel Philips Spierinck]
in Potsdam, in: The Burlington Magazine, June 1999 (Number 1155 – Volume 141)
Paul Bril died in Rome in 1626.[
]
Work
Paul Bril initially painted in the late Mannerist
Mannerism, which may also be known as Late Renaissance, is a style in European art that emerged in the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520, spreading by about 1530 and lasting until about the end of the 16th century in Italy, ...
style developed by his brother. These early landscapes are in the Flemish tradition inaugurated by Joachim Patinir
Joachim Patinir, also called Patenier (c. 1480 – 5 October 1524), was a Flemish Renaissance painter of history and landscape subjects. He was Flemish, from the area of modern Wallonia, but worked in Antwerp, then the centre of the art market ...
and Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; – 9 September 1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so-called genr ...
and further developed by his own brother. Works from this early period were characterised by a picturesque arrangement of landscape elements and violent contrasts between light and dark.[ These early paintings also show strong contrasts of forms to create a sense of dramatic motion. Bril contrasted steep cliffs with chasms or dark, twisting trees growing from hills next to flat, sunlit pastures.
His style changed during his stay in Rome. His compositions became calmer and his style more classicising around 1605. This may have been due to the influence of ]Annibale Carracci
Annibale Carracci (; November 3, 1560 – July 15, 1609) was an Italian painter and instructor, active in Bologna and later in Rome. Along with his brother and cousin, Annibale was one of the progenitors, if not founders of a leading strand of th ...
and Adam Elsheimer
__NOTOC__
Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 – 11 December 1610) was a German artist working in Rome, who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century in the field of Baroque paintings. His relatively few paintin ...
. The works from this period have lower horizons and less abrupt transitions from foreground to background. The subjects are typically pastoral or bucolic scenes and mythological subjects.[ This late style had a strong influence on the development of Flemish landscape painting and was crucial to ]Claude Lorrain
Claude Lorrain (; born Claude Gellée , called ''le Lorrain'' in French; traditionally just Claude in English; c. 1600 – 23 November 1682) was a French painter, draughtsman and etcher of the Baroque era. He spent most of his life in It ...
's formation of the classical landscape.['Flemish and German Paintings of the 17th Century']
Wayne State University Press, 1982
Agostino Tassi may have been Paul's pupil. Tassi later became the master of Claude Lorrain. Paul Bril thus forms one of the links between the panoramic views of Joachim Patinir and the ideal landscape evolved by Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a ...
and Claude Lorrain.[ Bril is considered a precursor of the Dutch Italianates such as Cornelius van Poelenburgh and ]Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Bartholomeus Breenbergh (before 13 November 1598 – after 3 October 1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Italian and Italianate landscapes, in Rome (1619-1630) and Amsterdam (1630-1657).
Biography
Little is known of his early life. In his ...
, and, to a certain extent, of the Flemish and Dutch genre painters
Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, ...
active in Rome known as the Bamboccianti
The ''Bamboccianti'' were Genre works, genre painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Netherlands, Dutch and Flemings, Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subject ...
.[
Paul also painted small ]cabinet painting
A cabinet painting (or "cabinet picture") is a small painting, typically no larger than two feet (0.6 meters) in either dimension, but often much smaller. The term is especially used for paintings that show full-length figures or landscapes at a s ...
s on copper
Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...
and panel commencing from the 1590s. Some of these he signed with a pair of glasses
Glasses, also known as eyeglasses or spectacles, are vision eyewear, with lenses (clear or tinted) mounted in a frame that holds them in front of a person's eyes, typically utilizing a bridge over the nose and hinged arms (known as temples or ...
, a pun on the Flemish
Flemish (''Vlaams'') is a Low Franconian dialect cluster of the Dutch language. It is sometimes referred to as Flemish Dutch (), Belgian Dutch ( ), or Southern Dutch (). Flemish is native to Flanders, a historical region in northern Belgium; ...
word ''bril'' which means "glasses". These small-scale paintings depicted subjects that he and his brother had rendered before on a large scale, such as tempestuous seascapes, hermits in the wilderness, travelling pilgrims, peasants among ancient ruins, hunters and fishermen.[
A prolific draftsman, his drawings were popular with collectors and were copied by the many students who worked with him in his studio, which was a popular destination for Dutch and Flemish artists visiting Rome.
He often collaborated on paintings with Johann Rottenhammer. According to a dealer's letter of 1617, Rottenhammer painted the figures in Venice and then sent the plates to Rome for Bril to complete the landscape. Bril also collaborated with his friends ]Jan Brueghel the Elder
Jan Brueghel (also Bruegel or Breughel) the Elder (, ; ; 1568 – 13 January 1625) was a Flemish painter and draughtsman. He was the son of the eminent Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel the Elder. A close friend and frequent collaborato ...
and Adam Elsheimer
__NOTOC__
Adam Elsheimer (18 March 1578 – 11 December 1610) was a German artist working in Rome, who died at only thirty-two, but was very influential in the early 17th century in the field of Baroque paintings. His relatively few paintin ...
, whom he both influenced and was influenced by. His collaboration with Elsheimer is shown in a painting now in Chatsworth House
Chatsworth House is a stately home in the Derbyshire Dales, north-east of Bakewell and west of Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the House of Cavendish, Cavendish family sin ...
. Bril introduced Jan Brueghel the Elder to Cardinal Federico Borromeo
Federico Borromeo (18 August 1564 – 21 September 1631) was an Italian cardinal and Archbishop of Milan, a prominent figure of Counter-Reformation Italy.
Early life
Federico Borromeo was born in Milan as the second son of Giulio Cesare Borrom ...
, who subsequently became Brueghel's most important patron. He also let the Dutch landscape artist Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Bartholomeus Breenbergh (before 13 November 1598 – after 3 October 1657) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of Italian and Italianate landscapes, in Rome (1619-1630) and Amsterdam (1630-1657).
Biography
Little is known of his early life. In his ...
live in his Roman residence for many years.Paul Bril (Antwerp 1554-1626 Rome), ''Saint Jerome praying in a rocky landscape''
at Christie's
See also
* '' River View with Rocks'', oil on copper
Oil on copper painting is the process of creating artworks by using oil paints with copper as the Substrate (chemistry), substrate. This is sometimes referred to as “copper as canvas” because canvas is the most well known surface material used ...
anonymous copy of an original by Bril
References
Further reading
*Peter and Linda Murray, ''The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists. Fifth Edition: Revised and Enlarged'' (Penguin Books, London, 1988), 51.
*Carla Hendriks, ''Northern Landscapes on Roman Walls: The Frescoes of Matthijs and Paul Bril.'' (Florence : Centro Di della Edifimi, c2003).
*Rudolf Baer, ''Paul Bril: Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Landschaftsmalerei um 1600.'' (Munich: J.B. Grassi, 1930).
*Hanno Hahn, ''Paul Bril in Caprarola''. Miscellanea Bibliothecae Hertzianae, Roma, 1961.
*Francesca Cappelletti, ''Paul Bril e la pittura di paesaggio a Roma, 1580-1630.'' (Rome: Ugo Bozzi, c.2006).
*Louisa Wood Ruby, ''Paul Bril: The Drawings.'' (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).
*Anton Mayer, ''Das Leben und die Werke der Brueder Matthaeus und Paul Brill.'' (Leipzig: K.W. Hiersemann, 1910).
*Giorgio T. Faggin, Per Paolo Bril, in ''Paragone'', CLXXXV, 1965.
External links
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bril, Paul
1554 births
1626 deaths
16th-century Flemish painters
17th-century Flemish painters
Artists from the Spanish Netherlands
Flemish Renaissance painters
Flemish landscape painters
Fresco painters
Painters from Antwerp