watermark: coat of arms with a kneeling pilgrim holding a cross; similar to Heawood, no. 1351 (Rome, c. 1607)

Light brown stains; a vertical crease in the centre of the sheet

…; donated by Cornelis Willem Bruinvis (1829-1922), Alkmaar, to the museum (L. 2228), 1895

Object number: RP-T-1895-A-3089(R)

Credit line: Gift of C.W. Bruinvis, Alkmaar

It is only on closer examination that the cavernous space depicted on the recto is seen to be a vault of masonry, possibly a view inside the Colosseum, Rome. Van Regteren Altena believed this to be the same ruin as one in a large drawing by Cornelis van Poelenburch (1594-1667) in the museum’s collection (inv. no. RP-T-1884-A-293).⁶⁶P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, no. 266.

Running across the middle of the sheet is a sharp crease that divides the two scenes on the verso. This would appear to be a page from a sketchbook, were it not for the fact that the drawings on both the recto and verso extend right up to the fold. If Du Gardijn had made them when the sheet were still in the sketchbook, one would expect to see a blank strip, however narrow, on either side of the fold. The more likely explanation is that Du Gardijn removed the page from the book before he set to work.

Many of Du Gardijn’s drawings bear price notations. Initially one is tempted to regard them as the prices for which the sheets were sold, but that theory is soon demolished, by this one in particular. There are no fewer than three prices: on the recto 30.st.; on the verso is the same sum included below the drawing of the unidentified ruins; and then 1. gl: beneath the View in a Cave. Three prices cannot possibly apply to one and the same sheet. There are two other possibilities: that they refer either to something that was finished and had left the studio, or to something that still had to be made. In the first case, the drawings would have been part of a sort of liber veritatis, a collection of autograph copies of works that had been sold, with the prices being the sums paid for the originals. The large size of many of the drawings argues against this theory, for a liber veritatis would probably have been on a more modest scale, like the famous one by Claude Lorrain (1604/05-1682) in the British Museum, London (inv. no. 1957,1214.6-206a-b), containing 195 drawings that the artist made as a record of his paintings from circa 1635 onwards. The second alternative is that the drawings served as a kind of catalogue for prospective buyers, who could pick out the scene they wanted to have in a finished version costing thirty stuivers or one guilder. This seems the more likely explanation, although it does not provide all the answers by any means.⁷⁷On these price notations, see S. de Vries (ed.), Twee olieverfschetsen van Guilliam de Gardijn. Een toeschrijving met verrassende gevolgen, Alkmaar 1995, unpaginated (p. 7).

Marijn Schapelhouman, 1998

I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Vereeuwigde Stad. Rome door Nederlanders getekend, 1500-1900, Amsterdam 1964, pp. 107-08, under no. 54 (as Karel Dujardin); H. Robels, Niederländische Zeichnungen vom 15. bis 19. Jahrhundert im Wallraf-Richartz-Museum Köln, coll. cat. Cologne 1983 (Kataloge des Wallraf-Richartz-Museums Graphische Sammlung, vol. 1), pp. 98-99, under no. 142 (as attributed to Karel Dujardin); G. Jansen and G. Luijten, Italanisanten en bambocianten. Het italianiserend landschap en genre door Nederlandse kunstenaars uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen), 1988, pp. 92-93, under no. 53 (n. 4; as attributed to Karel Dujardin); M. Schapelhouman and P. Schatborn, Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam: Artists Born between 1580 and 1600, 2 vols., coll. cat. Amsterdam 1998, no. 112; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, pp. 75-76, figs. C-D

M. Schapelhouman, 1998, 'Guilliam du Gardijn, View in the Vaults of a Classical Ruin / verso: View in a Cave and View of a Classical Ruin, Rome, c. 1620 - c. 1625', in J. Turner (ed.), Dutch Drawings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200146118