watermark: Strasbourg lily; close to Heawood, no. 1761 (Schieland: 1592).^[According to Steland, p. 208, the same watermark is found on a drawing from the same series in the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome (inv. no. FN 503); Ibid., no. 136; J.C.N. Bruintjes and N. Köhler, Da Van Heemskerck a Van Wittel: Disegni fiamminghi e olandesi del XVI-XVII secolo dalle collezioni del Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, exh. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabands Museum)/Rome (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) 1992-93, no. 51.}

Some light brown stains

…; sale, W. Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94), Rotterdam and Wiesbaden (L. 2643), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895, no. 12 with pendant, fl. 42 to Peter Vischer-Burchardt (1869-1947), Basel and Schloss Wildenstein, near Basel;¹¹Copy RMA. …; sale, Anton Wilhelmus Mari Mensing (1866-1936, Amsterdam), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 27 April 1937 sqq., no. 8 with pendant, fl. 40, to Willy van der Mandele (Bloemendaal) (?);²²Copy Fondation Custodia, Paris & Notes Morgan Library Museum, New York. Mrs A.C.R. van de Mandele-Vermeer, Bloemendaal; her sale, Amsterdam (Mak van Waay), 17 December 1968 sqq, no. 238a with pendant, fl. 2,350, to the dealer Colnaghi, London;³³Colnaghi 1969. from whom, fl. 1,455, to the museum, 1969.

Object number: RP-T-1969-14

This is one of 12 known preparatory studies for the series of 18 Italian views by Jan Asselijn etched in reverse by Gabriel Perelle (1604-1677).¹⁴¹⁴A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, pp. 29-47. The others include two examples in the Teylers Museum, Haarlem, Italian Landscape with a Fountain near Loreto (inv. no. P 92) and Italian Landscape with the Colosseum (inv. no. P 093);¹⁵¹⁵M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, nos. 6-7. two in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, View of the Porta S. Paolo and the Pyramid of Cestius (inv. no. [MB 295a (PK)(https://www.boijmans.nl/en/collection/artworks/71624/the-aurelian-wall-with-the-porta-san-paolo-and-the-pyramid-of-cestius) and the unidentified Roman Ruins (inv. no. MB 295b;¹⁶¹⁶G. Jansen and G. Luijten, Italianisanten en bamboccianten. Het italianisierend landschap en genre door Nederlandse kunstenaars uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1988, no. 33. two in the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Ruins of the Palatine in Rome (inv. no. 1963-114) and Ruins of the Nympheum Acqua Julia in Rome (inv. no. 1963-115);¹⁷¹⁷A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011, nos. 19-20. Waterfall at Tivoli with the Temple of the Tiburtine Sibyl (Temple of Vesta) in the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica, Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe, Rome (inv. no. D-FN503;¹⁸¹⁸J.C.N. Bruintjes and N. Köhler, Da Van Heemskerck a Van Wittel: Disegni fiamminghi e olandesi del XVI-XVII secolo dalle collezioni del Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, exh. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabands Museum)/Rome (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) 1992-93, no. 51. one in the Print Room at Windsor Castle, Ruins of the Colosseum in Rome (inv. no. RCIN 906578);¹⁹¹⁹C. White and C. Crawley, The Dutch and Flemish Drawings of the Fifteenth to the Early Nineteenth Centuries in the Collection of her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle, coll. cat. Windsor 1994, no. 236. one in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, Brussels, View of the Colosseum or the Amphitheatre of Marcellus in Rome (inv. no. 4060/88);²⁰²⁰S. Hautekeete, Tekeningen uit de Gouden Eeuw in de verzameling Jean de Grez, exh. cat. Brussels (Koninklijke Musea voor Schone Kunsten van België)/Amsterdam (Museum Het Rembrandthuis)/Aachen (Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum) 2007-08, no. 47. the companion piece to the present sheet, in the Morgan Library & Museum, New York, the View of the Aqueduct at Frascati (inv. no. 1969.8);²¹²¹See Note 1. and one work in a private collection, View of the So-called Villa of Cicero in Tusculum.²²²²P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 100, fig. A.

Perhaps commissioned by the French publisher Pierre Ferdinand (1617-1665)²³²³G. Jansen and G. Luijten, Italianisanten en bamboccianten. Het italianisierend landschap en genre door Nederlandse kunstenaars uit de zeventiende eeuw, exh. cat. Rotterdam (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen) 1988, p. 68, under no. 33 (text by G. Luijten). or inspired by the example of other Dutch Italianates such as Herman van Swanevelt (c. 1600-1655),²⁴²⁴A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, p. 18. Asselijn decided to spread the records of his Italian sojourn via etchings by Perelle. Since both the publisher and the printmaker were residents of Paris, and since some of the drawings are on paper with a French watermark,²⁵²⁵The sheets in Rotterdam and New York bear a French watermark of 1643; cf. Ibid., pp. 239, 242. it is assumed that Asselijn made the designs during his stay in the French capital in 1645-46. Three sets of etchings, one of vertical format and two of horizontal format, each consist of six views of Roman monuments in a landscape setting.²⁶²⁶F.W.H. Hollstein et al., Dutch and Flemish Etchings, Engravings and Woodcuts, c. 1450-1700, 72 vols, Amsterdam and elsewhere 1947-2010, I (1947), nos. 15-32. Precisely rendered with clear outlines in graphite and the point of the brush to record the tiniest detail, the present design anticipates the accuracy of the print, no. 2 in the series by Perelle.²⁷²⁷Ibid., no. 16. The publisher’s address is given on the first sheet of each series as ‘A Paris, chez P. Ferdinand, au Fauxbourg S. Germain rue de Seine’. The drawing’s verso was blackened and the outlines indented with a stylus for transfer the design to the copper plate.

In both print and drawing, the round building is labelled as the Temple of Marcus Curtius (TEMPLE DE MARCVS CVRSVS in the print; Tempio di Marco Curtio in the drawing). However, such a temple never existed. What is actually represented is the sixth-century church of S. Teodoro al Palatino, located south of the Roman Forum, which in 1643 was renovated under Cardinal Francesco Barberini (1597-1679).²⁸²⁸Curiously, in almost all seventeenth-century Dutch drawings of the building, it is named as the Temple of Marcus Curtius, whereas in contemporary descriptions of Rome, it is correctly described as S. Teodoro (e.g. Federico Franzini, Descrittione di Roma antica e moderna, Rome 1643, p. 308). The motif was popular with seventeenth-century Dutch draughtsmen. Earlier examples include compositions by Leonaert Bramer (1596-1674) in the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin (KdZ 3922),²⁹²⁹P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 54, fig. A. and Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657) in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (inv. no. 23351),³⁰³⁰F. Lugt, Musée du Louvre. Inventaire général des dessins des écoles du Nord: École Hollandaise, 3 vols., coll. cat. Paris 1929-33, I (1929), no. 166. both of which differ in style and perspective. In addition, there are four brush drawings showing the subject from the same angle: one each in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (inv. no. RSA 53); the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. Z 351/1957); the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-1161); and the Herzog Anton-Ulrich-Museum, Braunschweig (inv. no. Z 515).³¹³¹P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 17, figs. 14-16, and p. 161, fig. A, respectively. Of these, Steland considered the Stockholm drawing as a first-hand study in situ by Asselijn.³²³²A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, p. 244. However, given its direct correspondence with the drawing in Leiden, with even the shadows matching, one is tempted to assume that both drawings are copies of a lost original.³³³³Schatborn in P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 17.

Like most of the surviving designs for Perelle’s etchings, the present drawing bears an old inscription probably once written below the image but later cut and pasted onto the verso, perhaps by the same hand as wrote the numbering on the verso.³⁴³⁴Snippets with similar inscriptions identifying the locations are pasted onto the versos of one of the Rotterdam sheets (inv. no. MB 295a, Porta di Sto. Paolo), one of the Haarlem sheets (inv. no. P 92, Fontaine proche de lorette); one of the Hamburg sheets (inv. no. 1963-114, palazzo maggiore); and the drawing in the Morgan (Vestiges des acqueducs de Frescati). In addition, several sheets are numbered by the same hand in brown ink: both Teylers drawings (N° 1141 and N° 517); the drawing in Brussels (N° 1149); and one of the Hamburg sheets (inv. no. 1963-115, 1107).

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

Exhibition of Old Master and English Drawings, exh. cat. London (Colnaghi) 1969, one of a pair in no. 33; ‘Keuze uit aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 17, 1969, pp. 151, 152 (fig. 18); ‘Keuze uit aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 18, 1970, p. 76; J.D. Burke, Jan Both: Paintings, Drawings and Prints, New York 1976 (PhD diss., Harvard University), p. 267; F. Stampfle, Rubens and Rembrandt in their Century: Flemish and Dutch Drawings of the 17th Century in the Pierpont Morgan Library, exh. cat. Paris (Institut Néerlandais)/Antwerp (Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten)/London (British Museum)/New York (Pierpont Morgan Library) 1979-80, p. 122, under no. 94; A.C. Steland-Stief, ‘Zum zeichnerischen Werk des Jan Asselijn: Neue Funde und Forschungsperspektiven’, Oud Holland 94 (1980), pp. 216, 220 (fig. 1); K. Andrews, Catalogue of Netherlandish Drawings in the National Gallery of Scotland, 2 vols., coll. cat. Edinburgh 1985, I, p. 2; A.C. Steland, ‘Beobachtungen zu frühen Zeichnungen des Jan Both und zum Verhältnis zwischen Jan Both und Jan Asselijn in Rom vor 1641’, Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 27 (1988), pp. 115-38 (esp. p. 124); A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989, pp. 19, 205, 208-9, 244, no. 5 (fig. 16); J.C.N. Bruintjes and N. Köhler, Da Van Heemskerck a Van Wittel: Disegni fiamminghi e olandesi del XVI-XVII secolo dalle collezioni del Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe, exh. cat. ’s-Hertogenbosch (Noordbrabands Museum)/Rome (Gabinetto Nazionale delle Stampe) 1992-93, no. 51; M.C. Plomp, The Dutch Drawings in the Teyler Museum, II: Artists Born between 1575 and 1630, coll. cat. Haarlem 1997, p. 39, under no. 6; P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 105 (fig. C); J. Shoaf Turner, Dutch Drawings in the Pierpont Morgan Library: Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries, 2 vols., coll. cat. New York 2006, p. 21, under no. 1; A. Stefes, Niederländische Zeichnungen, 1450-1800, 3 vols., coll. cat. Hamburg 2011 (Die Sammlungen der Hamburger Kunsthalle, Kupferstichkabinett, vol. 2), I, p. 74, under no. 19 (n. 6); B. Magnusson, Dutch Drawings in Swedish Public Collections, exh. cat. Stockholm (Nationalmuseum) 2018, n.p., under no. 1

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Jan Asselijn, View of S. Teodoro in Rome, Paris, c. 1645 - c. 1646', in J. Turner (ed.), (under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200116950