watermark: letters MCMD; cf. Laurentius, II, nos. 680 (The Hague: 1685) and 692 (Middelburg: 1676)

…; collection Christiaan Josi (1768-1828), Amsterdam (L. 2925bis); …; collection Herman Gerlings Czn (1816-88), Haarlem;¹¹According to the catalogue for the sale, William Pitcairn Knowles, Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 548. his sale, Amsterdam (C.F. Roos & Cie), 2 October 1888 sqq., no. 99, fl. 26, to the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam;²²Copy RKD. …; sale, William Pitcairn Knowles (1820-94, Rotterdam and Wiesbaden), Amsterdam (F. Muller), 25 June 1895 sqq., no. 548, fl. 12, to the dealer F. Muller, Amsterdam;³³Copy RKD. …; with the dealer P. Brandt, Amsterdam, 1955;⁴⁴According to the catalogue for the Butôt sale, Amsterdam (Sotheby’s), 16 November 1993, p. 17 …; bequeathed by Franziskus Cornelius Butôt (1906-92), Amsterdam and St Gilgen, Austria, to the museum (L. 2228), 1993

Object number: RP-T-1993-50

The art market in the Dutch Republic in the seventeenth century enjoyed a growing taste for Italianate scenes, works that invited viewers on a virtual visual trip through the South. One of the artists who travelled to Italy and exploited the material collected in Rome was Willem Romeyn. Decades after visiting the Eternal City, he created Italian vistas and ruins, always with shepherds and their cattle added as eye-catching staffage. The present drawing is one such later version, its signature in capital letters pointing to a date after 1660.⁵⁵P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 150. It shows the Porta Sant’Angelo, Tivoli’s western entrance, with the Ponte Gregoriano crossing the Anio. The Temple of the Sibyl is visible in the middle distance. Another view of Tivoli by Romeyn is in the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm (inv. no. THC 5236).

A second brush drawing of the Porta Sant’Angelo is in the Special Collections, Universiteit Leiden (inv. no. PK-T-AW-359). It is slightly larger than the present sheet (278 x 413 mm) and is catalogued under the name of Jan Asselijn (after 1610-1652),⁶⁶I.Q. van Regteren Altena, Vereeuwigde Stad. Rome door Nederlanders getekend, 1500-1900, Amsterdam 1964, no. 5. although it was not included in Steland’s monograph of that artist.⁷⁷A.C. Steland, Die Zeichnungen des Jan Asselijn, Fridingen 1989. In 1994, Peter Schatborn considered it to be a possible model for the present drawing.⁸⁸P. Schatborn, ‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 61 (1994), p. 368, however, leaving it open to further study. Its open foreground, lacking staffage and, above all, its paper with a non-Dutch watermark (an anchor within a circle, surmounted by a star)⁹⁹A. Mošin, Anchor Watermarks, Amsterdam 1973, no. 1265 (Dubrovnik: 1679), 1267 (Dubrovnik: 1686). support the idea of it having been done in situ in Italy. Could it also be by Romeyn? However, the spot where the draughtsman was seated for the present sheet is slightly to the right of the artist’s position for the Leiden version. This fact and differences in handling point to two different hands. One possible explanation could be that the Leiden drawing and a lost early version of the present sheet by Romeyn were done in a joint drawing session. This would provide further evidence against the Leiden drawing’s attribution to Jan Asselijn, who left Rome by 1644 or 1645 (some six years before Romeyn’s arrival). Other candidates for its author include Willem van Bemmel (1630-1708), who drew many of the same Italianate subjects as Romeyn,¹⁰¹⁰P. Schatborn, with J. Verberne, Drawn to Warmth: 17th-century Dutch Artists in Italy, exh. cat. Amsterdam (Rijksmuseum) 2001, p. 145. and Thomas Wijck (c. 1616/21-1677), whose visit to the South may have taken place between 1646 and 1653.¹¹¹¹Ibid., pp. 117, 119. (See also inv. no. RP-T-1960-212 for another possible pair fo related works by Romeyn and Wijck.)

Annemarie Stefes, 2018

F.C. Butôt (ed.), Niederländische Kunst aus dem goldenen Jahrhundert: Gemälde und Zeichnungen im Umkreis grosser Meister aus der Sammlung F.C. Butôt, exh. cat. Salzburg (Museumpavillon im Mirabellgarten)/Rotterdam (Museum Boymans-van Beuningen) 1972-73, pp. 112-13; L.J. Bol and G.S. Keyes, Netherlandish Paintings and Drawings from the Collection of F.C. Butôt by Little-known and Rare Masters of the Seventeenth Century, London 1981, no. 76; O. Le Bihan, L’Or et l’ombre: Catalogue critique et raisonné des peintures hollandaises du dix-septième et du dix-huitième siècles, conservées au Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux, coll. cat. Bordeaux 1990, p. 264, n. 9; ‘Keuze uit de aanwinsten’, Bulletin van het Rijksmuseum 61 (1994), p. 368, no. 11; 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, I, p. 52, under no. 84, n. 2

A. Stefes, 2018, 'Willem Romeyn, _, Haarlem, after 1660', in J. Turner (ed.), _(under construction) Drawings 2, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200148730