Guilliam van Nieulandt the Younger

Dr. Einar Perman (1893-1976), Stockholm,

by descent to the present owners,

sale, New York, Sotheby's, 31 January 2024, lot 107

P. Schatborn, Drawn to Warmth. 17^th-century Dutch artists in Italy, exh. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 2001, p. 42, p. 203 note 21

Laren, Singer Museum, Oude Tekeningen uit de Nederlanden. Verzameling Prof. E. Perman, Stockholm, 1962, cat. 82 (as Willem van Nieulandt I)

In 1604, the artists' biographer Karel van Mander wrote, in his account of the activities of Paul Bril, that '..for a year he had as his pupil [in Rome] Guilliaem van Nieuwlandt, of Antwerp, 22 years of age, presently living in Amsterdam, who took on his master's manner very naturally.'¹ During his three years in Rome, 1601-1604, Nieulandt did indeed work closely with, and in the manner of, Bril, but also developed his own, personal style, combining refined and precise penwork and delicate brown and blue washes with a rather creative approach to topography. Of his relatively few surviving drawings depicting ancient Roman monuments, some are topographically correct - mostly those executed during his stay in Rome, around 1603-4 - while others, made, like this fine drawing, later in the artist's career, sometimes represent the location depicted less precisely. As Peter Schatborn has noted, this is one of just three Italian views by Van Nieulandt dating from the 1620s; another, a View of the Colosseum from the Caelian Hill, dated 1620, is in Leiden.²

As regards the location depicted, the drawing was previously described as a capriccio-like view of the Temple of Minerva Medica, Rome, relocated beside water, but we are most grateful to Charles Noble for kindly informing us that a drawing of the same view by Sebastian Vrancx, in the Devonshire Collection at Chatsworth (inv. 1100³), traditionally similarly described, was identified by M.R. Nappi as a view of The Ruins of the Temple of Diana at Bacoli near Pozzuoli, Bay of Naples. This raises the intriguing new possibility that during his Italian stay, Nieulandt may have ventured as far south as Naples.

The allocation of drawings between Van Nieulandt and his artist uncle, also Guilliam van Nieulandt (1560-1626), with whom he lodged in Rome, has sometimes been debated, but some of those signed in capitals in this manner are dated after the Elder van Nieulandt's death, and it therefore seems reasonable to conclude, as Schatborn did, that all the drawings signed in this way are by Guilliam the Younger.  

^1.Karel van Mander, The Lives of the Illustrious Netherlandish and German Painters, ed. Hessel Miedema, 6 vols., Doornspijk 1994-99 (original publication 1604), vol. 1, p. 427, fol. 292r, vol. VI, pp. 16-17

^2.Leiden, Prentenkabinet van de Universiteit, inv. AW 1087; Schatborn, op. cit., pp. 38-42 

^3.M. Jaffé, The Devonshire Collection of Northern European Drawings, Turin/London/Venice 2002, vol. 2, p. 261, cat. 1284