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.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 * Matthi ...

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 plast ...

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 in the Collegio Romano. His success was assured after Pope Sixtus V 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 large ...

, the Vatican Palace and the Scala Santa. 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 ...

in Rome of around 1599. Paul Bril - Diana and Callisto (National Gallery, London)

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. Bor ...

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 thir ...

in collaboration with the brothers Giovanni and Cherubino Alberti (1600–02/3). In 1601 Paul received another major commission, to paint a series of large canvases featuring properties of the Mattei family. Paul further painted landscape frescoes in the Casino dell'Aurora of the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi 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 pol ...

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 families in Rome as well as Cardinal Federico Borromeo 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 ...

, 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 ...

and Duke Ferdinando Gonzaga in

Mantua Mantua ( ; it, Mantova ; Lombard and la, Mantua) is a city and '' comune'' in Lombardy, Italy, and capital of the province of the same name. In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the Eur ...

. 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,

Pieter Spierinckx Pieter Spierincks or Pieter Nicolaes Spierinckx (30 August 1635, Antwerp – 30 August 1711, Antwerp or England) was a Flemish painter and designer of tapestries. He was an important representative of the Italianizing movement in Flemish landsca ...

, Agostino Tassi and

Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom Hendrik Cornelisz Vroom (c.1562 – February 4, 1640 (buried)) was a Dutch Golden Age painter credited with being the founder of Dutch marine art or seascape painting.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 - View of Bracciano - Google Art Project

Paul Bril initially painted in the late Mannerist style developed by his brother. These early landscapes are in the Flemish tradition inaugurated by Joachim Patinir 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 gen ...

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 t ...

and Adam Elsheimer. 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 Paul_Bril_-_Chasse_au_cerf_(Louvre)

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 ...

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 painters active in Rome from about 1625 until the end of the seventeenth century. Most were Dutch and Flemish artists who brought existing traditions of depicting peasant subjects from sixteenth-century Netherla ...

. 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 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 pink ...

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 ...

, a pun on the

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. Paul Bril - Landscape with a harbour

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 Johann Rottenhammer, or Hans Rottenhammer (1564 – 14 August 1625), was a German painter. He specialized in highly finished paintings on a small scale. Biography He was born in Munich, where he studied until 1588 under Hans Donauer the El ...

. 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 collaborat ...

and Adam Elsheimer, 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, England. The seat of the Duke of Devonshire, it has belonged to the Cavendish family since 1549. It stands on the east bank of the ...

. Bril introduced Jan Brueghel the Elder to Cardinal Federico Borromeo, who subsequently became Brueghel's most important patron. He also let the Dutch landscape artist

live in his Roman residence for many years.Paul Bril (Antwerp 1554-1626 Rome), ''Saint Jerome praying in a rocky landscape''
at Christie's

References

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

Life

Work

See also

References

Further reading

External links