Lot 39: LIEVEN CRUYL GHENT 1634 - BEFORE 1720

bears inscription, lower left: J: Callot.f
pen and black and brown ink and grey and brown wash, within brown ink framing lines, on vellum
Inv.nr. N 62

147 by 205 mm.

Bordeaux, Musée des Beaux-Arts, La peinture française en Suède; Hommage à Alexander Roslin et à Adolf Ulrik Wertmüller, 1967, cat. no. 114, reproduced plate 52 (as J. Callot);
Amsterdam/Dordrecht 1994-5, cat. no. 18;
The Hague 2001, cat. no. 58

Professor Dr. Einar Perman, Stockholm, from whom purchased in 1968

An extremely fine example of the intricate topographical drawings on vellum that the Ghent-born priest Lieven Cruyl made during his various journeys to Italy between the 1660s and the 1680s, many of which were subsequently used as the basis for published etchings (see Barbara Jatta, Lieven Cruyl e la sua opera grafica; Un artista fiammingo nellÍtalia del Seicento, Brussels/Rome 1992). Probably for technical reasons relating to the materials that the artist used, very few of Cruyl's drawings of this type have survived in as good condition as the present example.

Several other versions of this definitive view of Rome are known, beginning with two large drawings, both dated 1665, now in Cleveland and Vienna (see Jatta, op.cit., pp. 127-8, nr. 76); one of these is the mirror-image of the other, and they were probably made as the basis for an unrealised print. There is also a smaller drawing of 1672, in the Uffizi, Florence (see Jatta, op. cit., p. 109, nr. 36), and a further, circular version (sold Amsterdam, Christie's, 12 November 1990, lot 109).