Fanciful View Of The Piazza Del Popolo In Winter - 17th Century Flemish School

Flemish School, 17th century. Oil on paper laid down on panel.
From the heights of a snow-covered hill - which is none other than the hill of Pincio in Rome - on which peasants are busy with their work, we can see the famous Piazza del Popolo on which a crowd of individuals is agitated. This central square is here the scene of a winter festival: the carnival. Everyone has fun in their own way: in the streets, some ride in sleigh while others race on horseback. In the center of the square, figures have gathered around the Flaminio obelisk to dance, play pranks and play ring toss. Taking part in these festivities, children play music while two of their comrades do their business behind them. The artist thus delivers a dual vision of winter: the urban entertainment taking place in the center responds to the two landscapes located in the foreground and in the background. Grazing light irradiates the scene with yellow and pink reflections as far as the distant hills, creating at the same time frank plays of shadows cast and backlighting on the architectural elements of the city. As part of the Flemish tradition, our painter gives realism to his work by composing from a point of view lowered to human height. Not seeking to embrace the entire world, he shows us a fragment of life located halfway between the genre scene and the landscape. The artist delivers here a personal interpretation of a work by Paul Bril representing the months of January and February within a calendar series translated into engraving by Aegidius Sadeler II in 1615. While Paul Bril's long trip to Italy l led to the painting of rather solemn characters, our artist prefers popular figures and comical situations characteristic of Flemish genre painting since Pieter Brueghel the Elder.

We have chosen to present this painting to you in a reversed profile frame in blackened wood.
Dimensions: 38 x 56 – 52 x 70.5 cm with the frame

Biography: Following an early apprenticeship in Antwerp with Damiaan Wortelmans, Paul Bril (Antwerp, c. 1554 – Rome, Oct. 7, 1626) leaves join his brother Mathijjs in Rome in 1574, in order to assist him in his pontifical orders. His first autograph works date back to the late 1580s; most of them are monumental frescoes intended for the Vatican. A landscape painter trained in the Antwerp tradition, his style gained in autonomy at the end of the 16th century through contact with Italy and its artists. Abandoning the dramatic effects of the Frankenthal school, he develops a more harmonious and calm painting where classical architecture and ruin occupy an important place. Renowned throughout Italy, he was elected a principal member of the Academy of Saint Luke in Rome in 1620 and his works were collected by the most eminent figures of his time.

Bibliography:
- GIBSON, Walter S., Mirror of the Earth: the World Landscape in Sixteenth-Century Flemish Painting, Princeton, Princeton University press.
- THIERY, Yvonne, Flemish landscape painters in the 17th century: precursors to Rubens, Brussels, Lefèbvre and Gillet, 1988.
- VLIEGHE, Hans, Flemish Art and Architecture: 1585 – 1700, Yale University Press, 1998.
- WOOD RUBY, Louisa, Paul Bril: The drawings, Belgium, Brepols, 1999.