Born in Deventer and apparently first active as an artist in Amsterdam, Bartholomäus Breenbergh (1598–1657) was among the earliest of the flood of Dutch artists who would study in Rome during the seventeenth century. He was a founding member of the Schildersbent, the society of Dutch painters working in Rome. Although he remained in Rome for about a decade, from c. 1619–c. 1629, relatively few of his paintings from this period are known, and his artistic development can be traced mainly through his drawings. During this time, he worked with the Dutch painter Paul Bril (1554–1626) who exerted an important influence on the younger artist. His draughtsmanship also resembles that of his contemporary Cornelis Poelenbergh (1594 or 1595–1667), a fellow student of Brill's.(1) After Breenbergh’s return to Amsterdam, he turned for inspiration to an earlier generation of Dutch artists, the “Pre-Rembrandtists,” in particular to Pieter Lastman (1583–1633). During this later stage of his career, Breenbergh favored biblical scenes set in somewhat mannered landscapes, peppered with classical ruins of the type he saw in Rome, though he also painted portraits.(2)

In contrast to his sparse output of paintings during his Roman period, Breenbergh’s production of drawings from this decade was prodigious and forms the largest part of his oeuvre. He mined these drawings for motifs for the rest of his life, repeating the ruins he sketched in both etchings and paintings. While he sometimes drew pure landscapes, he favored views of the Roman countryside that included architecture, such as scenes from the Orsini park at Bomarzo and the classical ruins at Tivoli. In technique and subject matter, the Crocker drawing is typical of his draughtsmanship: most of his Roman drawings, like this one, consist of black chalk underdrawings overlaid with brown ink and wash. Clearly fascinated by the dramatic effects of the bright Italian sunlight passing over crumbling ruins, the artist used a wide variety of touches, ranging from broad areas of smooth wash through a range of different pen strokes, to capture the fall of light and shadow.

The town of Tivoli, located about twenty miles outside of Rome, over centuries attracted artists to its Roman ruins, dramatic waterfalls, and views of the surrounding campagna. Breenbergh returned to the area a number of times during his years in Rome. Although he sketched a variety of views, here he chose to concentrate on the most popular of the ruins, the circular Temple of the Sibyl, or Temple of Vesta. Dating from the first century BC, the temple was later used as a Christian chapel: a lunette of the Madonna is visible through the door in the present drawings. The same temple appears in a number of other drawings by Breenbergh.(3) The unsigned drawing in Dresden is another version of the Crocker sheet, which Christian Dittrich regards as a workshop copy.(4) Dittrich points out that the irregularities and weak areas in the Dresden sketch are corrected in the Crocker version, resulting in a less spontaneous, more careful drawing. Indeed, the precision with which the draughtsman followed the black chalk guidelines with pen and wash suggests that the Crocker drawing may be a later version completed in the studio rather than in situ. The liveliness of handling and sparkling contrast between sun and shade, however, are characteristic of Breenbergh’s Roman drawings, and there is no reason to believe the Crocker drawing is a workshop copy rather than a second version by the artist, who sometimes repeated his own compositions.

Stacey Sell, in William Breazeale, with Cara Denison, Stacey Sell, and Freyda Spira, A Pioneering Collection: Master Drawings from the Crocker Art Museum, exh. cat. Sacramento and tour, 2010