The versatile artist, poet and playwright Guilliam van Nieulandt the Younger was born in Antwerp in 1584. His parents were salesman Adriaen van Nieulandt the Elder (c. 1562-1603?), and his wife Geertruyd Loyson. After Guilliam’s brother, the painter Adriaen van Nieulandt (c. 1586-1658), was born the family moved to Amsterdam in 1589, probably for religious reasons. In Amsterdam, Van Nieulandt received his education from Jacob Savery (1565/67-1603), in whose studio he worked in 1599. During the year 1601 he must have taken off to Rome, where he became a pupil of his eponymous uncle, the painter Guilliam van Nieulandt the Elder (1560-1626), with whom he is mentioned in a document dated 1602. In addition, Guilliam studied for at least a year with another Antwerp émigré in Rome, the painter Paul Bril (1553/54-1626), before his return to Amsterdam in 1604. There he married, in February 1606, Anna Pietersdr Hustaert, of Antwerp descent. After declaring to the city government that Guilliam had converted to Catholicism, the couple soon relocated to Antwerp, where Van Nieulandt became a member of the Guild of St Luke. During the following years four children were born, of whom Constantia (1611-1657) survived. In 1628 she married the painter Adriaen van Utrecht (1599-1652).

 

Besides his activities as a painter, Van Nieulandt was an active member of the local chamber of rhetoric, De Olyftak. Among its most productive and celebrated contributors, his classical, Senecan oriented plays were all performed by the chamber with great success, and subsequently published. In addition, Van Nieulandt painted the chamber’s theatre stage, and its coat of arms. In 1620, disagreements led to Van Nieulandt switching to De Violieren, another chamber of rhetoric, where four more plays saw the light. In 1629 Van Nieulandt and his wife moved back to Amsterdam, where his brother Adriaen had built up a prosperous painting career. However, his further career was short-lived. On 24 October 1635, Guilliam drew up his will from the house ‘In de vergulde engel’ in the Nieuwezijds Achterburgwal (now Spuistraat), and soon after he died.

 

Van Nieulandt’s three year stay in Rome was of paramount effect on his artistic output. One only has to look at his subject matter – he drew, painted and etched almost exclusively Roman vedute – and his style is clearly reminiscent of the meticulous, somewhat graphic style with tiny figures of his Roman teachers Guilliam van Nieulandt the Elder and Paul Bril, as well as the latter’s elder brother Mattijs Bril (1550-1583). During his entire career, he relied on the imagery of the drawings that he made in his Roman period, using and re-using the motifs – often recognisable Roman monuments, ruins and other architecture – that he recorded in those early years, either drawing from nature or by copying after the work of his masters. Sometimes his Roman views provided the decor for stories from Classical mythology or the Bible, but just as often he populated his work with pastoral staffage. Signed and dated works are known from at least 1604 until 1635, the year of his death. 

 

The present small-size panel painting may be dated to the second half of the 1610's, as it is stylistically close to a painting in the Národní Galerie in Prague dated 1617 (inv./cat.nr. O-9769). It depicts several people, all men, standing outside a city wall, while collecting and discussing various architectural fragments that are scattered about. Dominating the picture are the remains of a tower that is quite reminiscent of the Torre delle Milizie, a Roman medieval tower that van Nieulandt knew well, as he depicted it in a print (Hollstein Dutch 7-1). This reflects van Nieulandt's common practice of mixing fact and fiction in his paintings, incorporating accurate topographical details into an imaginary landscape. Undoubtedly, however, during his stay in Rome he must have observed many early collectors of antiquities such as the ones he paints here, as local and foreign humanists alike were drawn to the city's many treasures from the past.