Willem II van Nieulandt (Antwerp 1584 - 1635 Amsterdam)

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 work, painted on an exceptionally large copper plate, is one of Van Nieulandt’s most majestic perspectives on the Forum Romanum in Rome, conceived as a gorgeous coulisse-landscape. Standing on a central knoll with antique column fragments that serves as the painting’s main repoussoir, a shepherd in a bright yellow cloak spreads his arms. This spreading gesture is repeated by another shepherd to the right, whose silhouette subtly contrasts with the lighter puddle in the distance. While the shepherds primarily spread their arms to herd their flock, the gesture cleverly emphasizes the imposing wide view at offer. A drawing providing a similar broad and topographically correct view of the Forum, which Van Nieulandt clearly made in situ, no doubt served as the painting’s primary inspiration (Buenos Aires, private collection).

 

However, while the drawing includes a similar knoll in the foreground, it only captures the ruins and buildings at the west end of the Forum, most notably the three iconic columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux to the left, the Tabularium (the records office of ancient Rome, located at the Capitoline Hill) with its signature tower in the central background, the Column of Phocas and the Arch of Septimius Severus, all of which return in our painting. To further enrich the present painting’s composition, Van Nieulandt added several antique ruins in the foreground. Behind additional staffage of shepherds and a donkey, the main structure on the left (the south side of the Forum) is the ruin of the Temple of Saturn, with its signature inscription ‘S[enatus] P[opulus]Q[ue] R[omanus] INCENDIO CONSUMPTUM RESTITUIT’ (The Senate and People of Rome restored [the temple] consumed by fire). Next to it stand the three columns of the Temple of Vespasian and Titus, only the word [R]ESTITVER remaining on its frieze. In reality, both temple ruins are located at the west end of the Forum, in front of the Tabularium, as can be seen in an engraving by the Frech artist Etienne Dupérac (c. 1525-1604), which Van Nieulandt might well have employed. One may, in fact, discern the Temple of Saturn at its correct topographical location in the far distance in our painting, which thus remarkably depicts the ruin twice. 

 

Such topographical relocating of antique structures as pictorial elements in his paintings is common practice in the oeuvre of Van Nieulandt who, for example, identically reused the motif of the temples of Saturn and Vespasian and Titus in another composition (sale Paris, Drouot, 8 December 1975, lot 130). Similarly, the third structure on the left, its silhouette emerging behind the temples of Saturn and Vespasian and Titus, is the no longer existing ruin of the Temple of Serapis, which in reality was located not at the Forum, but on the Quirinal Hill. No drawing of this edifice by Van Nieulandt exists, nor does it feature in other works by him. For its unique inclusion here Van Nieulandt might once more have relied on one of Dupérac’s prints, which depicts the building from the identical angle. As for the structures on the right (the north side of the Forum), Van Nieulandt found yet another source. With some artistic license, he integrally appropriated both the darker repoussoir with overgrowth and the lighter ruins beyond from a Roman veduta by his former teacher Paul Bril, now in the Louvre. Indeed, Van Nieulandt had shown a particular interest in this specific composition by Bril, on which he elaborated in at least three paintings, all signed and dated 1609. 

 

This brings us to the dating of our work, which was likely executed not much later, a conclusion corroborated by another painting from that year, in which we find the same west end of the Forum as its central component. Furthermore, considering Van Nieulandt’s early production up until to 1610, one notices that among the signed and dated works (12 in total) eight are painted on copper. In contrast, after 1610 no dated works (28 in total) are painted on this support anymore, clearly indicating a near exclusive shift towards painting on panel. Stylistically and compositionally, the present painting with its grand and elegant scope and bright, subtle palette is clearly removed from the earlier, more dense production. Rather, it heralds Van Nieulandt’s most ambitious career phase, the first half of the 1610s, in which he painted his most balanced and impressive Roman vedute, such as the kindred View of the Campo Vaccino dated 1611 in the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten Antwerpen, the spectacular Adoration of the Magi of c. 1612 in a Dutch private collection, the likewise undated View of the Forum Romanum formerly in the art trade, which adopts a similar view towards the west side of the Forum, and the Departure of the Israelites from Egypt dated 1612 in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. Like the present painting, these works offer broad and monumental V-shaped perspectives on Rome’s antiquities, the present work being the only one painted on copper. That given, an approximate dating of c. 1610-1611 seems appropriate.