Street Scene with Roman Ruins, Jan Both, c. 1642 - c. 1644 – (Jan Both) ◄ prijašnji Sljedeći ►

Umjetnik: Jan Both

Datum: 1644

Veličina: 66 x 83 cm

Tehnika: Oil On Canvas

Blankert was the first to point out that this picture by Jan Both must be the companion piece to the Landscape with a Ruined Temple and Card Players in Munich (fig. a).7 Not only are the dimensions almost the same but the compositions and the placement of the figures are each other’s mirror image. Burke went a step further and proposed that the two paintings represent different times of the day. The warmly lit Rijksmuseum scene seems to be illuminated by the evening sun, while the cooler tonality of the Munich canvas suggests the light of morning.8 This led Salerno to assume that the pendants were the same as the ones that Joachim von Sandrart reported as being in his own collection.9 However, there is no firm evidence of this. If the two scenes were indeed intended to be a pair, which is by no means certain, they were separated a long time ago. The one in Munich was already in the Kurfürstliche Sammlung there in the eighteenth century,10 while the one in Amsterdam only emerged on the art market in London in 1894. The composition of the landscape has an interesting sense of recession into depth thanks to the prominent classical ruins. The one in the right foreground could be that of the Temple of Antonius and Faustina in the Forum Romanum. It has been suggested that the triumphal arch in the centre is that of Titus.11 It too stands in the Forum, and before it was restored in the eighteenth century it had a sloping side. That feature would not rule out the Arch of Drusus either; in fact the broken column just to the left of the opening makes that even more likely. In any event, there is a close correspondence, albeit reversed left for right, with the arch depicted by the artist in the painting now in the Duke of Devonshire’s collection at Chatsworth.12 The building vaguely visible in the background is based on the Colosseum. The architecture in this cityscape is a free interpretation and compilation of classical ruins to be seen in Rome, so this is a true capriccio. The scene is dominated by men in large hats in the bambocciante style popularized in Rome by Pieter van Laer.13 Von Sandrart’s statement that the Both brothers collaborated on paintings has led to the suggestion that the figures in this cityscape are by Andries.14 In contrast to those in the Munich canvas, which were definitely by him, Blankert felt that there was an absence of the liveliness and caricatural found in that work, which rightly convinced him that the Amsterdam picture must be by Jan alone.15 Since the latter produced street scenes of this kind while he was living in Rome, and given the attribution of the staffage to him, this canvas was probably executed shortly after Andries’s death in 1642. Richard Harmanni, 2022 See Key to abbreviations, Rijksmuseum painting catalogues and Acknowledgements