Paul Bril (Antwerp 1553/54 – 1626 Rome)

An extensive mountainous coastal landscape with Brigands abducting Theagenes and Chariclea

oil on canvas
41 3/8 x 58 ¼ inches (105 x 148 cm.)

Literature: 
Francesca Cappelletti, Paul Bril e la pittura di paesaggio a Roma 1580-1630, 2005-6, p.306, no 172.

Recently discovered, this painting is an important addition to the oeuvre of Paul Bril. Its attribution has been confirmed by Dr. Luuk Pijl, who, having inspected it in the original, considers it ‘one of this painter’s best works’ and will include it in his forthcoming catalogue raisonné of works by the artist.  The attribution has also been confirmed on the basis of a photograph by Dr. Luisa Wood Ruby, Curator in the Frick Collection, New York, and author of the catalogue raisonné of Paul Bril’s drawings.   The painting was published in the recent catalogue by Cappalletti (op.cit) as an interesting enrichment to the catalogue of the artist’s known works, notable for the originality of the composition and its sophisticated lighting.  

The subject depicted comes from the late ancient Greek novel Historiae Aethiopicae by the Syrian Heliodorus.  The story tells of the love affair of the Greek Theagenes and the Ethiopian Chariclea, a princess and priestess of Apollo.  Theagenes has abducted Chariclea but while fleeing, the couple are taken captive by pirates, whose chief wants to take Chariclea for himself.  However, at a feast on the Nile delta, the pirates end up quarrelling and kill each other (which is the scene depicted in the middle distance).  Theagenes is wounded in the fight, and when a band of brigands comes upon them, the couple are taken captive, once again, while the robbers plunder the ship.  A second group of brigands appears and, having driven the first band away, take the young lovers to their nearby village, which is the main scene in this work.  After numerous vicissitudes, the story ended happily with the marriage of the couple.  

Although virtually unknown today, Historiae Aethiopicae was quite popular during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  A French translation appeared from 1547 onwards in several editions, and an important edition with engravings by Crispijn van de Passe appeared in Paris in 1624, one copy of which was owned by Maria de’ Medici.  The subject was thought to be suitable for palace decorations; in the king’s apartment at Fontainebleau the story was depicted by Ambroise Dubois in 1609/10, and in 1625 Abraham Bloemaert was commissioned by Frederik Hendrik of Nassau, Prince of Orange, to paint the story on the occasion of his marriage with Amalia van Solms.  Bloemaert’s Theagenes and Chariclea among the slain Sailors, now in Potsdam, Sanssouci, shows the scene on the beach, which is rendered in Bril’s painting in the middle distance (see M. Roethlisberger and M.J. Bok, Abraham Bloemaert and His Sons, Doornspijk, 1993, I, no. 424, and II, fig. 594).

Noting stylistic similarities with works Bril painted during the last years of his prolific life, such as the fine Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs in Oberlin, dated 1623, and the Landscape with the Temptation of Christ in Birmingham, dated 1626, Dr. Pijl has suggested a date of around 1625 for the present painting and this dating to the final decade of his activity has been endorsed by Cappelletti (loc.cit), who notes similarities between the handling of the leaves and tree-trunks in the shaded area on the right hand side in  our picture and that in the Landscape with Nymphs and Satyrs, signed and dated 1623, in the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio.  According to Dr. Pijl, this painting demonstrates that Bril was a master of observation.  Many details are meticulously rendered, from the plants and trees to the sunset and harbor in the distance.  The alternating zones of dark and light give the landscape a clear structure and also provide a convincing suggestion of depth.  Although Bril often relied on Northern and Italian figure painters for the staffage in his landscapes, (Cappalletti is of the opinion that the figures are by a collaborator), Dr. Pijl considers that the figures in the present work are stylistically entirely in keeping with Bril’s own way of figure painting.  Moreover, they are unusually large in size: no other painting with figures of this scale is extant, which makes our painting even more important among Bril’s late works.  The literary source and the sylvan mood make this type of painting interesting in connection with the formative years of Claude Lorrain.  Claude, who appeared in the early 1620s in the Roman art scene and who would become the most important landscape painter in seventeenth century Europe, took this type of work as a point of departure for his own magical works.