The Adoration of the Magi

c. 1640 - c. 1650

Object data

oil on tin-plated copper

support: height 28.4 cm × width 48.8 cm
outer size: depth 6.5 cm (support incl. frame)

Technical notes

The support is a copper plate with a tin coating. A light grey underpainting beneath the architecture, landscape and figures was applied over a white ground. The paint layers were smoothly and opaquely applied, except for some areas in the sky. There is a small pentimento in the contours of the Virgin’s face. Infrared photography revealed an underdrawing in the architecture of the Coliseum in the background and in that of the podium on the right.

Scientific examination and reports

technical report: G. Tauber, RMA, 30 August 2004

Condition

Fair. The hills on the left are slightly abraded, leading to transparency in the trees, the buildings and, in particular, the caravan. The blue of the Virgin’s cloak and that of Melchior and of the figure standing on his left, is discoloured, and shows a distinct craquelure. There are small discoloured retouchings throughout.

Provenance

...; sale, F. Kaijser (†) (Frankfurt, Amsterdam) et al. [section F. Kaijser], Amsterdam (C.F. Roos), 4 December 1888 sqq., no. 13, as B. Breenbergh, fl. 295, to J.H. Balfoort for the Vereniging Rembrandt;¹ from the Vereniging Rembrandt, fl. 347, to the museum, January 1889²

Object number: SK-A-1482

The artist

Bartholomeus Breenbergh (Deventer 1598 - Amsterdam 1657)

The son of a pharmacist, Bartholomeus Breenbergh was baptized in the Reformed Church of Deventer on 13 November 1598. After his father’s death in 1607 the family moved to Hoorn. As already noted by Houbraken, nothing is known about Bartholomeus’s training. He is first recorded as a painter in October 1619 in Amsterdam, and by the end of that year he was listed in the census of Rome as a Catholic. He was one of the founding members of the society of Dutch artists, the Bentvueghels, in which he was given the sobriquet ‘het fret’ (‘the weasel’). Some 30, mostly small cabinet paintings and 80 drawings can be ascribed to his decade in Italy. His first signed and dated painting, The Finding of Moses, is from 1622.³ It shows the influence of the Pre-Rembrandtists, and especially of Jan Pynas, with whose work Breenbergh could have already familiarized himself in Amsterdam. The other paintings from his Roman sojourn are mostly Italianate landscapes with staffage, but without any particular subject. Their style is deeply indebted to such painters as Adam Elsheimer, Filippo Napoletano and Paulus Bril, and show a great similarity to the cabinet pieces of Cornelis van Poelenburch, with which they have often been confused. According to his own testimony (1653), Breenbergh often observed Bril painting during the seven years he knew him in Rome, and he copied his work.

The exact date of Breenbergh’s return to Holland is not known. While a drawing dated 1630 shows a ruin which could be Borgvliet near Bergen op Zoom,⁴ he had settled in Amsterdam by 1633, where he married Rebecca Schellingwou, who came from a fervent Roman Catholic family of cloth merchants. The most important difference between his Italian work and the more than 100 paintings he produced in Amsterdam after his return is the introduction of biblical or mythological subject matter into his classical landscapes, and the greater prominence given to the figures. Although the production of small coppers and panels continued, larger formats predominate. Besides paintings and drawings, Breenbergh produced prints. After the 1630s his artistic output seems to have diminished, which might be related to the fact that he is recorded as a merchant in several documents from 1649 on. His last and most ambitious picture, Joseph Distributing Corn in Egypt of 1654, a complex composition crowded with large figures, is a synthesis of his mature style.⁵ He was buried in the Dutch Reformed Oude Kerk in Amsterdam on 5 October 1657.

Although it has been suggested that Jan de Bisschop (1628-71) was a pupil of Breenbergh, nothing points to the presence of a workshop, nor is there any information about possible patrons. It is likely, though, that Paolo Giordano Orsini II, Duca di Bracciano was one of them during Breenbergh’s time in Rome, as he made several monumental drawings of Bomarzo, the family’s seat, and the Orsini inventory of 1655/56 records seven of his landscapes.

Taco Dibbits, 2007

References
Houbraken I, 1718, pp. 369-70; Descamps II, 1754, pp. 299-301; Roethlisberger 1969, pp. 3-19; Nalis 1972; Roethlisberger 1981, pp. 2-22; Roethlisberger 1985; Roethlisberger 1991, pp. V-X; Verdi 2005, pp. 10-23

Entry

In his review of the auction of the estate of F. Kaijser in 1888, Bredius suggested a date for this picture in the middle of Breenbergh’s career. He also noted that it showed the strong influence of Cornelis van Poelenburch, and that it was painted very smoothly.⁶ Doubts about the attribution were first voiced by Blankert in 1968, who considered its quality not up to Breenbergh’s standard, suggesting instead that it might be a copy or workshop product.⁷ Roethlisberger also concluded that the traditional attribution could not be sustained, although he pointed to the resemblance to Van Poelenburch’s work from the end of his time in Italy, and to that of Jan Pynas – two artists who had a profound influence on Breenbergh.

This small copper, with a biblical scene set in an open space reminiscent of the Roman fora with a ruin in the background that recalls the Coliseum,⁸ is indeed of the type that Breenbergh painted when under the influence of Van Poelenburch in the late 1620s and early 1630s.⁹ Elements of the composition are also to be found in other paintings by Breenbergh, such as the horse on the left with its left leg lifted and its head hanging down, which appears in The Schoolmaster of Falerii in Kassel.¹⁰ The positions of the kneeling king, whose robe is gathered up by a young boy behind him, and of the Virgin and Child, are similar to those in a signed picture dated 1648 formerly in Amsterdam.¹¹ However, the figures in Breenbergh’s paintings from around 1630 are usually placed more towards the background, and only start crowding the foreground later in his career. The smooth manner in which the figures are painted and the use of bright colours are also more reminiscent of Breenbergh’s late work. This discrepancy argues on the one hand for a date around 1630 and on the other for one in the 1640s. The overall weakness of the composition suggests that the painting was produced by an artist in Breenbergh’s immediate circle in the 1640s. That Breenbergh’s work was copied during his own lifetime, even though he does not appear to have had a workshop, is attested to by a copy of Joseph Distributing Corn in Egypt, which has a similar bright palette and was either copied after the lost original by Breenbergh or after Jan de Bisschop’s reproductive print.¹²

Taco Dibbits, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 35.

Literature

Roethlisberger 1981, p. 103, no. 315

Collection catalogues

1903, p. 64, no. 621 (as Breenbergh); 1976, p. 143, no. A 1482 (as attributed to Breenbergh); 2007, no. 35

Citation

T. Dibbits, 2007, 'circle of Bartholomeus Breenbergh, The Adoration of the Magi, c. 1640 - c. 1650', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.6237

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