View from a harbor

Bril Paul

(Antwerp 1554 - Rome 1626)

The canvas, painted around 1611 by Paul Bril for the Borghese family, shows a view of a sea port dominated by a large sailing ship with three flagpoles bearing several flags, two with the coat of arms of the Borghese family and the figures of the saints Peter and Paul. A third emblem, visible on the bow, instead shows the Immaculate Conception, while the white banner fluttering in the wind bears the papal insignia surmounted by the pontifical keys and triregnum, the triple crown. 

Surrounding it are groups of men whose slender figures are engulfed by the vast landscape that opens up behind them, distinguished by a leaden sky and a rocky mass on which a city with a bell tower and watchtower stands.

Object details

Commentary

According to scholars, this painting was made by Paul Bril for Paul V and given by the pope to his nephew Scipione Borghese, who paid the gilder Annibale Durante eight scudi in 1612 for ‘a gilt frame for the view with a ship by Paul Bril eight by six palms’ (Della Pergola 1959, p. 149, no. 208). Listed in all the Borghese inventories (Della Pergola 1959), Giovanni Piancastelli’s object descriptions (1891) and Adolfo Venturi’s Catalogo, the seascape is mentioned by, among others, Scipione Francucci (1613; for a differing opinion, see Herrmann Fiore 1999) and Iacomo Manilli, who described it in 1650 as ‘the large painting above the table of a port with lots of boats’.

Entirely absent from the correspondence between Cardinal Federico Borromeo and Paul Bril (who painted a variant for the powerful prelate between 1610 and 1611 that was ‘similar to the one for M. Crescenti or even finer’ [Vaes 1931]), Paola della Pergola (1959) dated the work to after 1611,  a date moved back by Didier Bodart (1970, p. 230) to 1610 and fixed by Luigi Salerno (1977) to 1610-1611. In 2006, finding the painting to be more mature and carefully considered than the ones made for Cardinal Borromeo (Milan, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana) and Monsignor Crescenzi (Brussels, Musée Royaux des Beaux-Arts), Francesca Cappelletti confirmed the date of 1611 (Cappelletti 2006; idem, 2011), the year in which the painter came into contact with Scipione Borghese for the decoration of the Casino di Montecavallo.

The painting depicts a port with a large sailboat with three masts flying flags, two of which bear the Borghese coat of arms and the figures of Saints Peter and Paul. A third flag, at the bow, instead depicts the Immaculate Conception, while the fluttering white flag is decorated with the papal insignia topped by the papal keys and triple crown. All around are groups of men, the slender figures of which are dwarfed by the vast landscape that opens up behind them, marked by a cloudy sky and a rocky mass topped by a city with a bell tower and a watchtower.

This was a very popular subject and the artist painted multiple versions of it: one variant was made for Cardinal Carlo de’ Medici (Florence, Museo degli Uffizi); another was reported by Giulio Mancini in 1615 (Mancini c. 1615 [ed. 1956-1957]); another, attributed to Bril and datable to 1621, is mentioned in the inventory of Scipione Borghese (Corradini 1998, p. 450).

A drawing of this seascape was made in 1638 by Claude Lorrain (Liber Veritatis fol. 30, London, British Museum), who, arriving in Rome in 1613, took an interest in the landscapes by Bril, Agostino Tassi and Adam Elsheimer.

Antonio Iommelli