Currently not on view
Landscape with the Ponte Lucano and the Tomb of the Plautii
More Context
<p>Jan Both left his native Netherlands to spend several years in Rome (ca. 1638–41). While there, he sketched landscapes from nature that would serve as inspiration for the Italianate views marked by golden light and warm atmosphere that he painted back in Utrecht. This landscape features one of the artist’s favorite subjects: the Ponte Lucano and the Tomb of the Plautii, Roman monuments in the vicinity of Tivoli that here have been relocated to a more mountainous terrain marked by massive trees. The figure of a driver with his mule is also a recurring motif in Both’s work. Extremely popular, the artist’s paintings were widely imitated and copied. The concentration of forms on one side of the picture, the relatively tight brushwork, and the compact shape of the central tree in this work are characteristic of the type of composition Both painted in the first half of the 1640s. </p>
Information
Frédéric Kalkbrenner, his sale, Paris, Laneuville/Bonnefons, 14 January 1850, lot 3, for 2000 francs; Dr. Louis Joseph Jecker, his sale, Paris, Durand, 10 November 1851, lot 1, for 1400 francs; Piérard de Valenciennes, his sale, Paris, Laneuville/Le Roy, 20 March 1860, lot 6, for 2400 francs; with Galerie Pereire, by whom sold, Paris, Pillet, 6 March 1872, lot 114, for 2200 francs; Anonymous sale, Paris, Ader Tajan, 12 June 1995, lot 99; Sotheby’s, London, 3 July 1997, lot 126 (sold for £13,500 to Duane Wilder); by bequest to Princeton University Art Museum 2018
