Jan de Bisschop (Amsterdam 1628-1671 The Hague)

Although de Bisschop often depicted Italian landscapes and monuments in his drawings there is no firm evidence that the artist ever travelled to Italy. It seems more likely that he copied works by other masters that depicted Italian monuments and landscapes. For the present drawing, de Bisschop drew inspiration from a slightly larger painting (54.6 x 45.8 cm.) by Jan Both (1618/22-1652), now in the Devonshire collection, Chatsworth (see Hofstede de Groot 27; reproduced in the 1992 Amsterdam catalogue). The drawing shows the same composition, slightly enlarged at the top, but without the group of figures on the left. A copy of this drawing, attributed to Jacob van der Ulft (1621-1689 Noordwijk), also lacking the group of figures on the left, is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam (inv. A 533).