A View of Bracciano with the Church of S. Maria Assunta (c. 1619–33): Art, History and Details

A View of Bracciano with the Church of S. Maria Assunta (c. 1619–33) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Bartholomeus Breenberg (Dutch, 1599–1657).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

In the early 1600s, artists from Northern Europe began to take long trips to Italy as part of their artistic training. Bartholomeus Breenberg traveled to Italy around 1620 and probably stayed for at least 12 years. While there, he sketched ancient ruins and the countryside, features he would use in his paintings when he returned to Amsterdam in the 1630s. The area around the Lago di Bracciano, a volcanic lake northwest of Rome, was home to several medieval villages that provided charming vistas for artists. In his view, Breenberg emphasized the crumbling turret of a medieval castle in Bracciano in front of the ordered, linear outline of the Church of Santa Maria Assunta beyond. Combining gray and brown ink washes to plot gradations in tone, he created vivid contrasts of light and shade, capturing the effects of the bright Italian sunshine.

Object facts

• Title: A View of Bracciano with the Church of S. Maria Assunta
• Date: c. 1619–33
• Creator attribution: Bartholomeus Breenberg (Dutch, 1599–1657)
• Culture: Netherlands
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: Brown and gray inks and washes applied with point of brush and brush, with traces of graphite underdrawing on cream antique laid paper
• Dimensions: Image and Sheet: 8.7 x 15 cm (3 7/16 x 5 7/8 in.); Mounted: 23.6 x 30.8 cm (9 5/16 x 12 1/8 in.)
• Collection: DR - Dutch
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 2020.127

A detail from the museum

In the early 17th century, European artists were just beginning to make sketches such as this one outdoors and onsite.

Collection credit

Nancy F. and Joseph P. Keithley Collection Gift

Further reading listed by the museum

• Peters, Emily. "Dutch Drawings." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 26-31, 38-41. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.