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A Ruined Temple
Charles Cornelisz. de Hooch1620-38
Dulwich Picture Gallery
London, United Kingdom
This pair was only recently attributed to de Hooch, previously being given to Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657). While the ruin in its pair Landscape with a Roman Ruin(DPG 26) has not so far been identified, that inA Ruined Templeis a variation of the famous circular ‘Temple of Vesta’ at Tivoli. Sketches of the temple would have been part of the stock-in-trade of any Dutch artist who had spent time in Italy. A typically Dutch element of this pair is the use of figures to inject an element of everyday life into scenes of decayed Roman grandeur – laundering in one, shepherding in the other.
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Details
- Title: A Ruined Temple
- Creator Lifespan: Active 1620 - 1638
- Date: 1620-38
- Physical Dimensions: w237 x h162 cm
- Type: Painting
- Medium: Oil
- Work Notes: Note in file: ‘very similar Vesta-type fantasy in NG Prague (‘attrib. to B.’) on copper 24 x 33.5 cm. (Burl. Mag. Jan 1967). V. fine dg [drawing?] of …[illegible] Temple. Monog. + d. 1627 in E. B. Crocken Art Gall (? Calif)Similar view of Temple in ptg in The Hague.Roethlisberger comments that ‘the round temple is based on the one in Tivoli, the ruin in the pendant relates to a drawing by Breenbergh (R 62).’
- Work Nationality: Dutch
- Support: Panel
- Provenance: London, Sir Francis Bourgeois, 1811; Bourgeois Bequest, 1811.
- Further Information: Little is known of Carel Cornelisz. de Hooch. Father of the celebrated Pieter de Hooch, he is recorded as a painter in Haarlem and Utrecht in 1628, and in 1633 he became a member of the Utrecht painters’ guild. His works consist of Italianate landscapes with Roman ruins, and reveal a familiarity with the styles of Bartholomeus Breenbergh and Cornelis Poelenburch. The paintings A Ruined TempleandLandscape with a Roman Ruinfunction as a pair and were first documented in 1813 when they were in fact attributed to Bartholomeus Breenbergh (1598-1657). More recently, however, they have been assigned to Carel de Hooch; if one examines the faint inscriptions on the canvases, it is easy to see how an ‘H’ could be confused for a ‘B’. Marijke de Kinkelder agrees with the attribution to De Hooch due to the distinctive representation of the architecture and figure inA Ruined Temple. The date ‘1633’ inscribed inLandscape with a Roman Ruinis consistent with De Hooch’s artistic development, and can be dated to his Utrecht period
- Attributed to: de Hooch, Carel Cornelisz
- Acquisition Method: Bourgeois, Sir Peter Francis (Bequest, 1811)
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