A wooded landscape with a bridge and sportsmen at the edge of the river

Paul Bril was an Antwerp artist who from 1576 made his career in Rome as one of the first landscape specialists. According to a label on the back, this work still hung in the 18th century in an unidentified Roman palace in the ‘second antechamber next to the gallery overlooking the courtyard’. Like most landscapes paintings at this date the picture would have performed a decorative function, to which its extravagantly contrived and colourful composition was well suited.