Paul Bril and workshop

And workshop on a label means the master designed the picture and worked on it, while assistants in his studio painted part of it. The Landscape with Shepherds at the Galleria Borghese, from around 1602, shows two herdsmen looking up at the sky among goats and sheep, with big trees in strong light and shade on the left and a lit church far off in country like the Roman Campagna. Every old inventory called it Bril. In 1893 Adolfo Venturi judged it too weak for the master, and later scholars settled on Bril with his workshop.

Paul Bril came from Antwerp, reached Rome in the 1570s to join his brother Matthijs, and stayed until his death in 1626. He painted landscape frescoes in the Vatican and in Roman churches and palaces, and his small landscapes were eagerly collected. This canvas may be one of the paintings seized in 1607 from the painter Cavalier d'Arpino, whose collection passed to Cardinal Scipione Borghese.