Naval Battle of 1588 against the Spanish Armada

In the lower left corner of this canvas a few painted digits can still be read, 444. The number comes from an inventory of the Borghese palace in Rome drawn up in 1693. The battle belongs to the summer of 1588, when the Spanish Armada met English and Dutch ships. The museum dates the painting to the next two years or so, while the news was still fresh. The painter, identified with some caution as Hendrick Cornelisz Vroom, looks down on the fight from high above, a viewpoint the museum links to Pieter Bruegel the Elder. From up there you can pick out powder smoke between the hulls, a broken spar in the water and a small boat packed with men. The art historian Kristina Herrmann Fiore thinks it was probably made in Rome for Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici and later reached Scipione Borghese, the cardinal who built this collection.