Stag Hunt

Paul Bril had an older brother, Matthijs, also a landscape painter, who worked in Rome before him and died there in 1583. The two names have tangled this picture's history. It came into the French royal collection through a dealer named Alvarez, and in 1683 the painter Charles Le Brun, keeper of Louis XIV's pictures, listed it in the king's inventory as a Paul Bril. In the 19th century it was moved to Matthijs, and only later given back to Paul. The date rests on a comparison. A very similar hunting scene in the Uffizi in Florence is dated 1595, so this one is placed in the early 1590s, when Paul was establishing himself in Rome. For a long time it was treated as the pair of another Louvre landscape. The Louvre now calls that pairing arbitrary and late.