Watermark: none.
Son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Jan Brueghel (who added an h to his name) became an inventive and highly successful artist in his own right. Early in his career, he spent several years in Italy, a period from which many drawings survive. This view of the Tiber employs his distinctive combination of brown and blue washes over pen lines and gives every appearance of having been sketched on the spot, though the washes were perhaps added later. The bridge--called the Ponte Sisto after Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned it--was already over a century old at the time. The famous dome of St. Peter's just visible in the distance, however, had only recently been completed. -- Exhibition Label, from "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings from the Thaw Collection"
Numbered in lower right corner, in brown ink, "21"; inscribed on verso, in graphite, "Brueghel B 18 /"; in another hand, "... / 569-0417".
Wellesley, Henry, 1791-1866, former owner.
Murray, Charles Fairfax, 1849-1919, former owner.
Morgan, J. Pierpont (John Pierpont), 1837-1913, former owner.
Collection J. Pierpont Morgan : Drawings by the Old Masters Formed by C. Fairfax Murray. London : Privately printed, 1905-1912.
Stampfle, Felice, with the assistance of Ruth S. Kraemer and Jane Shoaf Turner. Netherlandish Drawings of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries and Flemish Drawings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in the Pierpont Morgan Library. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1991, p. 26, no. 45.