HENDRIK FRANS VAN LINT (Antwerp 1684 - 1763 Rome) Fort in the roman campagna oil/canvas 32.5 x 43.5 cm ESTIMATE € 500 - 800 STARTING PRICE € 500 Hendrik Frans van Lint was a Flemish landscape and vedute painter. He was one of the leading landscape painters in Rome in the first half of the 18th century and his patrons included Rome's aristocratic families as well as European travellers on their Grand Tour. Hendrik Frans van Lint was born in Antwerp, the son of the history painter Pieter van Lint and his second wife Anna Moeren (Moren or Morren). In 1696, Van Lint was apprenticed to Peeter van Bredael, a painter of Italianate landscapes. Van Lint did not stay to complete his apprenticeship but left for Rome somewhere between 1697 and 1700. Here he would stay for the remainder of his life except for a short visit to Antwerp in 1710 after the death of his mother. In 1697, Van Lint joined the Bentvueghels (feather birds), an association of mainly Dutch and Flemish artists working in Rome. It was customary for the Bentvueghels to adopt an appealing nickname, the so-called Bentnaam. Van Lint's Bentnaam was studie in Dutch or lo studio (and even 'Monsú Studio') in Italian. On these expeditions he was sometimes accompanied by the Dutch painter Theodoor Wilkens. Van Lint would use his preparatory studies to develop full-scale compositions on canvas and often added ruins and classical buildings to create his elaborate imaginary landscapes. Van Lint lived in the via del Babuino and married Ludovica Margarete Tassel, daughter of an Italian tailor, in 1719. The couple had tenchildren, one of whom called Jacob or Giacomo van Lint, also a became a vedute painter. Another son called Giovanni Rocco became a silversmith. Van Lint appears to have moved in the circle of the Dutch vedute painter Gaspar van Wittel, known in Rome as 'il Vanvitelli'. Van Wittel had settled in Rome in 1675 where his topographical views had made him one of the most favoured artists of his generation. Van Lint possibly worked in van Wittel's workshop to assist the aging artist in the completion of his many commissions. Van Lint had a successful career and his patrons included eminent visitors to Rome and aristocrats on their Grand Tour, as well as some of the great patrician Roman families, including the Altoviti, Capponi, Pamphili, Sacchetti and Soderini. Don Lorenzo Colonna particularly liked his work and owned no less than 70 landscapes by the artist. Van Lint's wife died in 1744. The same year, he joined the Congregazione Artistica dei Virtuosi al Pantheon and was elected its Rector in 1755. The Congregazione was a corporation of artists who organised annual exhibitions of their own paintings on the metal railings in front of the Pantheon. Van Lint probably also worked as a picture restorer. Van Lint was specialised in landscapes which fall globally into two categories: idealised landscapes of people in nature and "vedute", landscapes or town views that are mainly topographical in conception. Among his earliest dated works produced in Rome are paintings from 1711, including View of a monastery on the Aventine, now in the collection of the Galleria Doria Pamphili. It has been suggested that this was the year in which he left van Wittel's workshop to strike out on his own. His idealised landscapes follow less the style of his contemporaries and compatriots Abraham Genoels and Jan Frans van Bloemen, who specialised in this subject matter. Van Lint went in a different direction under the influence of Claude Lorrain's Arcadian landscapes. Van Lint may have studied Lorrain's works in numerous Roman collections. It has been suggested that van Lint started out as a reluctant copyist of the work of Lorrain whose work was in strong demand but unavailable on the market. It was only later that he started to paint his own compositions inspired by and dotted with references to Lorrain as well as Nicolas Poussin. A good example of the influence of Lorraine on his idealised landscapes are the pair of paintings entitled Landscape with a Watermill and Dancing Figures (The Wedding of Isaac and Rebecca) and Landscape with the Nurture of Jupiter (private collections). The two compositions are directly inspired by Lorrain's monumental pair of landscapes in the Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome. In particular the first work is directly based on Lorrain's Landscape with Dancing Figures (The Mill), while the second is only inspired in its overall design by Claude's original of the View of Delphi with a procession. Van Lint was no slavish follower of Lorrain but rather an inventor of his own as shown by the fact that he introduced a number of elements that are absent from Claude's work. Van Lint also shows that he is at heart a vedute painter who preferred realistic views by substituting for Claude's fantastical domed palace a representation of the Colosseum and a monument that he had depicted on numerous occasions in his Roman vedute and may be based on an existing feature in Rome. Like Lorrain, van Lint paid particular attention to the trees in his compositions. His wide open compositions are imbued with silence and invite contemplation. In his topographical views, Van Lint was first directed by his experience working for van Wittel. His sharp powers of observation make him stand out as a vedute painter in the 18th century. It is likely he developed these compositions on the basis of Van Wittel's treatment of similar subjects. While van Lint is known to have employed other artists such as Corrado Giaquinto, Adriaen Manglard, Anton Raphael Mengs, Pierre Subleyras, Sebastiano Conca, Giuseppe Chiari and Placido Costanzi to paint the staffage in his landscapes, he often painted the figures himself. The only artists whose figures have been identified in his work are Pompeo Batoni and Francesco Zuccarelli. The figures he painted in his compositions were often inspired by those of famous painters of the 17th century such as Guido Reni. PLEASE NOTE: The purchase price consists of the highest bid plus the buyer's premium, sales tax and, if applicable, the fee of artists resale rights. In the case of normal taxation (marked ° at the estimate), a premium of 24% is added to the highest bid. The mandatory sales tax is added to the sum of the highest bid and the buyer's premium. This amounts to 13% for paintings, drawings, graphic works and sculptures and 20% for photographs and all other items. The buyer's premium amounts to 28% in case of differential taxation. The sales tax is included in the differential taxation.