Rondinini paintings rediscovered. A self-portrait by Paul Bril and a ‘witchcraft’ by Pieter van Laer

The Rondinini family is important for having developed a well-defined taste in collecting during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, with an interest in ancient sculpture and painting staged in their palaces and villas in Rome and its surroundings. The most eminent artists active in seventeenth-century Rome worked for them. The paintings presented here are the most relevant examples of a great number of works that have re-emerged during a collaborative research project conducted by the universities of Florence and Salerno on the family’s contributions to the history of collecting. The first is a signed self-portrait by the Flemish artist Paul Bril, a pioneer amongst the landscape painters active in Rome between the late 1500s and early 1600s – a work of large size for the artist (110.0 x 81.5 cm); the second is a ‘witchcraft crowded with figures’ painted by Pieter van Laer, an eminent Dutch painter and leader of the group of masters called the ‘Bamboccianti’.