Addendum to the Master of the Roman Songbook

Last year the article dedicated to the Master of the Roman Songbook came to light.

I had attributed to this unknown Master 45 drawings, of which only 44 I could provide an image for.

On p. 2 I addmitted:

[…] Van Tatenhove recognised the hand of the Munich work in two drawings that were in the possession of art dealer Herbert E. Feist in New York in 1970 and had been attributed to van Nieulandt II at the time (present whereabouts unknown); an image of only one of these two could be traced. […]

Bianco, Anna. “The Master of the Roman Songbook.” Going South : Artistic Exchange between the Netherlands and Italy in the 17th Century, vol. IX, RKD & NIKI, 2023.

Sick at home, yesterday, I had some time to revise the literature and I could finally find the missing image in a catalogue of the art dealer Herbert Feist from 1974, as nr. 14.

14. Antonie Crussens middle of XVII cent.
Landscape Castle and figures
Brown pen on vellum 7 *11 1/4
coll: Mond

Feist, Herbert E. Master Drawings: Netherlandish, German and Swiss. 1974.

The first mention of this sketch dates 1970 in another Feist catalogue, described with another similar landscape, both attributed to Willem van Nieuwlandt.

7. Willem van Nieuwlandt Flemish (1584-1626)
Landscape twitch Town on Mountain and figures
Bistre pen on vellum 7 * 11 1/4

collection: Sir Robert Mond (L. 2813a)

Feist, Herbert E. Master Drawings: Landscapes, Architectural and Stage Designs. 1970.

I kept searching and scrolling through the catalogues because generally, art dealers tend to present many times the same unsold objects. Feist, for example, published three times the companion of this drawing: in 1965 as nr. 4, in 1970 as nr. 6, and in 1979 as nr. 10.

In yet another plot twist, I was recently made aware of an extremely particular portrait of a composer active in Rome in the first half of the seventeenth century. Although the question pertained the sitter, my eyes and my heart could not contain the excitement in recognizing the hand of my Master of the Roman Songbook. But this will be for another time.