View of Tivoli from the north

One of the artist's most impressive and imposing drawings, this shows the town of Tivoli from the north, with its immediately recognisable Temple of the Sibyl, and its famous cascades just hidden by the greenery on the left of the drawing. Despite the convincing appearance of the view, however, it is most unlikely to be a study from life. All the evidence suggests that van der Ulft never visited Italy: on the contrary, he seems to have spent virtually his entire life in the town of Gorinchem in the western Netherlands, where he served as a governor of the orphanage from 1661. The 1988 catalogue also notes several errors in the topography, such as the fact that the Temple of the Sibyl is shown with too few columns, and emphasises that the view has the carefully-composed appearance of a landscape drawn in the studio to impress with its elegance, rather than having been taken precisely from life. Dated 1673, on a strip of paper attached to the verso, it was probably inspired by or copied from a work by another artist, although no exact prototype is known. Many of van der Ulft’s drawings of this type were inspired by the works of Jan de Bisschop and the technique, certainly, is adopted from de Bisschop, with its smooth layers of translucent brown wash set off with highlights derived from the untouched white of the paper. It is a particularly large drawing for van der Ulft, who normally worked on a smaller scale, and the composition is remarkably effective, with Tivoli bathed in sunlight on its hillside and framed in the foreground by a dark sweep of woodland. Another drawing of similar size, showing a Roman landscape and also dated 1673, was sold at Hôtel Drouot (Maître Renaud), Paris, on 7 November 1979, lot 154.