BRILL

BRILL. - A family of painters from Anversa; it included the brothers Matteo (b. 1550, d. Rome 1583) and Paolo (b. 1554, d. Rome 1626), who pursued their activity as landscape painters in Rome. MATTEO appears a monotonous and meticulous narrator in the series of frescoes with which he decorated the Vatican Geographical Gallery; whereas PAOLO, who arrived in Rome shortly after 1574, enlivened his own landscape vision through contact with the rich Venetian-style colouring of Adamo Elsheimer (works after 1600), and with the landscape painting that had derived more definite characteristics from the Carracci school; evidence of this is the fresco decoration of a room in the casino Ludovisi, which Paolo painted together with the Domenichino, the Viola, and the Guercino. This enabled him to temper the initial documentary dryness of his views with a greater breadth and airiness of vision (frescoes in the casino and the palazzo Rospigliosi, 1605-1609), attaining the soft luminosity of his later works (cf. canvases in the Louvre, of the years 1620-24), which would be imparted to C. Lorrain himself. A draftsman and engraver, he had A. Tassi among his pupils. Among the works of the first period are the frescoes in the Laterano and the Scala Santa (c. 1589), in S. Cecilia in Trastevere (c. 1599), in the sala Clementina (c. 1602) and in the sala Ducalo in the Vatican, and in the sacristy of the cappella Paolina in S. Maria Maggiore (c. 1605). - Vedi Tav. VII.