The Ruins of Brederode Castle

A Dutch draftsman and painter, Goltzius traveled to Italy in 1590, just before the first wave of so-called Dutch Italianates. His naturalistic depictions of Rome's antiquities and views became important records of how the city and its artistic monuments appeared in the late sixteenth century. The ruins of Brederode Castle near Haarlem were an inspiration for numerous Dutch artists in the seventeenth century. The depiction of Brederode Castle was one of Goltzius's few landscapes drawn from reality in the Netherlands, in the tradition of his precisely drawn Italian sketches. Gauw took Goltzius's 1600 drawing of Brederode Castle and turned it into an etching with the addition of trees, other structures, and figures of tourists and workers.