Dutch Baroque Era Painter, ca.1598-1657
Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher. He was one of at least eight children of a wealthy Protestant family in Deventer, where his father was the town pharmacist. After his father's death in 1607, the family left Deventer, probably moving to Hoorn. No artist then living in Hoorn could plausibly have been Breenbergh's teacher, and given the fact that his earliest works reveal the stylistic influence of the Pre-Rembrandtists, it is more probable that he was apprenticed in Amsterdam. In 1619 he was called upon to give testimony in Amsterdam: on this occasion his profession was listed as 'painter'. His oeuvre can be divided stylistically and iconographically into two distinct groups. He belonged to the first generation of DUTCH ITALIANATES, northern artists who travelled to Italy in the 1620s and were inspired by the light and poetry of the southern landscape. The work of this period consists of numerous Italianate landscape drawings and paintings.
