The Study of Art in Rome
by GOUBAU, Anton, Oil on canvas, 113 x 165 cm
The kind of pictures produced in Holland by painters such as Both, Asselyn and others, were in Antwerp mainly the work of Anton Goubau who shows himself at his best in the mostly imaginary eclectic assemblages of Roman street scenes he painted after 1650, when he returned to Antwerp after several years in Rome. It is not always clear what is most important in these scenes, the orderly arrangement of the landscape or the genre-style figures, strongly influenced by the scenes of popular Roman life by Pieter van Laer, Il Bamboccio.