Dirck Helmbreker

According to Houbraken he lived from 1624 to 1694, but this has since been proven to be incorrect.^[1][2] He was born in Haarlem and became a pupil of Pieter de Grebber.^[1] He traveled to Rome at a young age, where he remained until his death.^[2] His paintings belong to the group of artists known as the Bamboccianti, or, as Houbraken writes, Bamboots,^[2] which is a specialization by Northern artists in small-scale genre scenes in the manner of Pieter van Laer while in Rome.^[3] Helmbreker arrived in Italy in 1654, eventually settling in Rome by the end of the decade.^[4] At the end of the 1670s he and the Flemish painter Willem Reuter were members of a group known as the 'Congregazione dei Virtuosi al Pantheon'.^[5] The Congregazione counted among its members many important artists who left their mark in Rome.

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  Pilgrims near a fountain 1670
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  An Italianate landscape with peasants making merry and pressing grapes

He was influenced by Sébastien Bourdon.^[1] His genre scenes, which were among the last generation of the Bamboccianti,^[3] tended to be more classical in inspiration than many their earlier low-life scenes.^[4] Ultimately, these works found great success with Italian collectors.^[4] In 1695 he was commissioned to paint the main altar piece of the Church of St. Julian of the Flemings in Rome.

Houbraken described a painting from 1681 in the possession of Pieter Klok showing an Italian monastery with a group of poor people in the foreground with various handicaps being given soup from a large kettle ladled by a Franciscan friar. Helmbreker was very religious and donated often to the poor of Rome.^[2]

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