drawing;
album
- Museum number
- Nn,1.13
- Description
-
View from the Palatine Hill, looking towards the Pyramid of Caius Cestius, formerly part of an album; trees and rocks in right foreground, with yellowing sky behind, pyramid seen across valley on l. 1781
Pen and black ink and watercolour, some gum arabic
- Production date
- 1781
- Dimensions
-
Height: 324 millimetres
-
Width: 474 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- From album NN,01.1-25
See Nn,1.1 for information about the Towne albums as a whole.
This watercolour and that of St. Peter's from above the Arco Oscuro are compositionally the most formal and classical of Towne's Roman period, derived partly from seventeenth-century sources - notably Gaspard Dughet - but also from the views of Rome painted by Richard Wilson in the 1750s. Towne, who was also a painter in oils, has emphasised the formal quality of these compositions by reinforcing the depth and brilliance of the colours with gum arabic, temporarily creating the illusion of oil-paints.
In the centre is the pryamid of Caius Cestius and the Porta San Paolo; the Protestant Cemetry (where both Keats and Shelley were later to be buried) is beside the pyramid. The church on the right is probably S.Prisca on the Aventine.
The following label was written by Richard Stephens for the Towne exhibition in 2016:
Employing an artist's characteristic device, Towne has used a pointed object - here the pyramidal tomb of Caio Cesto - in the middle ground of the composition to serve as a point of focus and attract the viewer's eye into the three-dimensional space imagined by the picture. The mount was made using paper watermarked with a date of 1794, and doubtless the gum arabic and brushed ink shading in the right foreground foliage were applied at the same time.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
1958 Apr, BM, Eight centuries of landscape ... water-colours, case 58
1971 BM, Classical sites and monuments, no.57
1972 Sep-Nov, Council of Europe, London, Age of Neo-classicism, no.845
1979/80 Nov-Jan, Munich, Haus der Kunst, 200 Jahr engl. Malerei, no.99
1981 BM P&D, Francis Towne and John 'Warwick Smith, no cat.
2016 Jan-Aug, BM, 'Light, Time, Legacy: Francis Towne's watercolours of Rome' (no catalogue)
- Condition
- Laid down in artist's original wash-lined mount.
- Acquisition date
- 1816
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- Nn,1.13
- Additional IDs
-
Miscellaneous number: 1973,U.1347