View of Tivoli

Description The high viewpoint allows the artist to show much of the town of Tivoli near Rome, featuring the famous circular, 1st-century BC Temple of Vesta and the bridge over the thundering falls of the Tiber River. This view, combining a heroic element of nature, antiquity, and the increasingly popular theme of the city, was first defined as an almost iconic image of Italy for northern artists by the great 16th-century Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel. Van Wittel was among the Dutch landscape painters who went to Italy, and he settled there in 1674. His focus on the topography of the landscape and the small size of many of his paintings made his works attractive to tourists as souvenirs of their visit. For more information on this painting, please see Federico Zeri's 1976 catalogue no. 390, pp. 505-506.

Conservation

Date	Description	Narrative
11/10/1977	Examination	examined for loan

Exhibitions

• The Origins of the Italian Veduta. Brown University, Bell Gallery, List Art Center, Providence. 1978.
• Romance and Reality: Aspects of Landscape Painting. Wildenstein & Company, New York. 1978.

Provenance Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1897 catalogue: no. 461]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Inscriptions [Signature] On the ground near the figure of the artist: G V W Ro[M]A

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902