Ariccia, The Porta Napoletana with the Palazzo Chigi

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Ariccia, The Porta Napoletana with the Palazzo Chigi

Artist Giovanni Battista Camuccini (Italian, 1819 - 1904)

Place of OriginItaly, Rome

Dateabout 1840

Dimensions13 9/16 × 18 1/2 in. (34.5 × 47 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds given by Dr. and Mrs. James G. Ravin

Object number

2020.37

Not on View

Label TextAlthough Giovanni Battista Camuccini was a professional artist and the son of a renowned painter, Vincenzo Camuccini (1771–1844), he considered the audience for his creativity to be himself alone. Active as an artist only until the early 1850s, his body of work consists of studies from nature painted outdoors (en plein air)—including trees, rocky outcroppings, and topographical scenes. Ariccia, the Porta Napoletana with the Palazzo Chigi displays the artist’s freshness and spontaneity without being strictly a sketch. It manifests the freedom and quickness of touch of an oil sketch combined with a degree of finish that renders it a completed painting. The superbly preserved canvas depicts a vignette in the ancient village of Ariccia, located between Lake Albano and Lake Nemi, some nine miles southeast of Rome. Trees, a grassy slope, a road, three centrally positioned figures, architecture, and sky constitute the evocative composition. The central motif of the Porta Napoletana, with its two-story archway framing a vista to a distant building and sky, is so named because it faces towards Naples. The looming structure at right is the Palazzo Chigi, the ducal palace of the Chigi family. This is the first 19th-century Italian painting to enter the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art.Published ReferencesDe Rosa, Pier Andrea, Giovanni Battista Camuccini – Magic Land, Antonacci Lapiccirella Fine Art, Rome, 2020, pages 13, 35, repr. plate 14.