Les Cascatelles de Tivoli (1776)

Above the cascades rises the round temple of the Sibylle at Tivoli, with the villa of Maecenas at the right. Hubert Robert had drawn these falls at leisure during his Italian years (1754–1764), and in 1776 he composed the site in the antique key the eighteenth century loved: ruins, cliffs and falling water arranged as an ideal rather than a record. The picture answers Joseph Vernet’s version of the same subject in the museum’s collection — Vernet, whom Robert is thought to have followed in this Italianate genre. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.