Paysage italien au tombeau

The picture presents a vast perspective punctuated by architecture — the circular tomb at the right, inspired by the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella on the Via Appia — and by figures, in accordance with the rules of the composed landscape. The mountains evoke the Alps, and a boat carries travellers across the water toward the far shore. Géricault painted the canvas about 1818, between his Roman years and the Raft of the Medusa, and it shows the breadth and melancholy grandeur he brought to landscape in the tradition of the seventeenth-century masters. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-arts de la Ville de Paris.