Udsigt fra Athenatemplet på Akropolis

From the Temple of Athena on the Acropolis, the view opens over the sunlit roofs and broken terraces of Athens toward the blue horizon beyond. Martinus Rørbye painted the study in 1844, during the long Italian and Greek journey that had taken him south from Rome and given him a new range of architectural and landscape subjects. The ancient structure is not treated as a ruin detached from the present: its columns and worn stone frame a living city, while the clear air and measured recession of the view make the remembered past part of an observed landscape. Rørbye was one of the central painters of the Danish Golden Age and a favourite pupil of C.W. Eckersberg, whose exacting study of architecture, light and perspective shaped the younger painter’s travel pictures. A note on the reverse identifies the English colourman Robert Davy as the maker of the prepared paper on which the study was painted. It is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).