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Lot Essay
The present lot is the most accomplished of a small series of Roman views painted from the public park on the Pincio by Caffi in 1846. It was possibly painted as a companion piece to a work of similar dimensions, dated 16th June, showing the Pincio in the early morning (fig. 1).
Caffi was one of the most accomplished and peripatetic vedutisti of his age. Made acutely aware of the international demand for paintings in this genre by the large number of expatriate artists working in Rome and Venice, with whom he shared a strong sense of light and an affinity for working sur le motif, Caffi nevertheless ploughed a very independent furrow which combined a loose, impressionistic touch with an almost documentary sense of time and place.
This painting was executed very shortly after the long trip that Caffi undertook to North Africa and the Near East in 1843-44, during which he filled countless sketchbooks with drawings of the sites and people he encountered. Many of these were worked up into paintings and exhibited to great acclaim in Rome in 1844 and 1845. Caffi's Orientalist experience honed his sense of light and of topography, which he brought to bear in this timeless view of the Eternal City. The scene here is bathed in an ethereal evening light and is enlivened by the modish fashions of the figures on the terrace. The suffused atmosphere, soft colours and figures seen from behind (in particular the lone nun standing on the right), lend the composition an unusally Romantic character; it is particularly similar to views of Dresden by moonlight by the Danish artist Johan Christian Dahl, executed at around the same time.
Caffi was one of the most accomplished and peripatetic vedutisti of his age. Made acutely aware of the international demand for paintings in this genre by the large number of expatriate artists working in Rome and Venice, with whom he shared a strong sense of light and an affinity for working sur le motif, Caffi nevertheless ploughed a very independent furrow which combined a loose, impressionistic touch with an almost documentary sense of time and place.
This painting was executed very shortly after the long trip that Caffi undertook to North Africa and the Near East in 1843-44, during which he filled countless sketchbooks with drawings of the sites and people he encountered. Many of these were worked up into paintings and exhibited to great acclaim in Rome in 1844 and 1845. Caffi's Orientalist experience honed his sense of light and of topography, which he brought to bear in this timeless view of the Eternal City. The scene here is bathed in an ethereal evening light and is enlivened by the modish fashions of the figures on the terrace. The suffused atmosphere, soft colours and figures seen from behind (in particular the lone nun standing on the right), lend the composition an unusally Romantic character; it is particularly similar to views of Dresden by moonlight by the Danish artist Johan Christian Dahl, executed at around the same time.