A Capriccio of the Tower of Benevento

The looming structure that fills Robert's evocative picture is directly inspired by the medieval tower that dominates the fortress town of Benevento, near Naples, where the artist traveled in 1760 in the company of his patron the Abb de Saint-Non. Though he probably painted it in the 1780s, some years after his return to Paris, the tower must have lingered in Robert's mind as a striking rarity in the land of Greek and Roman antiquity. In this depiction, Robert imagines the tower beside a fragment of architecture that suggests the Roman Colosseum, a fantastical juxtaposition worthy of Panini. In other versions of the subject, such as the large decoration formerly in the Kotzebue collection, he might perch the tower on a rocky buttress overlooking the sea, while in the tiny picture Petit Paysage de Sicile (22 x 16 cm.) in a private collection, he rendered it a ruin, modified its arched windows, and placed it on the edge of a mountainous estuary amid pseudo-medieval ruins.

In a Louis XIII carved giltwood frame with acanthus leaf outer edge and ribboned inner edge.