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Lot Essay
The younger brother of the portrait painter Pietro Labruzzi, Carlo spent his early years in Nuremburg before returning to Rome where he became a member of the Congregazione dei Virtuosi del Pantheon. By 1786 he had been elected to the Accademia di San Luca and had established himself as a popular landscape painter, particularly among the British Grand Tourists.
In the autumn of 1789 Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead invited Labruzzi to accompany him along the Appian Way, following the route taken by Horace on his journey to Brindisi in 38 BC. Hoare described their departure in his Classical Tour: 'On Saturday, 31st October, 1789, I quitted Rome, with the view of tracing the Appian Way as far, at least, as Beneventum, and, if practicable, even to its termination at Brundisium'. More than eight hundred watercolours survive from this trip, which are now mostly in Roman public collections (see also C. Hornsby, 'Carlo Labruzzi. An album of thirteen aquatints dedicated to Sir Richard Colt Hoare', Apollo, March 2000, pp. 3-8).
This pair is a rare example of Labruzzi's oeuvre in oil and can be compared with another pair of the same views, formerly in the Galleria Gasparrini, Rome (G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del Seicento e del Settecento, Turin, 1994, II, figs. 559-60).
The gouache of the Ruined Nymphaeum, now in Tate Britain, would appear to be a preparatory study for the present work.
In the autumn of 1789 Sir Richard Colt Hoare of Stourhead invited Labruzzi to accompany him along the Appian Way, following the route taken by Horace on his journey to Brindisi in 38 BC. Hoare described their departure in his Classical Tour: 'On Saturday, 31st October, 1789, I quitted Rome, with the view of tracing the Appian Way as far, at least, as Beneventum, and, if practicable, even to its termination at Brundisium'. More than eight hundred watercolours survive from this trip, which are now mostly in Roman public collections (see also C. Hornsby, 'Carlo Labruzzi. An album of thirteen aquatints dedicated to Sir Richard Colt Hoare', Apollo, March 2000, pp. 3-8).
This pair is a rare example of Labruzzi's oeuvre in oil and can be compared with another pair of the same views, formerly in the Galleria Gasparrini, Rome (G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del Seicento e del Settecento, Turin, 1994, II, figs. 559-60).
The gouache of the Ruined Nymphaeum, now in Tate Britain, would appear to be a preparatory study for the present work.