Women washing at the fountain of the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati

As was customary for art students at the time, Robert went to Rome as part of his artistic training. He arrived there, along with the vast retinue of the French ambassador to the court of Pope Benedict XIV, Étienne-François de Choiseul, in 1754. In his drawings made in Rome, the young Robert already shows a masterly use of his favoured medium, red chalk. Many of the drawings depict Roman monuments from highly original and dramatic viewpoints, as is the case in this sheet. It shows the fountain at the Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati, as is indicated by an inscription on a counterproof of this drawing in the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon (see Catala, op. cit., no. 42). Variants of the drawing are in Musée de Valence, the Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie, Besançon, and the Louvre and a copy by Pierre-Adrien Pâris, probably made after the present drawing, is in the Bibliothèque Municipale, Besançon (ibid. under no. 42). A number of views of the Villa Aldobrandini by Robert and its surrounding is in the same collection (ibid., nos. 43-50).