Unknown_Corot-2012

4 . Civitella, 1827

Pen and ink on paper 9 ¾ × 14 7 ⁄ 8

inches ( 24 . 8 × 37 . 8 cm)

Inscribed lower right: Civitella Estate sale stamp lower left: Lugt 460 a

provenance Corot sale 1875 ; Collection Richard Goetz; Paris Art Market; Jill Newhouse Gallery ( 2010 ).

exhi b i t ions Paris, Galerie Hector Brame, June 14– July 5 , 1957 , no. 28 ; Berne, Kunstmuseum, Corot , January 23– March 13 , 1960 , no. 100 .

l i terature R IV, no. 2586 .

Private collection

This drawing dates from Corot’s first sojourn in Rome, a critical period in the painter’s technical and aesthetic development as a landscape painter. It was during this trip that Corot undertook a systematic study of outdoor landscape drawing and oil sketching that was rooted in the techniques and teachings of the French school of classical landscape. Lengthy excursions to famous sites in the Roman countryside were a key part of this training, and the journeys would follow paths that travelers and artists had been making for centuries. One of these well-known sites was the spectacularly rugged landscape surrounding the hill town of Civitella, which was part of a circuit of travel into the mountains east of Rome. Corot

embarked on this journey in the spring of 1827 , arriving at the ancient town of Olevano in April and the environs of Civitella in July. Corot’s other known drawings of this site rely more on incidents of trees and foliage to fix the landscape’s topography and indicate depth, light and shade ( Vue de Civitella, c. 1827 , Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 8983 ). There are fewer such incidents in the present drawing, whose precisely drawn contours and subtle indications of light and shadow create a lucid, complete view using deceptively simple means.

Vue de Civitella, c. 1827 , Musée du Louvre, Paris, RF 8983