Italian Artist
A Rare View of the Via Appia Antice with the Tomb of Cecilia Metella
around 1680
pen in black and brown, wash, on paper, 19,3 x 26 cm
simple black frame with golden pearl bar, 40,8 x 45,7 cm
Collector’s Mark: PM (Mathias Polakovits (Budapest 1921 – 1987 Paris))
SOLD
The Tomb of Caecilia Metella is an imposing funerary monument on the Via Appia Antica in Rome. It was built in the 1st half of the 1st century B.C. for Caecilia Metella Cretica, the daughter of the Roman consul, Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus. In the Middle Ages it was rebuild into a castle. The building has fascinated artists over the centuries, both Hubert Robert, Claude Lorrain, Piranesi and Jan Frans van Bloemen painted it. Johann Heinrich Wilhelm Tischbein depicted it in the background of his painting „Goethe in the Campagna“.