Monks in the Cloister of the Church of Gesù e Maria, Rome

François Marius Granet

1808 · Oil on canvas · European Paintings

This painting was first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1808. It combines an appreciation for seventeenth-century Dutch cabinet pictures, which had been fashionable among French collectors since the late eighteenth century, with a new interest in the everyday life of contemporary Italians. In many of Granet’s Roman scenes, iconic settings are passed over in favor of lovingly observed but overlooked ones such as this cloister, located on the Via del Corso near his studio. Among the earliest admirers of these genre paintings was Granet’s closest colleague in Rome, the history painter J. A. D. Ingres.

Artist

François Marius Granet

Date

1808

Medium

Oil on canvas

Department

European Paintings

Credit line

The Whitney Collection, Gift of Wheelock Whitney III, and Purchase, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Charles S. McVeigh, by exchange, 2003