Piazza del Duomo, Messina, Sicily

William Leighton Leitch

1835–36 · Graphite with white heightening · Drawings and Prints

Leitch drew Messina’s main square when he visited the city in 1835-36 during a four-year sojourn in Italy. The distinctive banded façade of the city’s Norman cathedral, and its truncated bell-tower, would both be destroyed in an earthquake of 1908, and later rebuilt. At center, we are shown the fountain of Orion (1553), with Italian pilgrims kneeling in the foreground. After Leitch returned to London in 1837, he became active in the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and served as drawing master to Queen Victoria and the royal children.

Artist

William Leighton Leitch

Date

1835–36

Medium

Graphite with white heightening

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Gift of Roberta J.M. Olson and Alexander B.V. Johnson, 2017