Torre dei Schiavi, The Roman Campagna (from Cropsey Album)

Jasper Francis Cropsey

1853 · Graphite, white gouache, and brown and gray ink washes on dark buff wove paper · The American Wing

During his first European sojourn in 1847, the young Hudson River School-painter Cropsey toured and sketched in the Roman Campagna. The picturesque landscape around Rome was admired for its vast beauty and historic ruins—evidence of the greatness and decline of ancient civilizations. The Torre dei Schiavi (Tower of Slaves), a mausoleum built as part of an extensive imperial villa in the third century a.d., is one of the best-known monuments on the Campagna. As both a tomb and a ruin embodying Rome’s faded glory, the tower had poetic associations, which Cropsey emphasizes by including the rising moon, a potent symbol of eternal time. Cropsey was one of several American artists who drew the tower, including Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900).

Artist

Jasper Francis Cropsey

Date

1853

Medium

Graphite, white gouache, and brown and gray ink washes on dark buff wove paper

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Charles and Anita Blatt Gift, 1970