Louis-Jules-Frédéric Villeneuve

In the early 1800s, many European artists were drawn to the remains of ancient Roman aqueducts that dot the landscape around Tivoli. Villeneuve dramatized this ruin’s sun-struck stone and romantic overgrowth with a background of clouds and rising mists. Monumentality is emphasized by the scale of the people who approach the lower arch on a roadway.

Skilled as both painter and printmaker, Villeneuve often reproduced his own work. He published this painting as a lithograph the same year that he painted it. The commercial success of his prints indicates the importance of landscape views to a wider audience of armchair tourists and nature lovers.