From a slightly elevated vantage point, Franz Ludwig Catel directs the viewer’s gaze across a monumental fountain basin on the stage-like terrace of the Villa Medici to the Eternal City, with the dome of Saint Peter’s and the Castel Sant’Angelo rising up in the distance. Since the 17th century, numerous artists had captured this popular view from the Pincio, among them, Jean-Auguste- Dominique Ingres, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Johann Wilhelm Schirmer, and Camille Corot. A preliminary drawing in pencil (Pio Istituto Catel, Rome) and the Bremen watercolor served Catel as a point of departure for several versions in oil, showing the motif with changing staffage figures and at various times of day. Here, Catel has suffused the scene with the atmospheric light of early evening. The painterly appeal of the watercolor lies in the combination of elements depicted with a dry brush, and other parts being rendered with wash. The fountain and the water flowing over the rim have been painted with particular delicacy. Catel spent more than four decades in Rome. With his naturalistic landscapes and picturesque genre motifs, he was exceptionally successful, having numerous patrons among the European aristocracy.
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