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Tomb of the Horatii and the Curatii, near Albano, Italy
Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery
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Richard Wilson (1713/14-1782)
Tomb of the Horatii and the Curatii, near Albano, Italy
Undated
Oil on canvas
50.5 x 70.4 cm
19 7/8 x 27 3/4 in.
00307
P61A
The tomb is on the Via Appia Nuova, just beyond Albano on the way to Ariccia. The road is shown at the left with a coach and horses passing along it in a cloud of dust and figures disappearing onto the woodland. Only two of the tomb's towers now survive. Here it is shown standing on sandy ground, with a standing woman and seated man before it. A goatherd with his dog and a flock of goats cross the foreground from the left and there are trees behind the tomb and in the background.
Gloucester 2014 (unnumbered); Croome 2019
Stanley Marling; bequeathed to Gloucester City Museum and Art Gallery, 1963
Unsigned; no inscription
The technique is more solid compared with that in P61. There is a pentiment of a second shepherd with a staff. The dark purple tones of the dust cloud and the related area are uncharacteristic of Wilson. The figures in the foreground are small and unconvincing and the background figures and coach are ambiguous.
The tomb near Albano is in the Etruscan manner, a massive cube originally surmounted by five obtuse cones of which two are still standing.
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P67 Landscape Capriccio with the Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii and the Villa of Maecenas at Tivoli, National Museum of Western Art, Tokyo
[1] J.F. van Bloemen (L'Orrizonte), Paesaggio con Monumento degli Orazi e Curiazi, Pericoli Collection, Rome
[2] Thomas Barker of Bath, The Tomb of the Horatii and Curiatii, 1792, National Museum Wales, Cardiff (NMW A 454)
As noted by Constable, the trees on the right and the tomb itself are larger in proportion than in P61 and P61B and the flock of goats is more prominent.
WGC, pp. 203-4 pl. 82b (Version 1)
The tomb provided the model for at least two eighteenth-century garden structures in Britain.
Dimensions framed: 67.5 x 90.7 cm. Treated by Miss E. Hamilton-Eddy, 1976. Kate Lowry has noted: Goatherd figure has a pentiment indicating a change of position. Figures in the distance are not well defined. Foliage of tree against sky is quite fiddly for Wilson but sky is painted down to foliage which is typical. Under UV light retouching is visible around foliage at upper right and there is a large retouched tear in tree left of centre.
15/06/2020