The Monuments of Paris
The Monuments of Paris (Les Monuments de Paris) c1789 by French Painter Hubert Robert (1733 – 1808), who specialized in creating artwork of the Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, and Renaissance styles. French Title: Vue imaginaire de la Grande Galerie du Louvre en ruines
This is a wonderful mix capriccio of ancient ruins among the modern buildings and cathedrals of Paris of the time; with horse carriages going through an ancient arch and past the massive monument of a rider on horseback, toward the architecture of the modern era.
By the arch we can see men and women carrying out their daily lives as men work by the arch harvesting ancient stone blocks tof the new building that are being built.
This is a retouched digital art old masters reproduction of a public domain image that is available as a rolled canvas print online.
Below Info Derived From Wikipedia.org
Hubert Robert was born in Paris in 1733. His father, Nicolas Robert, was in the service of François-Joseph de Choiseul, marquis de Stainville a leading diplomat from Lorraine. Young Robert finished his studies with the Jesuits at the Collège de Navarre in 1751 and entered the atelier of the sculptor Michel-Ange Slodtz who taught him design and perspective but encouraged him to turn to painting. In 1754 he left for Rome in the train of Étienne-François de Choiseul, son of his father’s employer, who had been named French ambassador and would become a Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs to Louis XV in 1758.
He spent fully eleven years in Rome, a remarkable length of time; after the young artist’s official residence at the French Academy in Rome ran out, he supported himself by works he produced for visiting connoisseurs like the abbé de Saint-Non, who took Robert to Naples in April 1760 to visit the ruins of Pompeii. The marquis de Marigny, director of the Bâtiments du Roi kept abreast of his development in correspondence with Natoire, director of the French Academy, who urged the pensionnaires to sketch out-of-doors, from nature: Robert needed no urging; drawings from his sketchbooks document his travels: Villa d’Este, Caprarola.
View of the Port of Rippeta in Rome, c. 1766, showing the Ancient Roman Pantheon next to an imaginary port
The contrast between the ruins of ancient Rome and the life of his time excited his keenest interest. He worked for a time in the studio of Pannini, whose influence can be seen in the Vue imaginaire de la galerie du Louvre en ruine (illustration). Robert spent his time in the company of young artists in the circle of Piranesi, whose capricci of romantically overgrown ruins influenced him so greatly that he gained the nickname Robert des ruines. The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career.