View of Ripetta by Hubert Robert - The Beauty of Ancient Ruins

View of Ripetta

View of Ripetta c1756 by French Painter Hubert Robert (1733 – 1808); known for painting in the Rococo, Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Realism, Renaissance period styles; landscape imagery of semi-fictitious ruins.

The painting shows several old building of an ancient civilization that are now being used by the current inhabitants much differently then there intended purpose.

While in the foreground we can see people in row boats that are anchored at the shore going about their daily business.

This is a retouched digital art reproduction of a public domain image that is available as a canvas print online.

Below Info Derived From Wikipedia

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.[2] The albums of sketches and drawings he assembled in Rome supplied him with motifs that he worked into paintings throughout his career.