Castel Sant' Elmo, from Capodimonte

Executed with softened brushwork and a restrained palette, the painting employs muted earth tones and delicate blues that mute the dramatic potential of the scene. Degas’s handling of light creates a gentle diffusion across the sky, while the subtle modeling of the stone and foliage lends the composition a quiet, almost lyrical quality.

Created early in Degas’s career, the canvas later entered the collection of the Capodimonte Museum before being transferred to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Its movement reflects the 19th‑century interest in Italian vistas among French artists and the subsequent acquisition by British institutions seeking representative works of Degas’s formative period.