1764
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Le Sarcophage is a 1764 by Hubert Robert, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
Hubert Robert painted a crumbling Roman sarcophagus in a grassy ruin, half-buried by vines. His etching shows two men studying it—one in a wig, the other in a tattered coat—like tourists today. They’re not real. Robert made them up. Robert visited Rome in the 1760s. He sketched real ruins but added fake people to sell prints to collectors. His trick? Mixing fact with fancy to make Rome feel alive. The prints were popular with travelers who wanted souvenirs. Look up The Cleveland Museum of Art to see more of his playful ruins.
Derived from his own pen-and-ink drawings, this suite of etchings features fictional characters situated near recognizable buildings and statues in Rome. On the title page, Robert dedicated the suite to Marguerite Le Compte, who visited Rome in 1764 in the company of the wealthy author and art enthusiast Claude Henri Watelet. Both Le Compte and Watelet were amateur etchers, and they socialized with a group that included artists and printmakers centered at the academies in Italy. Robert’s dedication was likely motivated by the hope of future patronage from Le Compte. She may be the generous…
Read the full account in the museum source.
Hubert Robert (French pronunciation: ; 22 May 1733 – 15 April 1808) was a French painter in the school of Romanticism, noted especially for his landscape paintings and capricci, or semi-fictitious picturesque depictions of ruins in Italy and of France.
See the richer artist page
