1764
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Le Temple Antique is a 1764 by Hubert Robert, a Romanticism work, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
You see a crumbling stone temple by moonlight. A few people stand around it, tiny against the grand ruins. The sky glows behind broken columns. Robert painted this from his own drawings he made in Rome. He never actually visited the temple—it’s a made-up place. He used light and shadow to make the scene feel real. This kind of fake-but-fantastic view was popular in the 1700s. Look up *Hubert Robert (French, 1733–1808)* next.
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.
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