An Italian Harbour in Stormy Weather

When Joseph Vernet painted this storm in the 1740s he was a young Frenchman making his name in Rome. The canvas and its calm companion, a view of the waterfalls at Tivoli, belonged to Cardinal Silvio Valenti Gonzaga, secretary of state to Pope Benedict XIV and a leading collector in the city. In 1740 the painter Giovanni Paolo Panini, a specialist in views of Rome, painted an imaginary picture of the cardinal's gallery, its walls packed with paintings.

The cardinal died in 1756, and his collection was later sold at auction in Amsterdam. The two Vernets were bought there for Prince William V of Orange. In 1795, after the French invasion, they were taken to Paris with the rest of the prince's pictures, and they came back to The Hague in 1815.

Both now belong to the Mauritshuis and hang in the Gallery Prince Willem V.