Landscape with a Scene under a Tent

In 1678 Prince Giovan Battista Borghese paid the Bolognese painter Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi for "several paintings", and four landscapes on copper from that payment are still here. The family was then refitting its palace at Ripetta, beside the Tiber, and the set was probably meant for the ground-floor apartment. This one strays furthest from Grimaldi's usual repertoire. Under a pale awning on the right, guests are eating and drinking, with plates and glasses on the grass or raised in their hands. A nude young man reclines at the water's edge in front of them. The museum's catalogue calls it a kind of bacchanal, a theme the prince probably chose himself. Across the stream, a low fall of water spills past a walled village with a tall tower.