Naples and the Castel dell'Ovo

The low, blocky fortress out on the water is Castel dell'Ovo, the Egg Castle, the oldest castle in Naples. It stands on what was once a small island, where Greek settlers founded a harbour town around 650 BC, and in the Middle Ages Neapolitans believed that the poet Virgil, remembered then as a magician, had sealed an egg in its foundations. If the egg ever broke, the castle would fall and the city with it.

Corot came to Naples in the spring of 1828. He was 31, near the end of his first stay in Italy, and he spent about seven weeks around the bay making studies outdoors. This one is painted in oil on paper and was only later mounted on canvas. The walls he painted are essentially the ones the Aragonese kings of Naples rebuilt in the 15th century. The study now hangs in the Langmatt at Baden in Switzerland, the villa where the collectors Sidney and Jenny Brown kept their French pictures.