Roman Ruins

When the painter walked through Rome in the 1620s the Forum was grazing land, and Romans called it the Campo Vaccino, the cow field. Cattle and herdsmen moved between arches that were half buried in earth. That is the view on this oval copper plate of 23 by 30.5 centimetres, a triumphal arch with herdsmen in front of it. The picture came from the collection of Cardinal Carlo de' Medici, where it is recorded in 1663, and it has been at Palazzo Pitti since 1666. It was shown in the gallery between 1828 and 1834. Its Palatina inventory number is 479 and its companion piece is 473. The museum places it in the painter's Italian years and thinks it may have been painted in Florence, from memory, at the size of a cabinet picture meant to be held close and talked over.