Souvenir of Castel Gandolfo

Castel Gandolfo stands on the rim of Lake Albano, south-east of Rome, and since the 17th century the popes have spent their summers there. Corot worked around the lake in November 1826 and through the summer of 1827, on his first Italian journey, and on his two later trips to Italy there is no record of him going back. This canvas was made decades afterwards in his Paris studio. The Louvre dates it only to the third quarter of the century, and the late 1860s were when he painted this theme most often. The pale town sits on the left under an evening sky, and on the right a goatherd plays a pipe under the big trees, his goats beside him. The museum in Reims owns a close variant with the composition reversed.