The Arch of Titus in Rome

What this canvas records is an arch that cannot be seen this way any more. Between 1818 and 1821 the Arch of Titus in Rome was taken apart and rebuilt, and everything here comes from before that work: the ruin choked with vegetation, a stunted tree in the foreground, the Farnese gardens rising behind. A shepherd sits and plays a reed pipe with sheep around him, on ground Romans then called the Campo Vaccino, the cow field, because the Forum was pasture. The picture probably came out of the journey Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo made to Italy in 1657. A stay in Naples is documented. Rome is an inference from the painting itself. The Prado gives him as the author and states plainly that no document proves it, and that the name of Benito Manuel Agüero has lately been raised.