Ruines médiévales

Corot spent 1825 to 1828 in Italy and came home with roughly 150 small oil studies painted outdoors, on supports light enough to carry up a hillside. They were not made to be sold. Studies like this stayed in the studio as working stock, material for the large finished landscapes he sent to the Salon in Paris. When he died in 1875, hundreds of them were still there. The estate stamped every one with the words Vente Corot and sold them off over several days, which is how a sketch its maker never signed came to hang in a museum. That stamp is on this panel. Its date, 1828, puts it at the end of that first Italian stay.