Unlike its pair,A Ruined Temple(DPG 23) , the ruin in this picture has not so far been identified. Both paintings epitomise how the ‘first generation’ of Dutch Italianate artists revelled in the discovery of the picturesque qualities of the Roman campagna and its ruins. A typically Dutch element of this pair is the use of figures to inject an element of everyday life into scenes of decayed Roman grandeur – laundering in one, shepherding in the other.
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