Ruins in a Landscape

Placed in the immediate foreground and reaching to the top of the sheet, a ruin-a fragment of an ancient structure located on the south side of the palace of Septimius Servus on the Palatine Hill-towers over a slight hill on the left and distant trees in the right background. Typical of Asselijn's drawings made in and around Rome, the drawing was carefully rendered in brown wash over graphite. Precise strokes in wash, short broken parallel hatching, and darker dots enhance the ruin's three-dimensional form. Light appears to pour in from the left illuminating the ruin from its side. Reinforcing the understanding of the monumental structure as a decrepit remnant of the past, plants appear to grow out of every crack and crevice. The large scale of this highly finished sheet suggests that it was made as an independent work of art.