View of Temple of Vesta, Tivoli
Medium
Pen and brown ink, with brush and brown and blue wash, on ivory laid paper, laid down on ivory laid card
Dimensions
15.6 × 25.2 cm (6 3/16 × 9 15/16 in.)
Classification
pen and ink drawings
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
4093
Art Historical Context
Nestled among the rolling hills of Tivoli, just outside Rome, the ancient Temple of Vesta—icated to the Roman goddess of the hearth—has long captivated artists with its elegant cylindrical form and crumbling Ionic columns. In this exquisite drawing, Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (6–1680), a Bolognese Baroque master known as "Il Bolognese," captures the temple's timeless beauty against a hazy landscape. Working in the 17th century,imaldi served the papal court and excelled in architectural views and landscapes, blending precise observation with poetic atmosphere. Executed in pen and brown ink wi...
About the Artist
Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi · 1606–1680
Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (1606–1680), known as "Il Bolognese," was an Italian painter, draughtsman, and etcher whose career exemplifies the wide influence of the Bolognese school of landscape painting in seventeenth-century Rome. Born in Bologna, Grimaldi trained in the tradition of the Carracci, whose idealized approach to landscape — blending careful observation of nature with classical compo...