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Torre dei Schiavi, The Roman Campagna (from Cropsey Album)

1853
Not on view
During his first European sojourn in 1847, the young Hudson River School-painter Cropsey toured and sketched in the Roman Campagna. The picturesque landscape around Rome was admired for its vast beauty and historic ruins—evidence of the greatness and decline of ancient civilizations. The Torre dei Schiavi (Tower of Slaves), a mausoleum built as part of an extensive imperial villa in the third century a.d., is one of the best-known monuments on the Campagna. As both a tomb and a ruin embodying Rome’s faded glory, the tower had poetic associations, which Cropsey emphasizes by including the rising moon, a potent symbol of eternal time. Cropsey was one of several American artists who drew the tower, including Thomas Cole (1801–1848) and William Stanley Haseltine (1835–1900).

Artwork Details

Object Information
  • Title: Torre dei Schiavi, The Roman Campagna (from Cropsey Album)
  • Artist: Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, Rossville, New York 1823–1900 Hastings-on-Hudson, New York)
  • Date: 1853
  • Culture: American
  • Medium: Graphite, white gouache, and brown and gray ink washes on dark buff wove paper
  • Dimensions: 4 1/8 x 5 11/16 in. (10.5 x 14.4 cm)
  • Credit Line: Purchase, Charles and Anita Blatt Gift, 1970
  • Object Number: 1970.9.26 recto
  • Curatorial Department: The American Wing

More Artwork

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Album Compiled by Jasper Francis Cropsey
Jasper Francis Cropsey
1847
Castle Garden, New York
Multiple artists/makers
1860
Hackensack Meadows, Jasper Francis Cropsey American, Watercolor, gouache, and graphite on off-white wove paper, American
Hackensack Meadows
Jasper Francis Cropsey
1890
Pompton Plains, New Jersey, Jasper Francis Cropsey American, Oil on canvas, American
Pompton Plains, New Jersey
Jasper Francis Cropsey
1867
American Falls, Niagara, Jasper Francis Cropsey American, Graphite and white gouache on dark buff-colored wove paper, American
American Falls, Niagara
Jasper Francis Cropsey
ca. 1855

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