Robert, Hubert – Artists Hermitage ~ part 10

A description of Hubert Robert’s painting The Artists

Robert was a famous 18th-century landscape painter from enlightened France. It so happened that after learning the basics of painting and sculpture in his homeland, the young artist was sent to Rome. It was Italy that later became the main inspiration for Hubert Robert’s paintings.

The novice painter learned a lot from the Italian master Piranesi, who was then working in Rome. He absorbed the fine art of painting, watched much of the life of the city, made many sketches that came in handy on his return to France.

Robert paints the canvas "Artists", taking as a basis the motif of admiration for the art of antiquity. Italy struck him with unimaginable contrasts: centuries-old columns and statues neighbored here with everyday life quite naturally. For example, street vending could be set against a backdrop of carved snow-white columns from the historical past.

The "artists" were passionately engaged in their work. Sitting on the ruins of ancient architectural structures, they contemplate all this wealth of a long dead majestic world.

The era that gave birth to philosophers and mathematicians, the wisest thinkers in history, has left these evidences of its once vibrant heyday. The wreckage of buildings, huge vases, partially destroyed or intact sculptures that have survived speak of the greatness of human thought, imagination and skill.

Hubert Robert, as a genre landscape painter, painted the composition against the backdrop of nature. The sky is obscured by tranquil clouds; trees, hills and grass fill the blank areas of the canvas.

The approximate year of the masterpiece’s creation is 1796. An interesting fact is that the sitters for the two artists were chosen by the author of the canvas himself and his best Roman mentor, Piranesi.

The State Hermitage safely guards the creation of the painter of ruins, so that everyone at all times can admire the enormous cultural heritage left to the world by ancient Rome.