Provenance
The artist [1783-1853]; (his estate sale, Copenhagen, 1854, no. 21); Count F.R. Scheel, Ryegaard.[1] (sale, Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen, 6 October 1998, no. 2001); private collection; (Bruun Rasmussen, Copenhagen); purchased 10 September 2004 by NGA.
[1] The buyer has not been firmly identified, but he may be the Danish politician Frederik Christian Rosenkrantz Scheel, 1833-1912, one of at least two family members with the same name.
Accession Number
2004.75.1
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 31.8 x 47.4 cm (12 1/2 x 18 11/16 in.) | framed: 46.7 x 62.2 x 5.1 cm (18 3/8 x 24 1/2 x 2 in.)
Classification
Painting
Credit Line
Gift of Victoria and Roger Sant
Tags
Painting Neoclassical & Romantic (1751–1850) Oil Painting Canvas Danish
Background & Context
Background Story
Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg (1783-1853) was a Danish painter known as the father of Danish Golden Age painting, whose precisely observed vedute (view paintings) of Rome and Copenhagen established the standard for Danish landscape and architectural painting. View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome from 1814 depicts the ancient Roman sewer in the precisely observed, topographically accurate manner that Eckersberg developed during his Italian stay (1813-16). The 1814 date places this in Eckersberg's Roman period, when he was producing the precisely observed vedute that would establish the standard for Danish view painting.
Cultural Impact
View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome is important in the history of Danish painting because it demonstrates the precisely observed vedute manner that Eckersberg developed in Italy and transmitted to the Danish Golden Age. The painting's combination of topographical accuracy and atmospheric perspective would become the standard for Danish view painting, and Eckersberg's Roman vedute are among the most accomplished in European view painting of the early 19th century.
Why It Matters
View of the Cloaca Maxima is Eckersberg's precisely observed Roman vedute: the ancient sewer rendered in the topographically accurate, atmospherically perspectival manner that he developed in Italy and transmitted to the Danish Golden Age. The 1814 painting established the standard for Danish view painting that would define the Golden Age.
![Saint Bernard and Saint Catherine of Alexandria with the Virgin of the Annunciation [right panel]](https://api.nga.gov/iiif/e6890364-4d99-4684-a62b-5060ee3c3446/full/400,/0/default.jpg)
