Piazza del Duomo, Messina, Sicily
William Leighton Leitch British, Scottish
Not on view
Leitch drew Messina’s main square when he visited the city in 1835-36 during a four-year sojourn in Italy. The distinctive banded façade of the city’s Norman cathedral, and its truncated bell-tower, would both be destroyed in an earthquake of 1908, and later rebuilt. At center, we are shown the fountain of Orion (1553), with Italian pilgrims kneeling in the foreground. After Leitch returned to London in 1837, he became active in the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours, and served as drawing master to Queen Victoria and the royal children.
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