View of the Piazza del Campidoglio from the Left Side of the Cordonata

We here look past the corner of the Capitoline Museum in Rome at the Campidoglio, with a partial view of the Senate at left. An equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius stands at the piazza's center with the Palazzo dei Conservatori glimpsed through trees at right. This a proof of one of the 43 wood engravings that Ruzicka created for Mrs. Charles MacVeagh's "Fountains of Papal Rome," Scribner's, New York, 1915, where this image appears on page 47. Other wood engravings made for the Campigdolio chapter are the "Senate Building" (MMA, 18.25.41), "Marforio" (MMA, 18.25.50), and "Lion attacking a Horse" (MMA, 18.25.49); found in the book on pages 51, 55, and 56.
Ruzicka went to Rome in 1913 with the manuscript of "Fountains of Papal Rome" in hand and, by 1914, had engraved the blocks for fourteen full-page illustrations, twenty-two smaller ones and seven vignettes. The artist later described the volume as a "quite remarkable work...still the most authoritative book there is on the subject in the English language," but he could not have been happy with the commercially printed illustrations. The Museum's proof impressions were, by contrast, printed by Ruzicka himself and convey the subtle tonal shifts and delicate details that he intended.