The Staircase of the Dragon Fountain at the Villa d’Este, Tivoli
Jean Honoré Fragonard French
Not on view
In 1760, near the end of his student years in Italy, Fragonard spent a summer at Tivoli, just outside Rome, producing a series of red chalk drawings featuring the lush and overgrown formal gardens of the Villa d’Este. They were met with great acclaim back in Paris, likely spurring the artist to create painterly variants by re-working the chalk counterproofs in sepia wash. This sheet will be the museum’s first example of Fragonard’s innovative use of the technique. Fluid accents in brown wash heighten the contrast of light and shade, evoking the hazy heat and bleaching light of midsummer.
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