Tivoli and the Roman Campagna with a Man and Woman

Wilson began painting landscapes while on a sojourn to Italy in the 1750s, executing numerous sketches of the countryside around Rome. Here he depicts Tivoli (about twenty-five miles east of Rome), with its ancient buildings perched atop a cliff overlooking the Aniene River gorge.  The town had long been popular with artists—Claude Lorrain, the great French landscape painter, worked there a century earlier. Notice how Wilson has included an artist sketching in the middle ground.