Hubert Robert, *Caprice with the Pantheon and a Fountain*

Celebrated in^{the 18th} century as the pre-eminent painter of ruins, Hubert Robert’s work is most often characterised by landscapes featuring ancient ruins, brought to life by figures contemporary to the artist, casually going about their business. These paintings are known as ‘caprices’, a term used to describe imaginary depictions that bring together monuments which are in reality scattered. The ‘caprice’ or Capriccio thus stands in contrast to the Veduta, a contemporary genre denoting a quasi-photographic representation of a landscape.

The ‘caprice’ enjoyed immense success in the second half of^{the 18th} century, as it expressed both a sense of nostalgia and fear: ‘Everything is destroyed, everything perishes, everything passes’ (Denis Diderot, Salon of 1767). Similarly, in his views inspired by current events, Hubert Robert takes pleasure in depicting monuments in Paris that have been destroyed (the fire at the Palais Royal, houses on the bridges) or those under construction.

Whilst Hubert Robert casts a gaze that oscillates between admiration and nostalgia for a vanished past, his canvases are also a celebration of life as it renews itself, populated by colourful characters moving through the world of their ancestors. These figures, observed and sketched, are drawn directly from the daily life of the painter, who spent eleven years in Italy. During his youth, from 1754 to 1765, the painter sketched incessantly, thereby building up a repertoire of forms that served him throughout his career.

Having been a pupil of Michelangelo Slodtz, Hubert Robert undertook the journey across the Alps alongside his patron and French ambassador to Rome, Étienne-François, Duke of Choiseul. He associated with the great artists of the time, such as Jean-Honoré Fragonard, as well as figures like the Abbé de Saint-Non, who introduced him to Naples and Pompeii. The works of Panini and the drawings of Piranesi – whose engraving workshop he frequented – also fuelled his pictorial imagination.

The painting on display in the red room can be attributed to Hubert Robert despite the absence of a signature. It indeed displays all the characteristic features of his style and subject matter. The colour palette of the painting is light, and the brushwork is fluid in this view inspired by Roman architecture, featuring the Pantheon in ruins—a recurring motif in Robert’s paintings. The stone basin in the foreground also appears in another of Robert’s paintings, *Ruins with an Obelisk in the Distance*, dated 1775 and held at the Pushkin Museum in Moscow. The fountain, on the other hand, is a more original motif, no doubt inspired by the one – destroyed in the^18th century – designed by the architect Francesco Borromini for Piazza Capodiferro.

Hubert Robert, 1733–1808: A Visionary Painter, [Paris, Musée du Louvre, 9 March–30 May 2016], exhibition catalogue edited by Guillaume Faroult, Paris, Musée du Louvre / Somogy, 2016.