Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, 'The Roman Campagna, with the Claudian Aqueduct', probably 1826

As was the custom for many French artists in the early nineteenth century, Corot travelled to Italy as part of his training. He arrived there in late 1825 to begin his first (and longest) visit, which lasted three years. His former teachers, Achille-Etna Michallon and Victor Bertin, had both been specialists in classical landscape and had worked in Rome and the surrounding countryside, where they sketched the ruins and classical sculptures they included in their paintings.

Accompanied by a fellow student from Bertin’s studio, Johan Karl Baehr, Corot arrived in Rome in November 1825. He spent much of the following year in the countryside around Rome, returning to the city for the winter, when he worked on finished pictures for the Salon. Except for a visit to Naples in February 1828, he remained close to Rome.

Corot painted a number of views that included the Aqua Claudia, which you can see in the distance. One of two aqueducts begun by Gaius Caesar in AD 38 and completed by Claudius in AD 52, the Aqua Claudia was supplied with water from the Caerulean and Curtian springs. When Corot painted this view, the aqueduct’s ruins could be seen just five kilometres south-east of Rome on the Via Appia Nuova. The precise spot where he stood to paint this picture has been identified: near the church of Sant’ Urbano around three kilometres from the Porta San Sebastiano. The square tower almost in the centre of the picture is the Tor Fiscale, a medieval defence tower. On either side of the tower is the Acqua Felice, an aqueduct built by Pope Sixtus in 1585. The Alban Hills can be seen on the right, and the Monti Prenestini on the left. The River Almone flows in the mid-distance, behind the trees.

This small picture is an oil sketch on paper, which was laid down on canvas at a later date. It is likely that Corot painted it in the spring of 1826, a few months after the start of his stay in Italy. There are traces of some basic drawing (possibly with crayon), mainly of the architecture and along the tops of the hills, but none in the foreground. Corot used a limited range of colours – tones of green, beige and violet-blue for the land, and blue, grey, purple and white for the sky – to create an open sunlit landscape beneath a blue sky filled with bright cumulus clouds. Despite the picture’s very small size, he has created an effect of expansive space with very economical means: areas of colour, laid down with thin paint, are given definition and scale by details such as the trees and architecture. These details also allowed Corot to introduce tonal accents and highlights (for example, the pink strip of the aqueduct placed against the violet-blues of the mountains) that complement the golden-browns and greens that predominate in the landscape. Alternating bands of lighter and darker tones running across the picture further enhance its sense of depth.