Hubert ROBERT (1733-1808) - Lot 96

Lot n° 96
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Estimation :
8000 - 12000 EUR
Result with fees
Result : 17 160EUR
Hubert ROBERT (1733-1808) - Lot 96
Hubert ROBERT (1733-1808) Shepherds and walkers in the ruins of Via Appia, near the mausoleum of Cecilia Metella Pen and gray wash over black stone on paper 31.5 x 45 cm (Watermark: fleur-de-lys in a circle with closed crown) Provenance : - Drouot Estimations sale, June 13, 2014, lot 20, as "attributed to Hubert Robert". - Private collection, Paris, France. Our drawing, characteristic of Hubert Robert's airy wash work, probably dates from his stay in Rome (1754-1765) and perfectly explains his nickname "Robert of the Ruins". The tomb of Cecilia Metella, built towards the end of the 1st century BC along Rome's monumental Via Appia, is one of the most imposing funerary mausoleums of the late-Republican aristocracy. Attributed to the daughter of Quintus Caecilius Metellus Creticus and probably the wife of Marcus Licinius Crassus, the edifice takes the form of a powerful cylindrical concrete drum lined with travertine, resting on a quadrangular base and once surmounted by an earthen mound, following a funerary typology inspired by Hellenistic traditions. Its dedication inscription - *CAECILIAE Q. CRETICI F. METELLAE CRASSI* - explicitly recalls the family alliances of one of the most influential gentes of the late Republic, while the frieze decorated with bucrania and garlands refers to the symbolic vocabulary of sacrifice and aristocratic memory. Transformed into a fortress by the powerful Caetani family in the 13th century, the monument's overlapping uses bear witness to the strategic and symbolic continuity of ancient Rome's most famous consular thoroughfare. This mausoleum made a great impression on the artist, for in the 1760s he produced a painting of almost identical composition, formerly in the collection of the Naryshkin princes, seized during the Bolshevik Revolution, and now preserved in St. Petersburg (64х111,8 см, Hermitage Museum, inv. ГЭ-5650). Two sanguine studies are also known, one, dated 1758-1759, kept at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen[3] (fig. 2), features the same foreshortening and the presence of horsemen as the painting's composition (inv. 964.4.1); and the other in a private collection (formerly Drawing Online Gallery, Paris, January 2026). Finally, among the drawings in the collection of Pierre-Adrien Pâris (1745-1819), Robert's Roman companion, we find a careful study of "la partie supérieure du tombeau" (Besançon, Musée d'Art et d'Archéologie, inv. Vol. 454, no. 52), attesting to the two friends' interest in the monument.
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