I made a new friend at the Denver Art Museum recently. This fairly recent acquisition delighted me!

This is why I love the history of art! I can time travel and see what St. Peter’s looked like around 1855. I’ve stood on the Janiculum Hill in Rome many times and gazed at St. Peter’s from this vantage point. It looks oh, so different nowadays!

Born near Edinburgh, Roberts came to be known as the “Scottish Canaletto” after the 18-century Italian cityscape painter famed for his precise representations of cities and their buildings. For over two decades Roberts traveled through Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East painting and architectural and topographical subjects. He painted this picture following a visit to Italy in 1853, the final stop of his travels before returning to London. For over a century such works had been enormously popular among British collectors as mementos of their Italian sojourns. In an inscription by Roberts he informs us that the work was a gift to the wife of his friend Joseph Arden, “…A Souvenir / of her Visit to Rome.”