La Cervara, the Roman Campagnac. 1830–31
Corot based his large oil painting on drawings and oil sketches made outdoors. Attracted to the beauty of the Italian countryside, he often sketched around Rome, where he lived from 1825 to 1828. More about this work
About this work
Corot based his large oil painting on drawings and oil sketches made outdoors. Attracted to the beauty of the Italian countryside, he often sketched around Rome, where he lived from 1825 to 1828. This painting's highly structured composition, based on forms moving into the distance along a series of diagonals, is characteristic of Corot's early style and recalls the classical landscapes of 17th-century painter Nicholas Poussin.
Text from the Cleveland Museum of Art.
How it was made
- Oil paint
- Pigment ground in a drying oil, usually linseed. It dries slowly, so painters could blend on the canvas, build up thin translucent glazes, and rework a picture over weeks. Canvas replaced wooden panels in the 1500s because it is lighter and can be rolled.
Jean Baptiste Camille Corot
French, 1796–1875 · Born and died in Paris.
Corot trained with the landscape painters Achille-Etna Michallon and Jean-Victor Bertin, then spent 1825–28 in Italy, where his small oil sketches of Rome and the Campagna caught its clear light with great economy. He returned to Italy twice and travelled widely in France. His Salon pictures moved from classical landscape to the silvery, misty reveries that made him famous in the 1850s and 1860s, and late in life he painted thoughtful figure studies of models in costume.
Written by Ochre Editions.
Rights and the museum’s record
Public domain. The Cleveland Museum of Art has dedicated this image to the public domain under CC0, so anyone may copy, adapt and use it, for any purpose, without asking. Our prints and files are reproductions made from the museum’s image; the museum doesn’t endorse them.
- Object number
- 1963.91
- Credit
- Courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Art
- Type
- Painting
- Department
- Modern European Painting and Sculpture
- Licence
- CC0 1.0 Universal
- Museum record
- See it on the museum’s site
