Capri in the Reign of Tiberius – Sketch to the Painting

This 1881 sketch for the Capri in the Reign of Tiberius composition, now in the National Museum in Kraków, offers a window into Siemiradzki's working method for his large Roman scene paintings. The Kraków museum, which holds Nero's Torches as its centrepiece, also accumulated related preparatory materials — sketches, studies, and variants — that allow reconstruction of the artist's compositional process. Comparing this sketch to the finished Orgy in the Tretyakov shows the degree to which the final composition was worked out in advance versus discovered in the process of painting. Siemiradzki's studio in Rome was organised for large-scale production: preparatory drawings, colour sketches, and studies of individual figures were all systematic steps before the main canvas was begun. This sketch belongs to that professional system.

Oil on canvas with the exploratory quality of a compositional study: tonal masses established, figures placed schematically but not yet resolved, the essential spatial organisation of the Capri setting already clear. The colour is warmer and more summary than in the finished work, with individual passages of greater resolution only where Siemiradzki needed to test specific tonal relationships.