Italian landscape with donkey.

Italian Landscape with Donkey, dated 1880 and now in the National Museum in Warsaw, is one of Siemiradzki's more modest Italian observations — a straightforward record of the rural Italian countryside around Rome that he used as a setting for more ambitious compositions. Donkeys were ubiquitous in nineteenth-century Italian rural life and were painted by numerous northern European artists resident in Rome as authentic contemporary genre subjects that nonetheless connected to an ancient pastoral tradition. Siemiradzki's landscapes are less well known than his figure compositions but are consistently competent observations that demonstrate his ability to move outside the studio. The 1880 date places this alongside his major classical canvases, suggesting he painted such landscapes as a form of observational refreshment between the demanding large-format works.

Oil on canvas, the landscape prioritises the quality of light in the Roman campagna — bright, clear, and warm — over compositional drama. The donkey provides a scale-establishing focal point within the open landscape, its dark form contrasting with sunlit ground and sky. The handling is broadly academic, with more fluent, gestural brushwork in the sky and vegetation than in Siemiradzki's finished figure paintings.