La Colonnade

La Colonnade (The Colonnade) from around 1771, now of unknown location, treats one of Robert's favorite architectural subjects — a row of classical columns creating rhythmic spatial recession into atmospheric depth. Robert's Roman sojourn of eleven years gave him an encyclopedic knowledge of classical colonnades, from the great temples of the Forum to the porticoes of Renaissance palaces, and he drew on this visual archive throughout his career to create imaginary colonnades that combined features of real monuments in ideal compositional arrangements. The colonnade subject was particularly amenable to his technique because it allowed him to demonstrate the full range of his atmospheric effects: the light between columns could be made to vary from bright exterior illumination to deep interior shadow, creating a visual poetry of alternating light and dark that he mastered through decades of practice. His staffage figures moving through the colonnade provide the human scale that makes the architectural grandeur comprehensible and the sense of time passing that gives his architectural paintings their philosophical depth. The around-1771 date places this in his most productive French period, when large decorative commissions required him to produce colonnaded interiors and exteriors for aristocratic patrons across France.

The columns create a strong perspectival recession into atmospheric depth. Robert's rendering of stone in various states of preservation and illumination demonstrates his mastery of architectural surface and light.