Aqueduct in Ruins

Robert's Aqueduct in Ruins (1753) is another early Roman period work, depicting the great aqueducts that supplied ancient Rome with water and still stood as the most impressive engineering achievements of the ancient world visible in the eighteenth-century landscape. The aqueduct's double rows of arches stretching across the campagna provided a structure of great visual power — its combination of repetitive architectural module and vast horizontal scale creating a form unlike anything in medieval or Renaissance architecture. Robert studied the Roman aqueducts repeatedly during his Italian years, returning to the subject throughout his career as the structure that most powerfully expressed the ambition and engineering mastery of ancient civilization.

Robert captures the monumental scale of the aqueduct through careful perspective and the inclusion of small figures for scale. The warm golden light of the campagna bathes the weathered stone in amber tones, while the landscape recedes into a hazy blue distance that demonstrates Robert's command of atmospheric perspective.