Scaliger Tombs in Verona

The Scaliger Tombs — Arche Scaligere — are the Gothic funerary monuments of the della Scala lords of Verona, set in an iron-grille enclosure adjacent to the church of Santa Maria Antica in the heart of medieval Verona. These towering Gothic canopied tombs, surmounted by equestrian figures of the Scaligeri, were among the most visited and most painted monuments in Verona, drawing artists since the eighteenth century grand tour. Gierymski's view from 1900 places him in this long tradition of northern Italian artistic tourism while inflecting the subject with his own Impressionist attention to light on old stone. The National Museum in Warsaw holds this alongside his other Veronese architectural studies.

Gierymski approaches the Gothic monuments with the same warm, broken-color touch he applies to all his Veronese subjects, capturing the texture of the carved stone and the iron grille enclosure in terms of light and color rather than archaeological detail. The composition allows the Gothic verticality of the tombs to dominate the picture space.