Lake Avernus with a Sarcophagus

Lake Avernus, near Naples, was one of Wilson’s most repeated Italian subjects, painted in multiple versions. The volcanic crater lake, associated in classical mythology with the entrance to the underworld, embodied the fusion of landscape beauty with literary and historical resonance that defined Wilson’s approach to Italian scenery. Richard Wilson's Italian landscapes were the foundation on which his entire career was built. The years he spent in Rome in the 1750s, studying the work of Claude Lorrain and Gaspar Dughet in the landscape of the Roman campagna that had inspired them, gave him the compositional intelligence and tonal discipline that distinguished his mature work from the topographical painting that preceded him in British art. His Italian subjects — the Alban Hills, the volcanic lakes, the ruins of the campagna — were produced both for the British tourists who wanted souvenirs of their Grand Tour and for the collector market in London that was learning to value landscape painting as a serious genre.

The sarcophagus in the foreground adds a memento mori element to the serene lake view. Wilson’s rendering of the still water and distant mountains demonstrates his mastery of atmospheric perspective and tonal gradation.