Jacob More – View of the lake Nemi

Jacob More

(Edinburgh 1740-Rome 1793)

View of Lake Nemi, known as Speculum Dianae in ancient times

circa 1780

Oil on canvas, 70.5 × 94.5 cm

Old collection label on the frame: “N.5 Italian Landscape Jacob More”

Provenance: Holland, private collection; Rome, private collection

“The finest painter of air since Claude” according to Joshua Reynolds, the Scotsman Jacob More contributed to the creation of the repertoire of Italian vedute, dense with historical memories, destined to become canonical for European travellers on the Grand Tour. Appreciated by Goethe and Canova, and favourite painter of the legendary Lord Bristol, his name became forever associated with Rome when he designed the lake garden for the villa of Marcantonio IV Borghese according to English landscape taste.

Besides his flair for the sublime, More cultivated a more serene Virgilian vision of the classical landscape, seen in the quiet stillness of dawn in this rare view of Lake Nemi.