Artwork Information

Giovanni Volpato (born Bassano del Grappo 1735, died Rome 1803) was a noted antiquarian, excavator and manufacturer of decorative classical sculptures, but his principal fame and success came from his activities as an engraver of antiquities and archaeological sites for the tourist market in late eighteenth-century Italy. One of his many collaborators was the Swiss born painter Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros (1748–1810), who provided watercolour sketches for engravings and sometimes hand-coloured the resulting monochrome prints.

The site of the temples of Paestum, south of Naples, was known from at least the 16th century but was ‘rediscovered’ in the mid-18th century, during the pan-European fascination with the lost grandeur of ancient Rome and Greece, fuelled by the discoveries at Herculaneum and Pompeii. This view features the simplest of the structures in the temple complex, once known as the Temple of Ceres but now known as the Temple of Athena. Built around 500 BCE, its location on the highest point of the city accords with the custom of granting the loftiest sites to this goddess and numerous statuettes dedicated to her have been discovered in the temple grounds. The artist’s choice of a close-cropped view exaggerates the stocky construction of the temple, but its weighty construction is offset by the golden hues of the sandstone and the backdrop of soaring blue skies.