GASPARD DUGHET, CALLED GASPARD POUSSIN (ROME 1615-1675)

This painting was once part of a pair, with its pendant, a similar view of Tivoli but with a cascade in the foreground, now in the Hatton Gallery, King’s College, Newcastle-upon-Tyne. There has been some debate as to whether the pair are early or late paintings in Dughet's career, with Francesco Arcangeli regarding them early works of around 1654-8 (see 5th Biennale d'Arte Antica, Bologna, 1962, no. 106), and Boisclair dating them to the last years of Dughet’s life (op. cit.). The rust coloring of the landscape, however, and the bold treatment of the rock surfaces below the temple, are stylistically close in manner to a series of decorative panels in the Palazzo Doria, placing this painting in the earlier phase of Dughet's oeuvre, standing between his early naturalistic style and his later Poussin inspired landscapes.
Dughet was a master of description, particularly of the Roman campagna and the hilly environs of Tivoli, where he had lived. The present landscape combines his observation of the splendors of nature and evocations of the masterful creations of man with architecture now in decay; while the Temple of the Sibyl stands large by the Roman ruins at Tivoli, across the shadowed gorge we see wooded hills dotted with rural buildings of more recent construction.