Casino of the Villa d’Este

The view shows in the foreground the sixteenth-century “Rometta” (Little Rome) fountain, in the gardens of Villa d’Este at Tivoli, a town outside Rome that became one of Wilson’s favorite locations. The fountain was made up of miniature representations of Roman monuments, in this instance a waterfall representing the cascades at Tivoli with, above it, a small model of the Temple of the Sibyl and, to the left, a statue in a cave. Challe, winner of the Prix de Rome at the Académie royale in Paris in 1741, was a master of the technique seen in the present drawing, where black and white chalks are used on toned paper. Wilson transformed his drawing style by adopting this method.