View of Tivoli
  • Felice M. F. Storelli
  • Turin 1778 - 1854 Paris
  • View of Tivoli, 1815
  • Watercolour and gouache over pencil, framing lines with brush and black wash, on paper
  • signed and dated with pen on the lower right: Storelli 1815
  • 437 × 334 mm

After an apprenticeship with the landscape painter Pietro G. Palmieri (1737-1804) in Turin, who was simultaneously the royal advisor for the drawings collection of the Savoys, Storelli moved by 1806 to Paris, where he found his artistic home. He founded his own atelier and rose to prominence as the Duchesse de Berry’s painting instructor. But Storelli continued to cultivate his contacts with Turin and repeatedly received important commissions from the Savoys for the decoration of the royal palaces and collections.

Like so many other of his artistic colleagues from the 18th and 19th centuries, Storelli was unable to draw himself away from the fascination of this magical place near Rome during one of his journeys to Italy. Instead of the famous waterfalls, however, he chose as the theme of this watercolour a view of the dramatically lit ravine that the small Aniene River has mined into the rock beneath the hill of Tivoli. In the view from below, one recognizes on the right the distinctive temples of both the vestals and the so-called Tiburtine sibyl.

A distinguishing feature of Storelli’s works is their invariably homogenous colouration, reduced to green, blue, and brown tones, as demonstrated in this watercolour.