Eighteen Views of Rome: The Campidoglio (1665): Art, History and Details

Eighteen Views of Rome: The Campidoglio (1665) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Lievin Cruyl (Flemish, c. 1640-c. 1720).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Flemish artist Lieven Cruyl made a number of drawings of emblematic vistas of Rome for the Roman publisher Giovanni Battista de Rossi, of which ten were published as etchings in 1666. The Campidoglio features architecture designed by Michelangelo. The Campidoglio was an important ritual space atop the Capitoline Hill overlooking the Roman Forum. Michelangelo reoriented the piazza to look away from the forum and toward Saint Peter’s Basilica, creating a link between the civic buildings on the piazza and the home of the Catholic Church. He had the piazza paved in a trapezoidal shape and placed the ancient Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius on a newly designed plinth in the middle. With this design, he transformed the Campidoglio from a muddy hill to a central destination and ritual space for centuries to come.

Object facts

• Title: Eighteen Views of Rome: The Campidoglio
• Date: 1665
• Creator attribution: Lievin Cruyl (Flemish, c. 1640-c. 1720)
• Culture: Flanders
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink and brush and gray wash over graphite; framing lines in brown ink
• Dimensions: Sheet: 38.6 x 49.5 cm (15 3/16 x 19 1/2 in.)
• Collection: DR - Flemish
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1943.264

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Kowalczyk, Carolina Trupiano. Gaspar van Wittel: Il Catalogo Ragionato Dei Disegni. Milano: Dario Cimorelli Editore, 2026.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.