River Landscape with View of St. Peter's Basilica (after 1660): Art, History and Details

River Landscape with View of St. Peter's Basilica (after 1660) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Italian, 1606–1680).

The work and its context

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

With much of Saint Peter’s Basilica obscured by the energetic lines that form the foliage, the building appears integrated into the landscape in this river scene. What stands out is the massive dome jutting from the tree line. Designed by Michelangelo in 1547, the dome was completed in 1590, after his death. Michelangelo made many contributions to the architecture of Rome, but it was the dome of Saint Peter’s that fundamentally altered the city’s iconic skyline. Although loosely sketched and without fine detail, the dome in this drawing remains immediately recognizable as an emblem of Rome.

Object facts

• Title: River Landscape with View of St. Peter's Basilica
• Date: after 1660
• Creator attribution: Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Italian, 1606–1680)
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Drawing
• Technique: pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk; framing lines in graphite
• Dimensions: Sheet: 11.4 x 26.5 cm (4 1/2 x 10 7/16 in.)
• Collection: DR - Italian
• Department: Drawings
• Accession number: 1978.21

Collection credit

Delia E. Holden Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1978.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 66, no. 1 (January 1979): 3–47. Published as attributed to: Domenico Zampieri

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.