Page 67 - Joseph Wright of Derby: Virgils's Tomb & The Grand Tour.

© LA SALLE COLLEGE MUSEUM OF ART (Fig. 31).33 Adam made his view from almost the
identical spot as Clérisseau but without the distant
Fig. 32a. HUBERT ROBERT, Virgil’sTomb, 1778, oil on canvas. La Salle view over Posillipo.There are certain adjustments to
College Museum of Art, Philadelphia. the scale and detail, and in April 1755 Adam noted
that ‘It [the tomb] is now almost quite ruinous and is only
beautiful from its antiquity’, which may serve to explain
his architectural adjustments.A closer comparison with
Wright’s picture was painted by Hubert Robert in
1778 (Fig. 32A) based on an earlier drawing by the
same artist executed nearly twenty years before, which
had been later etched and issued in Paris in 1771
(Fig. 32B).34 By reducing the number of figures,
simplifying the physical features, and employing more
dramatic lighting, the English painter transformed the
composition from a mere archaeological study into
a sublime work of art.

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C ontemporary reviews of the picture and subse-
quent versions were very positive. One writer
who saw the painting on display in the Royal Acad-
emy exhibition of 1779 wrote that ‘Mr.Wright’s excel-
lence is too well known to need any further elucidations,
[yet] we cannot resist taking notice ofVirgil’sTomb,with the
figure of Scilius Italicus [sic]…so close a copy of na-
ture….’35 Another observer who saw a second ver-

Fig. 32b. ADELAIDE ALLOU, Virgil’sTomb. Differents vues dessinés d’après 33. Sir John Soane’s Museum, London, ‘View of ‘Virgil’s Tomb’ at
nature ... dans les environs de Rome et Naples, print after Hubert Mergellina,’ 1755, pencil and brown, blue, and grey washes, 8 x
Robert. 11 1/2 in. (Adam vol. 57/21).The quote can be found in Adam’s
correspondence, National Archives of Scotland, Edinburgh, Clerk
of Penicuik Collection, GD18/4769.

34. For a history of the complicated genesis of the original drawing
and later printed versions, see Patricia Crown, ‘An Eighteenth-
Century Collaboration: Fragonard, Robert, and Abbé Saint-Non,’
Muse, No. 26 (1992), pp. 53-61.

35. General Advertiser and Morning Intelligencer, 28 April 1779, p. 2.

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