2-747-489 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

View of the Acqua Acetosa (recto), c. 1645. This drawing represents a view of the famous Acqua Acetosa, a mineral spring that until the 1800s provided the favored drinking water of Romans who believed in its healing powers. Although topographically accurate, the sheet is not a plein-air study but a vision of an imagined Arcadian world carefully rendered by Gellée, one of the most original painters of the 1600s. The French-born artist spent his career painting and drawing the Roman Campagna and the Neopolitan coastline. Sublimely beautiful pen-and-ink and wash drawings such as this example reveal the artist's highly poetic response to the natural world and his unparalleled sensitivity to light.