(Toulon 1757–1832 Paris) The Arch of Titus, Rome, signed and dated: J. Taurel f. 1817, oil on canvas, 32.5 x 24 cm, framed Taurel is one of the exponents of the late Italianate-French Landscape movement, a school established by Claude Joseph Vernet, alongside Charles François De La Croix, called Lacroix de Marseille, and Carle Vernet as one of the close followers of the influential elder Vernet. Surprisingly, his oeuvre has only recently been rediscovered by art historians - during Napoleon’s reign he was considered one of the most influential landscape artists. Few of his important commissions for the Emperor have survived, among those the French Troops Entering the City of Naples, which was exhibited at the Salon des artistes français in 1799, and which is now in Versailles. Taurel excelled in two types of vedute: the imaginary, highly decorative views of idealized landscapes, often incorporating existing historic monuments in a Capriccio style as in the present painting, an accurate topographic depiction of well-known views. In this case, he shows one of the famous sites of ancient Rome in a composition recalling Piranesi’s engraving of the monument erected by the Emperor Titus after his decisive victory, alongside Vespasian, against the rebelling Judeans (see fig.1), as a traveler at the turn of the century would have seen it. Through the arch we see westwards over the Roman Forum, passing the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Dioscurs Temple, further in the distance the Capitol with the Tabularium, the state archive of the Roman Empire, with the Senator’s palace built by Michelangelo in the 16th century. The present signed and dated view of Rome is work of late French vedutismo at the stylistic turn towards a more romanticized image of the antique seen in the Restoration era.

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