Showrooms

"View of Pyramid Cestius, Rome"

Creator: Francois Marius Granet
Offered by: Arthur T. Kalaher Fine Art

Description
Brown ink and wash drawing with touches of watercolor and gouache by the French artist, Francois-Marius Granet. Signed lower left. Condition: Good. Provenance: Christie’s London sale 1993. Matted but unframed.

The Pyramid of Cestius (in Italian, Piramide di Caio Cestio or Piramide Cestia) is an ancient pyramid in Rome, Italy, near the Porta San Paolo and the Protestant Cemetery. It was built as a tomb for Gaius Cestius, a member of the Epulones religious corporation.[1] It stands at a fork between two ancient roads, the Via Ostiensis and another road that ran west to the Tiber along the approximate line of the modern Via Marmorata. Due to its incorporation into the city's fortifications, it is today one of the best-preserved ancient buildings in Rome.

Born in Aix-en-Provence, François-Marius Granet studied in the 1790s with Jean-Antoine Constantin and Jacques-Louis David, before travelling briefly to Rome in 1802. He returned to Italy and spent a further 21 years there as a member of a community of French artists, which included Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, François-Xavier Fabre, Pierre-Athanase Chauvin (1774-1832) and Nicolas-Didier Boguet (1755-1839). He was famous for his paintings of church and convent interiors.

In 1824 Granet went back France to become a curator at the Louvre. He was later director of the Museum of French History at Versailles, a post he kept until the Revolution of 1848. He bequeathed to the town of Aix his own collection, which is now housed in the Musée Granet.

So wrote the painter Jacques-Louis David of his one-time pupil François-Marius Granet. The son of a master mason, Granet learned drawing by copying his father's print collection before enrolling as a student at the free drawing academy in his hometown of Aix-en-Provence. In 1796 he traveled to Paris, where he studied Dutch and Flemish paintings in the Musée du Louvre. Before being accepted into David's studio, Granet earned his living painting mural decorations in private apartments. While with David, he developed an interest in medieval and royalist subjects--themes that would later dominate his work--but he soon had to leave for lack of funds. In Rome from 1802, Granet earned his living selling drawings of ancient monuments and painting biographical events from the lives of famous artists. Nearly twenty years later he reached the height of his success when he was awarded the Cross of the French Legion of Honor and the ribbon of the Order of Saint Michael. In 1826 he became a curator at the Louvre and later worked at Versailles.

More Information

Documentation:	Signed
Origin:	France
Period:	19th Century
Materials:	Brown ink, gouache and wash
Condition:	Good. Several tiny light foxing spots in sky
Creation Date:	Circa 1815
Styles / Movements:	Old Master, Realism
Incollect Reference #:	313224