Carlo Labruzzi

(Roma, 1748 - Perugia, 1817)

Three pencil sketches on paper depicting views of Roman ruins; framed into rectangular gilded wooden frames, 45x61 cm (2) and 45x56 cm, In the autumn of 1789, Carlo Labruzzi made a trip from Rome to Benevento along the Appian Way together with the archaeologist Sir Richard Colt Hoare who asked him to document the journey with numerous drawings. It is known that Labruzzi made a lot of sketches from life that he later used for the realization of pen and watercolored squid drawings that the English scholar had commissioned. Part of Labruzzi's work was purchased in 1899 by another archaeologist Thomas Ashby on the British antique market; in 1931 his wife sold it to the Vatican Library, which still today houses 226 watercolors of the "queen viarum". Another series of 188 drawings is kept at the Sarti Library of the Accademia di San Luca; still others are found in the British Museum and also in the Municipal Cabinet of prints in Rome. The three drawings presented here, we believe, can be part of those studies that are still unpublished because in private collections.