Capriccio with Antique Ruins
1730s
Medium
pen and brown ink, brush and gray ink, and gray wash over black chalk, heightened with white on brown wove paper
Dimensions
overall: 41.4 x 27 cm (16 5/16 x 10 5/8 in.)
Classification
Drawing
Department
CG-E
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund
Accession Number
1996.148.1
Art Historical Context
Created in the 1730s, Johann George Böhm’s *Capriccio with Antique Ruins* invites viewers into an imagined landscape where fragments of classical architecture stand in poetic disarray. The term “capriccio” refers to a fanciful composition that blends real and invented elements, a genre especially popular in eighteenth-century Europe as travelers on the Grand Tour developed a taste for evocative scenes of antiquity. Böhm’s drawing captures this spirit, offering a romantic meditation on the passage of time through crumbling columns, arches, and pediments that never existed together in reality. ...