View of the Garden Terrace of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli

Art Historical Context

Created around 1643–44, this delicate drawing captures the celebrated terraced gardens of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, Italy—one of the most spectacular Renaissance estates of the sixteenth century. Designed for Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, the gardens were famous across Europe for their dramatic fountains, cascading waterworks, and symmetrical plantings that descended the hillside in a series of broad terraces. Israel Silvestre, a French draftsman and printmaker who traveled extensively through Italy, recorded the scene with the precision of a topographer and the sensitivity of a landscape artist. Silvestre combined pencil, black ink, and layered washes of sepia, gray, and pale green watercolor to suggest both architectural structure and the soft textures of foliage and stone. The medium allowed him to convey the play of light across the terraces while emphasizing the geometric order that defined Italian formal gardens. Such views were prized by collectors as souvenirs of the Grand Tour and as models for garden design back in France. Today the sheet belongs to the Robert Lehman Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it preserves a vivid impression of one of the early modern world’s most influential landscapes.

About the Artist

Israel Silvestre (French) · 1621 –1691

French, Nancy 1621–1691 Paris