The Art Gallery at the Athenaeum contains one of America’s unique collections of 19th century American paintings. Each week we will feature a different work on this page. We hope educators will use this link as a tool to enrich their art curriculum. Vermonters and other citizens throughout the nation can now visit our gallery in this new, intimate, and informative way.
The text describing each painting was written by Mark D. Mitchell, Assistant Curator of Nineteenth-Century Art at the National Academy Museum. The digital images were prepared by Robert Jenks of Jenks Studio of Photography in St. Johnsbury, VT.
Please note that the St. Johnsbury Athenaeum prohibits the use of images from its collection in public exhibition, broadcast, electronic reproduction or publication in any form without prior written permission from the institution. If you would like to reproduce any of the Art Gallery images in any form, contact Irwin Gelber at 748-8291, extension 307.
Unknown artist
Roman Forum, undated
MICROMOSAIC, 12 ½ x 18 inches
Gift of Horace Fairbanks
This remarkable mosaic plaque documents a transitional moment in the history of modern archaeology. The view shown here, taken from the western end of Rome's ancient city center, or forum, offers a sense of the site before extensive excavations were undertaken at the turn of the twentieth century that revealed the area's lower strata as they are known today. Even the three sites featured prominently in the foreground—from left to right, the Arch of Septimius Severus, the Temple of Vespasian, and the Temple of Saturn—were relatively recent excavations, having only been cleared by the pioneering Italian archaeologist Carlo Fea in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The site was nevertheless already a significant tourist attraction, as the couple shown at the lower right suggests.
Archive of works previously highlighted:
A. Wordsworth Thompson - Waiting for the Steamboat at Menaggio |
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Sanford R. Gifford - The View from South Mountain in the Catskills |
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