Tivoli waterfalls with a herd
Technical details
Description
The German artist Phillip Peter Roos is the creator of Cascades at Tivoli with animals. The painter settled with his family in a house in the vicinity of Tivoli, a beautiful town close to Rome, in 1684. He would later be known as "Rosa di Tivoli". There he would specialise in Naturalist landscapes, almost always including flocks of sheep and goats in the foreground, as in this example. The great cascade on the River Aniene, which flows down from the Simbruini Mountains, near Tivoli, to the Roman campagna (countryside), where it joins the Tiber, is the focus of the image. The landscape at dusk was painted with loose brushstrokes, while the chiaroscuro effects in the rocks and vegetation are clearly defined and realistic. Roos painted a shepherd lying in the foreground, who watches over his flock of sheep and goats, and several cows, while contemplating such a magnificent spectacle of nature.