Watercolor of Rome Disappeared – n.3
Watercolor of Rome Disappeared is a series of one hundred and twenty paintings depicting the Rome of the late nineteenth century, made by Ettore Roesler Franz in three shots (forty frames for each set of dates).
Hundreds of watercolors on paper were made between 1878 and 1896 and depict scenes of everyday life on the streets of the historic center of the capital: people who do common works, stretch their clothes or wash them on the Tiber, walking, talking about the most and less, he does buy
Rome at the time
During this period, Rome had the appearance of a provincial town and far behind other Western European capitals so that Franz painted it and wanted to make it known, but then, becoming the capital of Italy, it was necessary to change the plan regulator outside the walls of the historic center, a phenomenon that very slowly (since the Second World War) will make the world of Roesler Franz and Rome Sparita disappear.
In his writing in English (a kind of “spiritual testament”) of 1894, Ettore Roesler Franz hoped that in his future his collection Rome Sparita “should be placed in a special room with a large topographic map of the old Rome where I would give directions to the places where the paintings were taken and this would facilitate the scholars of future generations to understand what the appearance of Rome was before these changes. “
This post is also available in: Italiano