Courtyard of an Italian Tavern

From the Getty Museum record

Made as an independent work of art, this sheet depicts an open central courtyard typically found in Italian Renaissance palaces. The inclusion of people eating at wooden tables in the courtyard together with a woman carrying in food from the open door at the right suggests that the grand Italian house now functions as a tavern or an inn. A single Corinthian column at the center supports an arcade and implies a sense of past grandeur. Wyck focused his attention on chiaroscuro light effects that animate the complex and fragmented architectural space. With a sparing use of wash applied with a fine point of the brush, the artist articulated details such as the chain of the buckets that are lowered in and out of the well by a pulley.