Getty Museum
Interior of Roman Building with Figures
Creator
Ettore FortiItalian Artist
All works by this person →Very little is known about the life of Ettore Forti. He painted genre scenes and history paintings in Rome in the late 1800s and early 1900s in a realistic style similar to that of Lawrence Alma-Tadema. He concentrated on ancient Roman subjects, which were rarely based on actual historical events. With fastidious detail, he focused on the architectural features of ancient sites. The figures in For
More on Getty ULAN- Date
- late 19th century
- Medium
- Oil on canvas
- Culture
- Italian
- Department
- Paintings
- Institution
- Getty Museum
Ettore Forti meticulously researched the classical objects and decorations in this historical genre painting, but he improbably combined a grand, luxurious setting with an intimate, domestic social gathering. He copied the painted architecture, swags of fruit and leaves, hanging masks, and instruments from Roman frescoes and based the floor marble and mosaic patterns, window grill pattern, and the *klismos* chair type on Roman models. The statues copy examples in Roman public and private collections. By the late 1800s, such paintings of ancient Greece and Rome were very popular. Artists researched the elements of their settings and painted with careful photographic realism to present plausible representations of daily life in classical times. Many of these genre scenes also have erotic undercurrents, with languidly beautiful young women in the company of older men.
The authoritative record is held by Getty Museum. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.
Get printable QR codesHide QR codes
Open QR codes for this object page and the museum record. They stay collapsed until needed.
Related across collections
Semantically similar works from Getty Museum and other institutions.