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Italy
Daniel Huntington (born New York City 1816-died New York City 1906)
1843
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 38 5/8 x 29 1/8 in. (98.1 x 74.0 cm.)
- Culture
- Italy
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed
View at the Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Daniel Huntington made many trips to Italy, where he was fascinated by the classical art and architecture. Many nineteenth-century American artists traveled to Italy to study the country's rich cultural history and to sharpen their skills as painters and sculptors. In this painting, Huntington personified Italy as a young woman holding a sketchbook and paintbrush. The distant ruins to the left of the image symbolize the country's rich past, while the Tuscan bell tower on the right represents the continuing influence of Catholicism. Female painters were rare during the nineteenth century, so perhaps Huntington intended the figure to represent an artist's muse. He painted the girl bathed in warm, yellow light from the sunset, emphasizing his romantic, idealized view of Italy.
