French school; 18th century."Landscape with Ruins.Oil on panel.Size: 36 x 30 cm; 40 x 34,5 cm (frame).Oval landscape clearly inspired by the romantic school, with monumental and solemn classical ruins bathed by the clear and bright light of the morning. It is this type of heroic landscape that this canvas depicts. It is a model of representation that was experiencing a renewed boom at this time, thanks to the mass consumption of engravings with views of cities, ancient or modern, fantastic evocations of the past or anecdotal images of the present. The poetic effect achieved in this painting is remarkable thanks to the carefully studied atmosphere, defined by the golden, hazy, highly nuanced lighting. Theposition, highly idealised and almost dreamlike, follows an ordered and balanced structure of great balance.During Romanticism, the ruin was the most evocative and real representation of the past. While in France theories such as those of Viollet le Duc advocated a historical reconstruction of ruined buildings, England defended the supremacy of the ruin. This English theory had its greatest representative in the figure of the scholar John Ruskin who, in his work The Stones of Venice, reflects his aesthetic ideas regarding ruins.Dimensions: 36 x 30 cm; 40 x 34.5 cm (frame).