Thomas Moran created at least five sketches of the Palace of the Caesars during his 1867 trip to Italy.¹ Here, clouds drift in from the left and move across the sky to suggest the passage of time, while the ancient palace with its crumbling stonework yields to the ravages of the centuries. What perhaps fascinated Moran about the site was the almost organic quality of the buildings, which seem to have sprung spontaneously out of the hillside, only to return to nature upon being abandoned by their human occupants.

The site of these palaces—Rome’s Palatine Hill—offered a panoramic view of the city, and Roman leaders favored the location for their residences. This was where Rome’s first emperor, Augustus, built his home and where subsequent emperors created a complex of palaces, culminating in Emperor Septimius Severus’s project to connect all the structures during his reign (193–211 CE). After Italy was invaded by northern Europeans during the fifth century, the complex was damaged and repaired, but by the sixth century the palaces lay in ruins. During the nineteenth century the ruins became a popular destination for American visitors to Italy.² Yale professor Benjamin Silliman, visiting in 1851, was astonished by the “complete annihilation of ancient grandeur,” and the American lawyer George Stillman Hillard, who visited in 1853, could not decide whether the site should be thought of as “a landscape or a ruin.”³ Moran’s Palace of the Caesars, Rome effectively captures Hillard’s sentiment, as human monument and nature seem inseparable.

—Sandra Pauly, Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Scholar for Moran Collection Research, 2021

_____________________________
¹ Morand, Thomas Moran: The Field Sketches, 31–32. Including this field sketch, Gilcrease owns five of Moran’s sketches entitled Palace of the Caesars.
² Oxford Classical Dictionary, 770–71.
³ Silliman, A Visit to Europe in 1851, 1:341. In 1853 Hillard published Six Months in Italy, which became one of the most popular guides to Italy in the United States during the mid-nineteenth century; see Hillard, Six Months in Italy, 1:300.