File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Mantovani Luigi, Il Campidoglio.jpg

This work was acquired with the Istituto Bancario Italiano (IBI) Collection in 1991.

In the painting, which shows one of the most famous sites in Rome, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius is framed by the ancient palazzi overlooking the deserted Capitol Square. The artist also painted a frontal view of the same place from a low-angle that favours the wide flight of steps, which is also entitled The Capitol (whereabouts unknown) and was shown at the major retrospective devoted to him at the Palazzo della Permanente in 1988. During his various stays in Rome Luigi Mantovani painted from life and immortalised some of the most characteristic sites in the city in a rich series of works depicting St Peter’s Square, the Imperial Fora and the Trevi Fountain, as well as executing landscapes of the Roman countryside.

This large canvas in the Collection bears on the back the partially visible inscription: "[…] IX Mantovani", possibly referable to 1931. This would date the canvas to the painter’s second Roman stay between 1927 and 1930, to the beginning of which Morning on the Tiber can be assigned. A comparison between the two paintings reveals the change underway in Mantovani’s language during these years, which he implemented through more solid volumes that enabled him to achieve greater formal definition while continuing with his characteristic rough, broken brushwork.

This development was promptly noted by Carlo Carrà in his review of the painter’s solo exhibition at the Galleria Micheli in Milan, which appeared in L’Ambrosiano on 14 March 1930. An insightful commentator on contemporary art, Carrà stressed Mantovani’s continuing in the 19th-century tradition and the refined technique with which he rendered the atmosphere of the landscape, albeit in the ambit of a production that was, on the whole, repetitive and monotonous. The article focuses on the tentative renewal that could be detected in the works produced in Rome, especially the Arch of Titus (whereabouts unknown), in which the artist experiments with clearly defined volumes and forms, closer to the coeval researches of the Novecento Italiano group and the artistic sensibility of Carrà himself. This pictorial research was limited to the end of the second and the beginning of the third decade of the 20th century and was quickly abandoned by the artist in favour of a return to his naturalistic and late Scapigliatura origins. Mantovani drew on 19th-century models to create his own unmistakable signature style that reflected a manner which, though obsolete, was still highly appreciated on the Milanese art market, as attested by the purchases made by the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan from 1943 on.