Raffaello Ceccoli Italian, active 1839-1852

'One has to be familiar with the Greek atmosphere, the Greek sun and the character of the Greek soil to be able to imagine the beauty of its sight. The south of Italy, Calabria, Apulia and Sicily, cannot help us visualize these distant Greek landscapes in which the richest mountain-tops, comparable to statues of Phidias and Praxiteles carved with purity and plasticity, may vanish in a variety of colour with which nothing can be compared in terms of harmony, freedom, choice of hues and the playful changes of the light. Indeed, distant landscapes, chains of mountains and clustered rocks truly exist only in Greece, and even the Italian sky never has the infinite charm possessed by the Greek atmosphere, this luminous space which is so well described by the words ''an ether of surpassing brightness''.' (Leo von Klenze, Aphoristische Bemerkungen gesammelt auf seiner Reise nach Griechenland, 1838).

In the early nineteenth century Greece had become a fashionable meeting-place for artists and tourists of all nationalities. Athens in particular, with its multitude of archeological sites, was the centre of attraction for most visitors to Greece, as an appreciation of ancient Greek culture inspired a growing number of Europeans to go beyond the prescribed perimeters of the Grand Tour. John Cam Hobhouse, Byron's travelling companion to Greece, wrote in his Journey through Albania in 1813: 'At the period when every young man of fortune, in France and England, considered it an indispensable part of his education to survey the monuments of ancient art remaining in Italy, only a few desperate scholars and artists ventured to trust themselves among the barbarians, to contemplate the ruins of Greece. But these terrors, which a person who had been on the spot cannot conceive could ever have been well founded, seem at last to be dispelled; Attica at present swarms with travellers.'

Lured by the appeal of Greece, it appears that Ceccoli too soon fell under the spell of its magnificent light, which he masterfully captured in the present work. The vibrant orange light reflections on the ancient theatre and Acropolis Hill contrast perfectly with the clear blue sky, and the elegant Greek depicted in the front adds another charming touch of  local colour to the composition. Captured by Athens' charms, Ceccoli stayed several years and became a teacher at the School of Fine Arts, where he advocated and taught a less conservative, more luminous style of academic painting.

Before coming to Athens, Ceccoli had lived for a while in Corfu and Zante. His artistic output whilst living in Greece consisted mainly of portraits of the heroes of the War of Independance, and philhellenic views such as the present work.

A similar view by Ceccoli but oval in format is in the collection of the National Gallery and Alexandros Soutzos Museum, Athens.