
The interior of the Temple of Diana at Nîmes was a subject that Hubert Robert returned to multiple times throughout his career; the Rohatyn picture, dated 1771, is the earliest of the major examples. The artist's most well-known depiction was exhibited at the Salon of 1787 as part of a series of paintings representing the great monuments of France, including a view of the Temple of Diana. The group of four was commissioned by the comte d'Angiviller, the minister of fine arts, for a new dining room at Fontainebleau and they are now in the Louvre, Paris, along with a preparatory drawing of the Temple of Diana (fig. 1). The viewpoint of the Louvre version of the subject is similar to the present work, though the staffage is different and the dimensions are both much larger and in a squared-off shape; the Rohatyn painting allows for a wider vantage of the temple. A third version of the subject, which is more similar in composition but slightly larger and again with different staffage, is signed and dated 1783 and is now in the Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza (inv. no. 343 [1978.43]).1

Here Robert has taken a decidedly artistic, rather than topographic, view of the Temple of Diana. While in this painting and his later depictions it appears as a towering and monumental structure compared to the figures, in reality it is much smaller in scale (fig. 2). Robert's appreciation for the architecture of ruins is evident in this approach; if the figures were to be any larger, they would take away from the grandeur of the monument. By exaggerating the structures he ensures that the subjects remain the wonder and splendor of the ruins, rather than a narrative of the men and women in the foreground.

1. Oil on canvas, 101 by 143 cm.