Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot first travelled to Italy in December 1825. Beginning his trip in Rome, the ancient city provided inspiration through the spring; he then relocated to Civita Castellana, then made his way to Papigno, where he worked from July through September. Often accompanied by other artists, Corot visited the area’s celebrated landmarks— notably the Cascata delle Marmore outside of Terni, created by the Romans in 271 BC and still the tallest manmade waterfall in the world. Corot recorded the dramatic, tiered falls from various vistas in drawings, oil sketches, and experimental plein air landscape paintings like La Cascade de Terni (fig.1, 2). These remarkable Italian views were the foundation of his oeuvre and inspired the Impressionists who followed him.

While some of Corot’s paintings of the Cascata delle Marmore echoed his contemporaries' choice in using a vertical picture space or a closer perspective, with the present work he works on a bold, panoramic scale to convey the falls’ power. The saturated color palette captures the strong summer sun as it is absorbed by the deep greens and shadowy tones of dense forest. Though viewed from afar, expressive brushwork recreates the powerful torrents particularly the fan of water that flares out as it reaches the Cascate's lowest section. The artist accurately records the Z-shape of the falls as they disappear behind cliffs, clouds of mist contrasting with the richly textured landscape. At the same time, Corot boldly employs an almost abstract, repoussoir effect in the foreground’s loosely painted hills, offering an epic vantage point for the viewer. The carefully arranged and detailed composition points to Corot’s early study in the studios of Achille-Etna Michallon and Jean-Victor Bertin, who took an academic approach to historical landscape painting while encouraging sketching outdoors to accurately record nature. Corot uses his exacting technique to convey the emotional immediacy of standing before the awe-inspiring falls. As the artist explained:

¹ While Corot’s Italian compositions were not well known until after the artist’s death in 1875, their direct approach to nature, study of light, and organization of form, proved influential to artists of the era such as Claude Monet and later Paul Cézanne.

¹ as quoted and translated, Kathleen Adler and Tamar Garb, Berthe Morisot, Ithaca, 1987, p. 16.