Della Bella, Stefano

One of the iconic ruins of the Eternal City, the Colosseum (72–80 CE) dominates the horizon as an emblem of ancient Rome’s prestige and might. The artist records the structure’s grandeur through the different orders of the columns and the enormous scale, yet he suggests its age by rendering weeds growing over the brick facade. The city’s layered histories are evoked through the distant figures strolling through the archways and the herds nearby, indicating how seventeenth-century Romans lived with the ancient past.