View of the Villa Medici

Until 1816, painters could only compete for the Prix de Rome in the History genre. In order to maintain the excellence of the French school of classical landscape painting, in 1816 Vincent-Marie Viénot de Vaublanc, Louis XVIII's Minister of the Interior, elected the same year as a free member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, created a historical landscape competition to be held every four years. Winner in 1817, Achille-Etna Michallon was the first to win this prize and to stay at the Académie de France with the other prizewinners. Grandson and son of a sculptor, the young artist studied with several painters, including David, who noticed his precocious talent, and then with Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes and Jean-Victor Bertin, with whom he discovered classical landscape painting. The Colosseum and the Villa Medici, seat of the Académie de France, seen here from the grounds of the Villa Borghese, were among the favorite motifs of painters staying in Rome. The young artist uses a classical yet picturesque perspective, revealing Constantine's Arch of Triumph and the Villa through an archway. In contrast to the series of exercises imposed on the other laureates, in 1817 the Académie's rules were very vague on the obligations of the only landscape painter laureate, who took advantage of his stay to travel the peninsula and multiply his studies from life. Michallon was part of the development of plein-air painting, which enabled artists to study nature on the spot before working on more ambitious compositions in the studio. The contrasts of light and the precision of foliage here demonstrate the talent of Michallon, who was considered the most promising landscape painter before his sudden death in 1822.