The Trevi Fountain, Rome

Sir Muirhead Bone was a Scottish printmaker and watercolor artist noted for his depictions of architectural subjects, city views, and landscapes. In 1910, he travelled to Italy. Rome provided Bone with several memorable subjects, including "The Trevi Fountain, Rome, " which he started in 1913, but only completed in 1928 (after painstakingly evolving the drypoint image on the plate through nineteen states or changes). Instead of showing a typical frontal view of this celebrated fountain and tourist site, however, Bone opted to show the fountain's surroundings and aspects of daily life he witnessed there from a corner vantage point. Viewed across the fountain's basin are the grand Baroque facade of the church of the Santi Vincenzo e Anastasio a Trevi (Saints Vincent and Anastasius at Trevi) and adjacent buildings with shops at street level. At the right foreground, behind a priest standing near a wagon tethered to two long-horned cows, Bone depicted a side detail of the Trevi Fountain structure: a large, craggy boulder set at the base of a tall Corinthian pilaster. At the lower left, the artist shows a workman digging, a partial view of a horse-drawn wagon, and other people standing near the railing of the fountain basin. At left, as a curious vertical element that compositionally balances the Corinthian pilaster at the right, Bone included a tall construction tower hoisting a bucket aloft.