Vue de Subiaco ("View of Subiaco") by Jean-Victor Bertin, 1818

In this painting, the sensory memories of Jean-Victor Bertin's stay in Italy, between 1806 and 1808, are brought to life with the depiction of a village perched on the composition's dexter side, but also by the heat-clouded mountains in the background. The traditional layering of the various planes is used to create a sense of perspective, enhanced by the almost theatrical distribution of light and shadow.

However, the Arcadian landscape is given life by an intriguingly picturesque scene, with a man lifting his hat in the direction of the Madonna, and women kneeling, grieving, visibly mourning the loss of a loved one. At the end of the afternoon, in the soft shade of the trees, men and women pray to the Virgin Mary and her child, whose integrity is compromised in the lower part of the picture.

The rays of the setting sun highlight these characters in search of meaning in an Arcadian landscape, whose soothing effect becomes uncertain. Jean-Victor Bertin's mastery of the balance of the scene and the sharpness of the planes, inherited from the lessons of his master Valenciennes, speak of humanity and its distress in the face of implacable reality. This composition echoes Nicolas Poussin's astonishing Paysage avec un homme tué par un serpent ("Landscape with a Man Killed by a Snake") (1648), now in the National Gallery, where the peaceful atmosphere of the idyllic landscape is disrupted by an enigmatic scene.

Suzanne Gutwirth, Jean-Victor Bertin (1767-1842). Un paysagiste néoclassique, thèse de l’École de Louvre, Paris, École du Louvre, 1969.

Suzanne Gutwirth, « Jean-Victor Bertin, un paysagiste néoclassique (1767-1842) », Gazette des beaux-arts, n^o LXXXIII, mai-juin 1974, p. 337-35.