Italienische Landschaft 

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes created this Italienische Landschaft, or Italian Landscape, using oil paint. The painting presents a soft, muted scene, dominated by pale yellows and greys that blend the sky and cityscape below. Valenciennes captures a panoramic view, where the structural forms of buildings are softened into silhouettes by atmospheric perspective and a uniform palette. The dome structure on the right serves as a focal point, its rounded shape contrasting with the more angular blocks of the surrounding buildings. Valenciennes was interested in the structure of landscape painting itself, using the Italian countryside as his laboratory. Here, we see the artist not just representing a landscape, but also distilling it, studying the effects of light and atmosphere to understand how they define form. The painting destabilizes the conventional picturesque by reducing the landscape to its elemental structures. The emphasis on form, composition, and the atmospheric unity suggests a proto-modernist sensibility. The work anticipates later movements where the essence of the subject is captured rather than its exact representation. It is a study in the poetics of space and light.