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Jan Frans van Bloemen, called l'Orizzonte was drawn to the beauty of Rome and the surrounding campagna and inspired by the classicising landscape paintings of the Italian master Gaspard Dughet. His grounding in the Flemish landscape tradition enabled him to easily assimilate the analytical and picturesque realism of Dughet and he quickly became known as one of the finest classical landscape painters in Rome during the first half of the eighteenth century.
The present canvas shows a capriccio view of Rome with figures resting in the foreground. Three women are engaged washing clothing at a picturesque fountain set in a secluded grove on the outskirts of the city. Two lean over the fountain to scrub the garments whilst a third balances a bundle on her head, ready to make her way back towards Rome, whose monuments and terracotta tile roofed buildings are faintly outlined in the background.
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