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Tutto Bene

This tranquil Italian landscape reminds us that all is well in Albany, New York, where our traveling exhibition Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum opens today!

The Albany Institute of History & Art hosts this artwork and fifty major paintings and sculptures that trace the transformation of the colonies into nationhood.

The quiet ruin of a Roman amphitheater is the setting for this work by Worthington Whittredge, who like many American artists of his day studied in Europe. A goatherd, sleeping on the stone benches, has let his flock wander from the sunken area—once a stage—to the meadow beyond. The artist's intention to forge a link between the ancient past and the pastoral present is clear. During the nineteenth century, Italy was in political upheaval and its decline from the glories of ancient Rome was a common theme among painters and writers.

Source: Gwen Everett. Young America: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Worthington Whittredge, 1820–1910, The Amphitheatre of Tusculum and Albano Mountains, Rome, 1860, oil, 24 x 40 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum purchase.