An Italian town seen from outside the walls

This is part of a group of at least eleven landscapes or to be more precise of city views in red chalk which had always been given to Watteau until Pierre Rosenberg and Louis-Antoine Prat rejected them in their catalogue raisonné. Inscriptions on the drawings show that three are views of Rome (Rosenberg and Prat, op. cit., nos. R577, R628, and R689), five are views of Padua (nos. R416, R553, R618, R660, and R853), and one is of Bassano (R. 597). The other two, including the present drawing, do not bear any inscription. Watteau never travelled to Italy and Martin Eidelberg, who still gives them to Watteau himself, has shown that the drawings are copies after Nicolas Vleughels (1668-1737) (for a portrait of Vleughels by Watteau, see lot 63). In only one instance, the prototype by Vleughels, in black chalk and wash, and the red chalk copy have both been preserved (M. Eidelberg, op. cit., 2014, figs. 48 and 54).