An Italian park with stairs

This is probably a capriccio based on the different Italian parks that Fragonard visited, for example at Tivoli and Frascati, of which he made numerous drawings during his two stays in Italy in 1756-61 and 1773-74. The present one was probably made in Paris in the 1780s. On the right Fragonard seems to have represented the Mouth of Truth, a massive marble mask which has been in the portico of the Church of S. Maria in Cosmedin in Rome since the 17th Century.

We are grateful to Eunice Williams and Marie-Anne Dupuy-Vachey for confirming the attribution of the drawing and their assistance cataloguing it.