Ettore Roesler Franz, Via e chiesa di s. Bonosa, dietro la Fortezza degli Anguillara, 1888
"Roma sparita" by Ettore Roesler Franz
This collection of paintings from the Museo di Roma in Trastevere is made up of a selection of watercolours made by Ettore Roesler Franz, which are part of the wider collection dedicated to "Roma sparita" ("Vanished Rome"), conserved in the Museo di Roma in Palazzo Braschi.
The rapid process of modernisation in the city, desired by the Italian government immediately after 1870, led Roesler Franz to paint and photograph the zones involved in the urban reconstruction and those that had been exposed to danger by the demolition. His attention was given to the areas most dramatically involved in these irreversible changes: the areas of Piazza Venezia, the Ghetto, the Borgo, Trastever, Monti and the banks of the Tiber.
The artist drew sketches and took photographs at the scene, which, re-elaborated in his studio, were the origins of his definitive watercolours.
The images painted in the watercolours show a pontifical Rome still estranged from the new bourgeois climate that was asserting itself.
In several works, Franz entirely eliminated any signs of progress that were already present: it is his own photographs that reveal this project of deliberate nostalgia.