Landscape with a View of Salerno

(Jean-Joseph-Xavier Bidauld)

Inscribed on the reverse: Bidauld ville de Salerne 1788; Vue de la Ville de Salerne dans le/ Royaume de Naples – 1788. Salerno lies nestled along the mountainous shore, a perfect maritime haven situated some thirty miles south of the city of Naples, capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The original Roman colony at Salerno was founded in 197 BC on the site of an Etruscan settlement. It became the capital of an independent principality that fell to the Normans in the late 11th century. After being sacked by Hohenstaufen troops in 1194, it recovered its independence; Guglielmo di Procida, hero of the Sicilian Vespers, was governing it a century later as a semi-independent vassal state of the Kings of Naples. The great Roman Princes Orsini and Colonna later gained possession, until the city and its dependencies were fully incorporated into the Neapolitan Kingdom in the 16th century.

PROVENANCE: Private Collection, France.