John Robert COZENS

Drawn in subtle washes of pale blue, green and gray, the present sheet is a fine example of John Robert Cozens’s watercolour technique, and depicts one of the artist’s favourite subjects. Lake Nemi is a small, almost circular lake set in the crater of an extinct volcanic situated about thirty kilometres southeast of Rome. (In Roman times it was also known in Latin as ‘Speculum Dianae’, or ‘The Mirror of Diana’, since the lake and its surrounding forest were sacred to the goddess Diana.) The small town of Nemi overlooks the northeastern side of the lake, while the town of Genzano (today called Genzano di Roma) is situated on the opposite side. Cozens depicted Lake Nemi, from different viewpoints, in a number of watercolours and drawings., as well as in several sketchbook pages.

Cozens often repeated his compositions, and this particular view of Lake Nemi seems to have been among his most popular works, to judge by the several autograph versions of it that are known, executed between 1778 and 1790. These include examples in the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, as well as a number of private collections. As one scholar has noted of this composition, ‘Lake Nemi was redolent with classical associations and Cozens has successfully captured the aura of the site by placing the foreground in deep shadow, making the lake dead calm, like a mirror, while the eye is led from the crater’s rim to the vastness of the coastal plain beyond, and on to the distant islands.’

Kim Sloan has further noted of this particular composition of Lake Nemi by Cozens that ‘The popularity of this watercolour may have been due to its extremely classical composition, as well as its well-known subject. Lake Nemi (‘Speculum Dianae’, the Mirror of Diana), was the centre of the cult of Diana, who temple was situated out of sight of this view, below the town and castle of Nemi, to which belong the arcades acting as a repoussoir on the right.’

In his Gentleman’s Guide in his Tour Through Italy, published around the same time that Cozens drew this watercolour, the late 18th century English botanist and traveller Thomas Martyn wrote that ‘The other beautiful lake of Nemi is also a crater of an extinct volcano. It was anciently called speculum Dianae and lacus Aricinus. Riccia is near this lake; as is also Genzano, called so corruptly from Cynthianum, and placed opposite to the town of Nemi. From the garden of the Capuchins, just above the lake, is the most delicious prospect imaginable. All the eminences about both these lakes are shaded with forest trees: the water and wood set off each other, and combine to form a landscape, which is at the same time delightful, and unusual in Italy.’