View of Ruined Arches and Tomb in Villa Borghese

Gaspard Dughet · n.d.

Medium

Pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash, heightened with white gouache over traces of graphite, on blue laid paper incised and blackened on verso for transfer

Original size

20.2 × 15.6 cm (8 × 6 3/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Gaspard Dughet's study of ruined arches and a tomb within Rome's Villa Borghese grounds carries the quiet authority of someone who spent a lifetime learning to see ancient landscape as a living thing. Dughet was born in Rome in 1615 to French parents and grew up in the household of Nicolas Poussin — his brother-in-law — absorbing that master's discipline for classical order while developing his own looser, more atmospheric sensibility. This drawing reveals his working process directly: the verso is incised and blackened for transfer, meaning the sheet was a practical tool, a stepping stone toward a finished composition rather than a display piece. The combination of pen, brown ink, and brown wash, heightened with white gouache on blue laid paper, produces a striking tonal range — shadows pool beneath the arches while the gouache catches light on crumbling stonework with remarkable economy. Dughet was so associated with Poussin's legacy that he was widely known during his lifetime simply as "Gaspard Poussin," a name that followed him into the following century. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the drawing's delicate layering of tone and light into the richer, more permanent medium of oil on canvas, honouring both the intimacy of the original sketch and the grandeur of its Roman subject.