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This watercolor, painted by Smith when he was back in London, shows the Villa Medici from the Via del Babuino, the street in which Smith was living in 1780. The villa was built for Cardinal Ricci da Montepulciano between 1564 and 1574 and was bought by Cardinal Ferdinando de' Medici in 1576. Still owned by the Medici at the time of Smith's Roman visit, it was purchased by Napoleon in 1803 and became the home of the Académie Française. An undated watercolor version, acquired from the artist by the Earl of Warwick in 1781, is in the British Museum. In all but a few minor details, the Yale version replicates the earlier watercolor exactly. Another version of the composition in oils on paper by Thomas Jones is in the collection of the Yale Center for British Art. Its misunderstanding of the villa's architecture suggests that it was copied from Smith, probably from the watercolor now in the British Museum, several details of which (not present in the Yale version) it reproduces.

Scott Wilcox

John Baskett, Paul Mellon's Legacy: a Passion for British Art: Masterpieces from the Yale Center for British Art, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT, 2007, p. 267, no. 55, pl. 55, N5220 M552 P38 2007 OVERSIZE (YCBA)