The work of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot profoundly influenced the course of nineteenth-century landscape painting, preparing the way for the impressionist revolution. Although he regularly submitted landscapes of a classicizing character to the official Salon exhibitions in Paris, it was his smaller, freshly observed, and fluidly painted studies made out-of-doors directly from nature, with their attention to the nuances of light and atmosphere, that constitute his most abiding contribution.

View of Rome: The Bridge and Castel Sant'Angelo with the Cupola of St. Peter's is one of his best known works of this type. Corot produced it between 1826 and 1828 during the first of several trips to Italy, where he developed the fairly recent trend of open-air landscape painting to new heights. The view Corot selected, looking west along the Tiber toward the Ponte and Castel Sant'Angelo with St. Peter's in the middle background, was a popular one treated by many earlier artists. Corot's approach, however, is unique.

Human presence and picturesque details are almost completely eliminated in favor of a highly simplified, strongly structured view. The massive forms of the castle on the right and the houses at the left balance the long horizontal bridge with its graceful arches, accented at the very center by St. Peter's mighty dome. This symmetry is matched by a vertical symmetry created by reflections in the water. Across the whole scene falls a soft, raking light that emphasizes three-dimensionality of form, unifies the picture's subtle range of blond tonalities, and helps create a mood of quiet repose that keynotes Corot's theme of harmony among nature, history and humankind.

Thick, creamy strokes of paint build up each shape with a remarkable blend of solidity and fresh, lively handling. A drawing that was either preparatory for or based on this painting, exhibiting very fine outlines of each form, illustrates Corot's working method as he described it in a letter: “First pursue form; afterward, values or relationships of tone, color and execution.”

-Steven A. Nash, Masterworks of European Painting in the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (1999)