View of the Cloaca Maxima, Rome  1814

In 1803, at the age of 20, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg went to Copenhagen to study at the Royal Dutch Academy of Fine Arts. After a sojourn in Paris, where he studied with Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825), and Rome, where he became part of a group of international artists engaged in the practice of plein air painting, he returned to the Royal Dutch Academy, first as prof...