Lot 182: Alfred Eduard Agenor van Bylandt , Belgian 1829-1890 Figures near the temple of Saturn on the Forum Romanum, Rome oil on canvas

signed and dated 1880 l.r. oil on canvas

78 by 120 cm.

P.A. Scheen, Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1950, The Hague 1969, p. 195 (as 'De ruïne van de tempel van Saturnus te Rome')
P.A. Scheen, Lexicon Nederlandse Beeldende Kunstenaars 1750-1950, The Hague 1981, p. 85 (as 'De ruïne van de tempel van Saturnus te Rome')

The present lot can be ranged among the finest paintings of Alfred Eduard Agenor van Bylandt. He was born in Brussels in 1829 and spent a large part of his career in The Netherlands, especially The Hague, where he became chamberlain of the King. He pursued his artistic ambitions next to his activities in Royal circles. Alfred van Bylandt died in 1890 in The Hague, leaving behind a small oeuvre, in which the present lot can be singled out as his pièce the resistance. It depicts a lively view of the Forum Romanum with the Temple of Saturn. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, when Van Bylandt painted the present lot, the excavations and reconstructions of the Forum Romanum had just begun, after centuries of decay. In that sense the present lot fits in well with the growing interest for classical culture.

Dedicated in 498 BC, the Temple of Saturn was the oldest sacred place in Rome, after the Temples of Vesta and Jupiter. It was rebuilt in 42 BC and again, in the fourth century AD, by the senate and people of Rome, as recorded on the architrave. The surviving Ionic columns, with their scrolled volutes, date from this period. Because of the link of Saturn with agriculture, the original source of Rome's wealth, the temple was the repository for the State treasury, which was located beneath the stairs under the high podium. It also contained the bronze tablets on which Roman law was inscribed. In the cella was an ivory statue, its feet fettered with woolen bonds, which were loosened on the Saturnalia (held each year on December 17).