Vue d'Italie : Marine animée aux environs de Naples

Original drawing in ink and watercolor depicting an animated seaside view with a village perched on a cliff.
Modern framing in blonde molding.
Drawing executed during the journey made with the Marquis de Sade during the year 1776.
Jean-Baptiste Tierce (1737-1794), student at the École des Beaux-arts in Rouen then at the Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris, quickly distinguished himself as a landscape painter for his views of the South of France and Italy. His paintings are preserved at the Uffizi in Florence and in several French museums. When in December 1775 Sade left Rome for Naples, he was welcomed by the son-in-law of his friend Doctor Mesny, Jean-Baptiste Tierce, who at that time was receiving commissions from Cardinal de Bernis. He found lodging for the Marquis "[who] intended to see everything [in the region], learn about everything, judge, admire, criticize, love, hate, in short to give free rein to that insatiable and passionate curiosity which led him into museums, galleries, churches, palaces and libraries, as well as into grottos, vaults, catacombs, and even into the bowels of volcanoes. He was not content to contemplate works of art, ancient or modern monuments; he also observed customs, politics, religion, administration, social life. The beauty of women, worldly customs, the quality of entertainments, ways of eating, drinking, dressing, praying, conducting oneself in society: nothing left him indifferent. He wanted to grasp all the present and all the past of this civilization, to embrace it entirely in a single and universal vision. A gigantic program, commensurate with his exceptional imagination, but which he could no longer fulfill, which was impossible for him to fulfill.
Yet such was his first ambition as a writer: grandiose, excessive. With this 'great work' in view, Sade hastily took notes, at roadsides or in inns, which he supplemented with the notes of his correspondents Mesny and Iberti. Thus was built this monument which he intended for the public, but which would not see the light of day until the 20th^th century.
Jean-Baptiste Tierce collaborated closely: he reread the notes and recorded his observations in small notebooks, with numbers referring to the works described. Sade took the greatest account of them. Often, the painter accompanied him on his excursions, his sketchbook in hand, drawing the buildings and landscapes before their eyes. About a hundred of these drawings and gouaches were recently found in the archives of the Sade family. They give the Journey to Italy the appearance of a true reportage." (Maurice Levert, Sade, pp. 283-284).
Provenance: archives of the Sade family.