Day 17: The Baths of Diocletian, Rome

Day 17: The Baths of Diocletian, Rome

Oh Rome, it is always great to be here, even in the cold.
One reason I love the daily painting project is that I have no idea what I will paint, so I set out first thing in the morning keeping my eyes open to what is around every corner.

This morning I missed my train to the studio and decided to be one of those optimistic people and see it as an opportunity. I walked out of the train station and across the street to one of my favorite spots, the Baths of Diocletian.

The Diocletian Baths
Watercolor on Paper
7 x 10″
$115

Purchase

These were the largest of the public baths in Rome and now lay right in the middle of a hugely busy intersection just between the Termini train station and Piazza Repubblica.

The front gardens are free and have recently been restored and expanded and are a great place to sit and relax and take it all in. One thing I love about Roman ruins or Roman construction, is that they built things on this ridiculously huge scale, making you feel just how fleeting our humanity is.

This particular part of the bath ruins is also the back part of a church whose entrance is in Piazza della Repubblica, called Santa Maria degli Angeli and as you can imagine is one of the most gorgeous churches in the city.

You can learn more about the history of the Diocletian Baths here and the church here.

I just felt inspired by the challenge to paint what is essentially a huge mass of now stone and brick, all more or less the same tone with a few variations in color. I think that were it not such a frigid day I may have sat longer to try and paint in some details of brick cast shadows and arches and more nuances. Painted this way though gives you a sense of the mass of the thing, and this is just a small corner.