Campagna landscape 

Heinrich Bürkel painted this Campagna landscape in the 19th century, when romanticism encouraged artists to find sublime beauty in nature, a sentiment that often glossed over the realities of rural life. Here, Bürkel invites us to gaze at an idealized Italian countryside, punctuated by the crumbling ruins of a Roman aqueduct. But notice who populates this landscape: a woman and man, perhaps farmers, ride donkeys accompanied by their goats. This scene, staged along a worn and winding path, speaks to the labor and the lives sustained by this land. Bürkel, though celebrated by the elite for his genre paintings, never fully belonged to that class himself, understanding what it meant to live and work with your hands. While the ruined aqueduct reminds us of the passage of time and fallen empires, the figures introduce a different temporality, one that acknowledges the endurance of everyday life.