ETTORE ROESLER FRANZ(ITALIAN 1845-1907)"PIAZZA DELLE AZIMELLE NEL GHETTO"Signed and located 'E. Roesler Franz Roma' bottom left; also titled and located verso, watercolor on paper cardSheet size: 22 x 30 1/2 n. (55.9 x 77.5cm)PROVENANCE:Private Collection, New Jersey.NOTE:The present work depicts Rome's oldest Jewish quarter. It is one of sixteen watercolors from the Roma Pittoresca series, which the artist executed between 1881 and 1887.Established in 1555 by Pope Paul IV as a place to intern the growing Jewish population, the ghetto was located in Rione Sant'Angelo, by the Tiber river, and was surrounded by walls whose gates were opened at dawn and locked again at sundown, creating an insalubrious trapezoidal area subject to flooding. As such, Roesler's works "take a candid look at the inhumane life of its residents, in what could seem to be a personal critique of people, past and present, who knew but took no action" (Dal Maso-Venditti, 1980, p. 62).The present work depicts Piazza delle Azimelle, which takes its name from the nearby presence of bakeries that sold azzime, or matzah - an unleavened flatbread made to celebrate Passover. "No larger than a courtyard, the paved square is enclosed by tall, gloomy dwellings and dark shops. On the stoops outside the shop, Jewish women would make buttons and buttonholes, mend clothing and sell rags" (Donatella Occhiuzzi, quoted in Landscapes of Memory, the Roman Watercolours of Ettore Roesler Franz, 1876-1895, Mandragora, 2007, p. 239). The two figures with bulky parcels on their shoulders and the child in the wicker "walker" in the center of the composition are quintessenial motifs in Roesler's oeuvre.This particular piece is the almost exact replica of an homonymous work, similar in size, now at the Museo di Roma in Trastevere.