Columns of the Temple of Neptune at Paestum

In June 1838, as part of his extended Italian sojourn (1835-43), Hansen visited the Hellenic complex at Paestum, about fifty miles south of Naples. To compose this view, he stood within the so-called Temple of Neptune, using its massive fluted Doric columns to frame the distant Temple of Athena. This study owes a debt to Hansen’s early training as an architect, a career he abandoned in order to study with the leading lights of the golden age of Danish painting, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and his pupil Christen Købke.