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Accession #	79.87
Artist	John Linton Chapman
Title	The Appian Way
Date	1869
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	29 7/16 x 71 9/16 in. (74.8 x 181.8 cm) frame: 38 3/4 × 81 5/16 × 3 5/8 in. (98.4 × 206.5 × 9.2 cm)
Inscriptions	Inscribed on verso: "Via Appia/ painted for Silas C. Herring, Esq. N.Y./ by J. Linton Chapman. Roma. 1869"
Signed	Signed lower right: "J. Linton Chapman./ Roma./ 1869."
Credit Line	Gift of The Roebling Society, Carll H. de Silver Fund, Caroline H. Polhemus Fund, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Frederick Loeser Fund
Location	Visible Storage: Case 24, Screen G (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks: Images of places can also represent time. For nineteenth-century Americans, who understood the American landscape to be unmarked by traces of past civilizations, the ancient ruins of Europe were objects of fascination and contemplation.

With the American tourist in mind, John Linton Chapman produced numerous versions of this painting of the Via Appia, the ancient roadway outside Rome that is lined with the ruins of tombs. Chapman describes the scene in precise detail, thus competing with popular photographic views of the site.