Glorification of Italian nature was absolutely natural for a young painter, trained by the whole academic education to take lead from Classicism. An exalted and heroic interpretation of landscape subject was combined smoothly with Matveyev’s praising of Italian nature, which justified those classicistic concepts of landscape that could seem to be artificial in the faraway Russia.
Tivoli – a town in central Italy in a province Lazio, in 24 km to the north-east of Rome, on the river Teverone. Known since the 4th century BC. Architectural monuments: temple of Vesta (or Sibyl; the 1st–2d centuries AD) villa Maecenas (the 1st century AD), and Villa d'Este (1549) with a park and a cascade system of waterfalls.

Matveyev Fyodor

Matveyev Fyodor Mikhailovich (1758, Saint Petersburg – 1826, Rome)

Artist, draughtsman, landscape artist.
Son of a soldier of the Izmailovsky regiment of the Leib Guard; at the age of six was assigned to the boarding school of the Academy of Arts. In 1764 he entered the Academy of Arts, studied under G.I. Kozlov and G.I. Serebryakov, since 1776 – in the landscape class of S.F. Schedrin. In 1778 he received a major gold medal for the program "to depict shepherds herding cattle under a mountain near the river ". In 1779 he graduated from the Academy of Arts and was sent together with the architect M. Berezin to Rome as a scholar. In 1783–1784 travelled to Italy and Switzerland, copied the paintings of J. P. Hackert, got acquainted with the art of the old masters, travelled to Germany.
In 1807 received a title of academician for the painting “View in the Environs of Naples”. In 1813 was elected a member of the Academy of St. Luca in Rome. The artist constantly longed to return to Russia and appealed to Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts with a request to pay his growing debts. In 1819 “sovereign emperor honoured him by ordering to derive 500 Roman talers annually to the academician Matveyev staying in Rome”. Matveyev lived in Italy till the end of his days.