In this beautiful watercolor, Ettore Roesler Franz captures one of his favorite themes — the Tiber River, whose banks were being irreversibly transformed at the end of the 19th century due to the construction of embankment walls. Our view is a reduced version of one from the first series of forty watercolors titled Roma Sparita, which Roesler Franz sold to the Municipality of Rome in 1883.

Here, we are on the left bank of the Tiber near Palazzo Farnese, and the artist likely positioned himself atop Ponte Sisto to paint the scene. On the left, we see the large embankment of the Farnesina Gardens, later modified to straighten the river's course, the houses of Trastevere, with the bell tower of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum Hill, and the towering dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the background.

On the right, amid the humble houses along Via Giulia, the imposing Palazzo Falconieri stands out, with its 17th-century belvedere, the only survivor of the changes made to the riverbanks. A lone barge carrying a load of wood floats downstream in the current, adding a melancholic touch to this scene of a rapidly disappearing Rome.