Dear All,

Excuse my naivety but I am trying to identify an artist(s) - and I am thinking here of one maybe two paintings I can remember (one more clearly than the other). They are of masses of people of which 12-30 are the foreground focus and seemingly quite dramatic events are happening to them. The people in the painting may be dressed in an ancient Greek/Roman style of clothing. They are situated within very large,open buildings. The buildings are infact impracticably large, bigger than one could construct and have many pillars and highly decorated, ornate ceilings. I'm not sure what artistic style they would be ascribed to but they are very detailed and rich in colour and "realistic". I apologise for they very vague description, but I'm sure this will mean something to someone. Many Thanks in advance. Edgar

Edgar, I think we need more detail as the above describes a lot of paintings. Is the work horizontal or vertical? What appears to be going on in the background? What are any characters in the foreground doing? etc,etc.

Your description reminds me of the paintings of Jacques-Louis David who has pictured people in big buildings, (Le sacre de Napoleon, Le serment du jeu de paume, etc), and people dressed in ancient style of clothing (Les sabines, Leonidas aux Thermopyles, etc). Unfortunately, I don't see a picture with big buildings and Roman masses.

Giovanni-Battista Piranesi has drawn impressive buildings, sometimes with small characters in them. I'm thinking of two interior views of Roman churches from his album, Vedute di Roma, but I have not seen them reproduced on the web.