View up the Tiber from the Strada di Marmorata

The Strada di Marmorata — the ancient road along the Tiber's left bank named for the marble-landing yards that once operated there — offered Van Wittel a distinctive southern approach to the river with a view upstream toward the Aventine Hill. His 1710 canvas, held in a National Trust collection, shows the Tiber at a point Van Wittel returned to across his career, finding in this stretch a combination of working riverside life and distant Roman topography that suited his documentary ambitions. By 1710 Van Wittel was in his late fifties and had spent thirty-five years in Rome; his Tiber views from this mature period show the confidence of an artist who knows exactly what each river bend looks like at each time of day in each season. The Strada di Marmorata view was among the less frequently depicted Tiber stretches — Van Wittel's choice of it reflects a deliberate effort to survey the entire navigable reach of the river rather than concentrate only on the most famous monuments.

The composition places the river bank on a pronounced diagonal that carries the eye upstream, with the road on the left providing human interest and the river receding to the right. Van Wittel exploits the contrast between the warm tones of the road and its buildings against the pale cool surface of the Tiber. Figures on the road are rendered with the minimum strokes needed to convey occupation and gender.