Landscape with Travellers Resting, known as A Roman Road

A broad road cuts through the landscape, scattered with a series of small figures travelling along it. Two figures are resting in the right foreground, while a man on the left seems to be picking up an orange that has just fallen from the tree above. In the distance, a small town is likely to be the travellers’ destination. Even though the structure to the right is clearly based on a medieval ecclesiastical building, the figures' costumes and the column at the end of the road suggest that the scene is most likely an idealised representation of ancient Rome.  

The work has long been believed to be the pair to Nicholas Poussin's (1594-1665) Landscape with a Man Washing his Feet at a Fountain, also known as the Greek Road, in the National Gallery, London. Both were presented as a set for the first time in two engravings in 1684 by the French engraver Étienne Baudet (1638-1711). Since then, art historians have often discussed the meaning of the two canvases together. The paintings have been seen as representations of untamed and wild nature of Greek civilization (the National Gallery version) contrasted with cultivated and civilized countryside of Roman civilization (the Dulwich Picture Gallery version).