River Landscape with a Fortified Town and Distant Mountains, Warriors Seated in Left Foreground

This large drawing, the largest known by the artist, is one of the many copies Watteau made after Venetian drawings by Titian and Campagnola in the collection of Pierre Crozat. Campagnola's original drawing is now in the Louvre, inv. 5552. Watteau's copy is a larger format (330 x 465 mm) than the original (257 x 391 mm), but also shows more of the trimmed detail on the left margin. It can be assumed, that is, that Campagnola's drawing was reduced in size, for it is difficult to imagine that he would have drawn the two dogs only as a fragmented detail, as they are now shown. In his adaptive imitation, Watteau stuck quite closely to Campagnola's landscape and only omitted the three staffage figures on the right in the middle ground.