Patio in Capri is one of the most striking canvases of Gorbatov's Italian period. It might be read as an homage to Sylvestr Shchedrin (1791-1830), the early 19th-century landscape artist whose greatest pictures were painted in Italy and were well-known to all Russian painters. Patio in Capri appears to be particularly inspired by Shchedrin's Terrace on the Sea Coast of 1828, which similarly portrayed the idyllic Italy of the Russian imagination. Both compositions depict vine-wrapped terraces above the sea in a seemingly magical place where man and nature exist together inharmonious beauty. Like Shchedrin, Gorbatov implemented an innovative palette to better evoke the varying qualities of light found along the coast, meanwhile capturing a perfect moment in time, a quiet afternoon in Capri.
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