Oil on linen mounted on wood 27x32 cm.
Civita Castellana and its environs is a place of intoxicating natural beauty. It is steeped in history, both ancient and artistic, going back millennia to the pre-Roman Faliscan civilization. In the Lazio region of Italy, during the 17, 18, and 19th centuries Civita was a Grand Tour epicenter of open air landscape painting for artists sojourning through the Roman Campagna. It has been painted and inhabited by such artistic eminences as Corot, Ingres, Turner, Granet, Michallon, Valenciennes, Dughet, Bertin and played host to the likes of Mozart, Byron, Goethe, Nathaniel Hawthorne and others too numerous to list. This is the landscape that set on fire Nicholas Poussin’s and Claude Lorrain’s Arcadian imaginations as they traversed northward from Rome toward Monte Soratte through the Campagna on horseback and on foot, drawing and dreaming. In this landscape, Arcadia as idea found its embodiment. Iv'e won a full scholorship and painted this old bridge while I was there.