V

Rome from the Pincio

From the Bosco terrace the eye takes in the whole of Rome: the dome of St Peter’s, the bell-towers, the pines rising from the city. A few steps away, the towers of Trinità dei Monti and the obelisk crown the Spanish Steps.

It is the most famous belvedere in Rome, the one painters have painted for centuries and that the residents rediscovered every evening. From here Jean Marc Lange watched the line of the horizon, the very question that would run through all his painting.

At sunset, when the stone turns pink and the water of the basins darkens, one grasps what these gardens offered to generations of artists: not a backdrop, but an open-air studio, and a horizon one never ceases to remember.