Genzano

Corot went to Italy three times, and 1843 was the last of them. Between late June and late July he worked at Genzano, a hill town in the Castelli Romani south of Rome, painting it from below with the Cesarini palace and two church fronts strung along the ridge. Twenty years had gone by since his previous Italian journey, and what he had learned in the French countryside in between shows in the handling here. The town is put together from broad warm strokes rather than drawn edges. He also added two figures the earlier Genzano studies do not have, a boy kneeling in front of a goat and a woman walking away up a path with a vermilion cloth on her head. The Phillips Collection in Washington bought the picture in 1955.