Panorama of the Roman countryside. The Prenestini mountains seen from Olevano

In the 1820s the hill village of Olevano, east of Rome, filled with painters every summer, most of them German. They lodged at the Casa Baldi, a country inn, and went out to paint the rocks, oak woods and mountains around it. Corot worked there too, during his first stay in Italy, and his drawings from Olevano are dated 1827 and 1828. This narrow canvas, under 20 centimetres high and about 45 wide, looks out from the village across the Prenestini mountains. The ridges are laid in dark and flat, almost as a single shape, while the clouds above them are built up in thick white paint. A pale road cuts across the slope in the lower right corner. The Casa Baldi still stands, and today the German Academy in Rome uses it to house its artists.