Rome

At the right edge of this tall, narrow panel, on top of a round fortress, stands an angel with raised wings. The fortress is Castel Sant'Angelo, and the angel goes back to a Roman legend. In 590, while plague was killing the city, Pope Gregory the Great is said to have seen the archangel Michael above the building, sheathing his sword as a sign that the sickness was over. The bronze figure Corot knew had been put up there in 1753. Beyond the stone pines rises the dome of Saint Peter's, and a boat lies moored at the riverbank below. The panel is almost two metres high and only 68 centimetres wide, a shape set by a wall in the bathroom Corot decorated for a friend at Mantes. The Louvre dates it only to the second quarter of the 19th century.