The Island and Bridge of San Bartolomeo, Rome

Corot reached Rome at the end of 1825, 29 years old and on the first of his three trips to Italy. He stayed nearly three years and worked outdoors in oil. This small view of the Tiber Island, which the National Gallery of Art in Washington dates between 1825 and 1828, is painted on paper and only later mounted on canvas, which is what a painter carries when he works away from the studio.

The bridge is the Pons Cestius, built in antiquity and known in Corot's day as the bridge of San Bartolomeo, after the church on the island. Most of what he was looking at was rebuilt before the century was out. The Tiber flooded Rome in 1870, the new Italian capital walled the banks and widened the channel, and between 1888 and 1892 the old bridge came down and a longer one went up in its place, with only about a third of the ancient stone reused and the central arch copied from the original. The hospital the Brothers Hospitallers founded on the island in the 1580s is still open.