Goethe dans la campagne romaine

In September 1786 Goethe, already Germany's most famous writer and a busy court official in Weimar, slipped away under a false name and travelled south to Italy, something he had wanted for years. In Rome he moved in with the painter Tischbein, a friend, who set him here among broken Roman stone, reclining in a pale travelling cloak and a wide hat, gazing off as if composing a sentence. Behind him lie the tombs of the Campagna, the countryside outside Rome the two men explored together. One oddity has never been explained. Look at Goethe's feet and he appears to have two left feet, perhaps because Tischbein built the picture in stages and never quite finished it.