A Fonte de Vaucluse

Thomas Cole made his name on the wild American wilderness, but in 1841, on his second tour of Europe, he turned to a place thick with literary memory. Vaucluse, in Provence, was where the early Renaissance poet Petrarch had gone to live and write five centuries before, beside the powerful spring that gives the valley its name. Cole visited and sketched on the spot, then built the canvas up in his Rome studio, narrowing the gorge to make it steeper and grander than the real one. He crowned the high cliff with a great castle that the actual Vaucluse never had, a bit of romance added to make the poet's retreat feel worthy of him.