罗马乡村。特斯塔乔山

Corot got to Rome at the end of 1825. He was 29 and had only been a painter for three years, since his father agreed to fund him instead of keeping him in the family drapery business. This small canvas, 16 centimetres high, still carries a faded date in the corner, December 1825, which puts it among the first things he made there. The hill he picked is the Monte Testaccio, a mound about 35 metres high built entirely out of smashed clay oil jars that dockworkers dumped behind the river port over roughly 250 years of Roman trade. The other French students were in the Forum drawing columns. Corot set up in front of the rubbish heap and painted the light on it directly onto the canvas outdoors. It reached the Louvre in 1906 with the collection of Etienne Moreau-Nelaton, who spent his life buying Corot.