Tuscan · 2026
This piece is part of my collection. Originals will soon be available to buy online — write to me in the meantime.
The subject
On a hill near Castiglion Fiorentino stands one of the best-preserved castles of the Valdichiana — Montecchio Vesponi — a long curtain wall and a great keep, famous as the home of an English soldier of fortune.
The castle’s walls and towers date mostly from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In 1384 the republic of Florence granted it to Sir John Hawkwood — ’Giovanni Acuto’, the English condottiero whose equestrian portrait Uccello later painted in the Duomo — as a reward for his service. It commands the whole valley.
I drew the long rust-coloured wall running along the ridge, the keep lifting at one end, cypresses climbing below.
It is a full-colour page: warm stone, green hill, blue sky.
A long wall on a ridge, a tower at the end of it — the castle of an Englishman who made Tuscany his own.
Ink for the battlemented wall and the keep, warm washes for the stone, with cypresses and vines drawn running up the slope.
History gave it a storybook owner; the hill gave it a storybook silhouette. I tried to do justice to both.
See also · Tuscan Torre di Montecchio, Valdichiana · Castello di Poppi · Fortezza di Montalcino