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Payne's Grey · 2026

“Porta d'Arco nel Chianti”

A stone gateway in the Chianti, drawn in ink and washed in Payne's grey alone — all the weight of the wall, none of its colour.

Porta d'Arco nel Chianti — original ink and watercolour

Details

TitlePorta d'Arco nel Chianti
PlaceChianti, Tuscany
Year2026
CategoryPayne's Grey
Dimensions14.8 × 21 cm (A5)
TechniqueInk and Payne's grey watercolour on Clairefontaine paper
Palette of the work
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This piece is part of my collection. Originals will soon be available to buy online — write to me in the meantime.

The subject

An Archway in the Chianti

The hamlets of the Chianti hills are tiny, half-fortified places, and you often enter them under a single stone arch with a tower above. This drawing is one of those quiet gateways, a cypress standing beside it.

Between Florence and Siena the Chianti is a land of vineyards and small walled borghi — Volpaia, Radda, Vertine and the like — where a gate-arch and a watch-tower are often all that remain of the Middle Ages, when this was bitterly contested border country between the two rival cities.

A cypress leans in at the side; through the arch the lane drops away into the vines.

Grey keeps it austere — stone, shadow and a single dark tree.

Region
Chianti, Tuscany
Between
Florence & Siena
Feature
a gate-arch & tower
Beside it
a cypress
Land of
vineyards
A stone gate-arch in a Chianti village opening onto the countryside
An archway into a Chianti borgo — the lane dropping away to the vines.Photo: lo.tangelini — CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
A small walled village with its tower in the Chianti hills
A Chianti borgo and its watch-tower — a remnant of the medieval border.Photo: Vignaccia76 — CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Stone, an arch, a cypress — in the Chianti that is a whole village, and almost a whole history.

Ink for the arch and the tower, a grey wash for the deep cool of the passage and the slope beyond.

It is the plainest kind of Tuscan beauty: not a monument, just a way in.

See also · Payne’s Grey Porta a Montepulciano · Palazzo Vecchio a Firenze · Hallstatt sul lago