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
In the Valdichiana, between Arezzo and Cortona, a single tall tower stands over the fields — the tower of Montecchio — a lookout from the age when this broad valley was contested ground.
The Valdichiana was long a frontier: marshy, fought-over, and watched from the low hills by towers and castles that kept an eye on the roads below. This slender, crenellated tower is one of them — a vertical mark in a wide, flat, luminous landscape.
I drew it plainly, rising out of the hill with a cypress for company and the valley opening behind.
The colour is gentle — warm stone, green slope, a pale Tuscan sky.
One upright tower in a very wide valley — sometimes that is all a drawing needs.
Ink for the tower and its battlements, light washes for the hill, the trees and the far, flat distance.
It is a quiet subject, and I liked it for that: a single sentinel, still standing watch over nothing in particular.
See also · Tuscan Castello di Montecchio Vesponi, Valdichiana · Castello di Poppi · Anghiari