3 July 2025
A Bell Tower in the Twilight
For years, M.C. Escher lived in Rome, but he did not like to depict the city itself in his prints. Escher found Rome more beautiful by night, which led him in 1934 to make a large series of woodcuts and drawings entitled Nocturnal Rome. During this period, he also drew the Basilica Santi Giovanni e Paolo. The drawing led to a lithograph only two years later: S.S. Giovanni e Paolo (1936). Ten years later, he returned to the subject with his first mezzotint: Dusk (1946). At first glance, the lithograph and the mezzotint seem almost identical, but they certainly are not.
