Porta Ostiense, Rome 1926

Louis Conrad Rosenberg made this etching, *Porta Ostiense, Rome,* and what grabs me is the way he fearlessly throws down these dense cross-hatchings, like a swarm of tiny lines building up the weight of the stone. It's like he’s wrestling with the very idea of a city gate. You can almost feel the grit of the stone under your fingers, the way those lines pile up, creating this texture. It’s not just about depicting a place; it's about feeling it, almost as if he’s trying to excavate the place with his pen. Look at the dark portal of the arch and the mass of tiny lines around the figures standing beneath it, like the city breathing. It makes me think of Piranesi and his feverish architectural fantasies, but with a bit more of a human pulse, not just stone but the lives lived within and around it. It's a reminder that art is about a conversation across time, where one vision builds upon another.