Island in the Tiber, Rome 1921

Louis Conrad Rosenberg made this etching of the Island in the Tiber, Rome, probably in the 1940s, give or take. I imagine him carefully layering strokes, the needle scratching across the plate, each mark deliberate but also…open to change. I can almost feel the artist breathing, trying to capture the ancient light and the weight of history bearing down on those little buildings. There’s a kind of ghostly quality here, like a memory fading at the edges. The delicate lines of the bridges and the buildings, the way they sort of dissolve into the sky, remind me of Piranesi, but softer, more intimate. That little boat bobbing in the water? It's like a tiny heartbeat in the middle of all that stone. It makes you wonder what Rosenberg was thinking about when he made this – the past, the present, or maybe just the way the light hit the water that day. I think as artists, we’re always in conversation with each other, riffing off what came before, trying to make sense of the world one mark at a time.