Via Galluzza, Siena 1923

Hermann Lismann made this beautiful study of Via Galluzza in Siena using ink and brush. Imagine him, standing in a quiet spot in this old city, just him and his ink. I'm thinking about how the arches pull your eye back, deeper and deeper, into the painting’s space. It makes me think about how the artist has this conversation with perspective, not as a rigid rule, but as a kind of dance. There is the surface of the paper, and the representation of three dimensions. It reminds me of Piranesi, the way he also played with space and shadows, turning architecture into these emotive landscapes. Lismann gets something really lovely about light and dark here too, the light feels like the true subject. All these windows, passages, gateways -- it makes me think of the mind itself, and all its secret corridors.