Landhuis aan voet van Monte Pellegrino 1778

Louis Ducros rendered this delicate watercolor, "Landhuis aan voet van Monte Pellegrino," capturing a dwelling at the foot of Monte Pellegrino. Notice how the artist uses the two cypress trees as vertical markers, framing the house. These trees, reaching skyward, are more than mere landscape elements. Since antiquity, the cypress, with its association with mourning and the underworld, appears on Roman sarcophagi and in funerary art, signifying eternal life and remembrance. We see echoes of this in later art. Consider Böcklin's "Isle of the Dead," where cypresses loom over the spectral island, bridging life and death. In Ducros’s tranquil scene, the trees evoke a sense of timelessness, connecting the house to the deep past. The artist captures the enduring, almost subconscious, human connection to symbols of mortality and the afterlife. Thus, the house becomes a part of a much older story.