Landscape, Ronda, Spain 19th-20th century

Curator: This is Denman Waldo Ross's "Landscape, Ronda, Spain," housed at the Harvard Art Museums. It is a delicate pencil drawing. Editor: There’s a certain ephemeral quality to the lines, almost as if the city is emerging from a dream. The tonality is very light. Curator: Ronda, historically, is a city cradled by mountains, a place of refuge. Ross captures this sense of the city rising above, almost floating. The high vantage point invites contemplation, suggesting the city as a symbol of endurance, a beacon of civilization. Editor: It's the composition, too. The way the city is perched so high on the page gives it a sense of monumentality, despite the delicate lines. The repetition of shapes—rectangles for buildings, curves for clouds—creates a visual rhythm. Curator: Indeed. The sparseness invites us to project our own interpretations onto the landscape, to fill in the details with our own memories and associations. Perhaps a meditation on the persistence of place. Editor: A fleeting moment, preserved through structure, like a half-remembered song.