During his visit to Italy, François Rouan drew the frescoes in Siena’s Palazzo Pubblico, but he also drew the Tuscan countryside, architecture and marble statues. Rouan was inspired both by Ambroggio Lorenzetti’s art and by the Sienese hillsides he roamed around, and this body of work features the houses and landscapes that he saw on his wanderings.

Like Lorenzetti, François Rouan plays with perspective: different scenes are juxtaposed on the canvas and find themselves linked in a sort of visual path that does not conform to the ordinary laws of perspective. This conception of space is reminiscent of Asian painting, particularly the landscapes painted onto folding screens and scrolls. By superimposing a pattern borrowed from the veining in marble that recalls the stylised clouds in Chinese painting, Rouan offers us a complete synthesis of East and West, past and present.