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| Francesco Salviati The Annunciation ca. 1533 oil on panel Chiesa di San Francesco a Ripa Grande, Rome |
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| Marco Bigio The Three Fates ca. 1540-50 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Michele Tosini Lucretia ca. 1565 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Annibale Carracci Assumption of the Virgin ca. 1600-1602 oil on panel Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome |
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| Antonio Tanari St Pudenziana and St Prassede burying Christian Martyrs ca. 1610-30 oil on canvas Basilica di Santa Pudenziana, Rome |
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| attributed to Pier Francesco Mola St Peter freed from Prison by an Angel ca. 1640-50 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Diego Velázquez Portrait of Pope Innocent X ca. 1650 oil on canvas Galleria Doria Pamphilij, Rome |
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| attributed to Salvator Rosa Falls at Tivoli ca. 1655-60 oil on canvas Accademia di San Luca, Rome |
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| Bernardino Mei Holy Family with Angels ca. 1658 oil on canvas Basilica di Santa Maria del Popolo, Rome |
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| Gregorio Preti Ecce Homo before 1672 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Bartolomé Estebán Murillo Virgin and Child ca. 1675 oil on canvas Palazzo Barberini, Rome |
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| Canaletto Ruins of the Colosseum, Rome ca. 1742-45 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
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| Giuseppe Santi Jupiter and Mercury revealing themselves to Baucis and Philemon ca. 1790 oil on canvas Fondazione Sorgente Group, Rome |
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| Antonio Mancini The Scholar ca. 1875 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome |
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| Francesco Camarda Blacksmiths 1910 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome |
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| Dome Skutezky After Hard Work 1910 oil on canvas Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome |
The Beginning of Color
These brown discolorations on a faded black-
and-white photograph are not at all like a defect
In anything remembered but, rather, a kind of
"Crystallization" as Stendhal described it, in
One of his more eccentric books about love.
In truth, my childhood was cast down like a twig
Into an abandoned salt mine near Salzburg
From where it emerged, of this I'm certain,
As something much richer than my own life,
A jeweled branch of living history, now
Retrieved by my mother from the well at Twig
Bog Lane. I'll never know who it was, and anyway
Why would I want to know who it was,
Who slid the black hard plastic button to On
One late summer afternoon in nineteen fifty-seven,
So that not only did some kind of shutter flick open
In my head, but the full force of color saturation
Hit my brain. The effect was high-speed Ektachrome
And life as it is now, that studio of constant poems –
It's just that as my mother hauled the metallic
Home Assistance milk gallon from the deep well
In Twig Bog Lane, the light of deprivation reflected
Back from her face and got lost in me, and I knew
How biography is the steadying of only one kind
Of lens, how memory offers different iterations;
How, somewhere, a paper was being coated with
Such chemicals that even deeper colors would form
Over time. During that summer, a world away,
The first International Color Salon was organized
In Hong Kong and, while restrictions on dollar
Imports meant that Ireland couldn't reach a speed
Of 100 ASA, faster colors kept rushing in. There
Was no holding life back once it swarmed; biography
Was ready for color, our brains were marked
That year for realities more personal, realities brighter
Than a boxed-in lens. Huge Blackwater river rats
That knawed through the doors of our dry toilets in
Twig Bog Lane were as ignorant of color as me; and
Could not have known that their multi-layered bristles
Would soon be seen in more subtle shades of brown.
– Thomas McCarthy (2017)