Jean Blaise Giraud - Mount Pellegrino - Palermo - Sicily - Oil On Canvas - 1921

Described by Goethe as "the most beautiful promontory in the world", Monte Pellegrino rises 600 meters high to form a promontory that juts out into the Tyrrhenian Sea and closes the northern end of the Gulf of Palermo. It served in particular during Antiquity as an advanced position for the troops of Hannibal Barca, who came from Africa to march on Rome. It constitutes one of the picturesque and privileged views of Magna Graecia and then of Italy in the eyes of artists. Born in Bordeaux, Giraud entered the Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1911. He was a student of Gabriel Ferrier. In 1914 he won the first prize of Rome with Pougheon and Despujols. His winning painting is now preserved by the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts. The Passion of the Virgin was the theme of the competition that year. But the war that broke out meant he was sent to the front rather than to the Villa Medici. Awarded the Croix de Guerre, he finally went to Rome to spend a year there between April 1919 and April 1920. On his return he exhibited at the Salon, where he was distinguished in 1923