Street in Assisi / Ernest D. Roth.

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Ernest D. Roth's etching shows a narrow street in Assisi, the hill town in Umbria whose medieval stone buildings have changed little in their basic layout over centuries. Roth dated the plate 1935, the same year he signed it in pencil, so the print records a specific moment in the interwar period, when European travelers and artists were drawn to small Italian towns for their age and quiet. Look closely at the walls, doorways and the way the street bends out of view; the etching captures the texture of old masonry and the sense of a town built for foot traffic rather than cars.

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