This interesting work clearly reveals the experiences of the artist on a seminal journey she made to Rome in 1988.

Her works are characterised by exceptional delicacy in the use of colour and a markedly lyrical quality, reflecting the feelings she seeks to convey. There is therefore no homogeneity among the objects she introduces into her compositions. Each element is unique and corresponds to a particular idea. With a meticulous, refined technique she endows each stroke, drawing or element with the particular degree of prominence assigned to it in the composition.

This landscape is somewhat reminiscent of Pompeian painting, to which Peláez must have been exposed to during her time in Rome. Virtually the whole of the canvas is covered with a range of earthy colours remitting to the hues we see in volcanic land. The small and roughly carved wooden figurine glued to the support could be seen as an

 ex-voto 

or votive offering originated in ancient civilisations as a pagan offering to the gods. In Catholicism it became an offering by the faithful to saints in gratitude for a favour granted, a gift or recovery from an illness.

offered to the devastated city, in an attempt to save it from being forgotten.

In the upper section of the canvas we see a framed work, a painting within a painting, a quite common recourse in Pompeian art: a window opening onto an imaginary world created by the artist, that forces spectators to focus their attention on a horizon of classic architectures, temples with columns and sculptures that seem to be floating in the air or in an ethereal substance, as if they were about to dissolve and vanish. The present and the past of a city are devoured by nature, a city recreated in the memory and imagination of the artist.