The thoughtful lines of Ben Nicholson’s pencil imply the geometric precision of architectural elevations. He positions the viewer on an upper loggia of the campanile and overlooking the transept of the Duomo, reducing the architectural design to line and form in a stylistic obverse to his Cubist flattening of the landscape. Such antithetical practice seems a playful exploration of the campanile’s colloquial name ‘the leaning tower of Pisa’, veritably toppled by Nicholson.

Following Nicholson’s early commitment to Constructivist principles, advocating mathematical precision, clean lines and an absence of ornament, this work comes at a time of enhanced creativity. Having moved to the Swiss Alps in 1958 with his third wife Felicitas Vogler, Nicholson entered a proliferate period inspired by his relocation to the heart of the continent. He was not only removed from the sometimes fractious internal politics of the British art world and the rivalries between its peers, but was also able to travel more extensively, and the subsequent works from this period are a catalogue of his travels.

Of his travels he concluded that 'I have favourite places - Mycenae and Pisa, and Siena, for instance - and I feel that in a previous life I must have laid two or three of the stones in Siena Cathedral...' (Ben Nicholson, Sunday Times, 28th April 1963)