The Musée Granet conceived an exhibition devoted to the artist Bernard Plossu on the theme of Italy. About a hundred pictures are shown, most of them unpublished, covering the period from the late 1970s to 2017. Although he is famous for pictures made almost exclusively in black and white since 1965, Plossu was able to experiment with colour in the course of his travels through a particular pigment process, the Fresson print, discovered in 1967; these matt carbon prints, known throughout the world, give his images a grainy, soft and almost powdery rendering. This magnificent set is set against some sixty drawings and watercolours, various views of the city of Rome and its surroundings made by the emblematic painter of Aix, François-Marius Granet (1775-1849), in the first half of the nineteenth century. The two artists share the same favourite subjects, the same interest in the Eternal City and in Italy, in its alleys charged with history, culture and memory, these landscapes suspended in time, urban or natural, marked by solitude. The treatment of light and shadows, in chiaroscuro washes for the painter and in analogue photography for the photographer, the framings and the motifs all evoke the force of a classic theme that becomes an archetype across the centuries.