Twombly moved from the United States to Italy in 1957, settling in a studio in Rome. The Eternal City, with its ancient Mediterranean culture and atmosphere, provided the perfect locale for the development of Twombly's own poetic sensibilities, and his painting quickly revealed the impact of the change of place. What were densely packed gestural works influenced by the Abstract Expressionists in New York, became open and airy, with a lightness of touch and a personal calligraphic style that seemed at once introspective, poetic and sublime. 'One may assume that Twombly's experience of Rome, of its living architectonic and pictorial continuity, and the contact the city offered painters of the Renaissance, opened up fundamental perceptions which were only to find concrete painterly expression in works from 1960 on, after years of personal reflection' (H. Bastian, Cy Twombly Paintings 1952-76, Vol. I, Frankfurt 1978, p. 39). For Twombly, the inspiration of classical mythology and allegorical fiction 'becomes ideal material for a landscape of myth and metamorphosis that recurs again and again in his paintings and never quite leaves him' (ibid.).

In Untitled (Roma), 1961, various encrypted marks of graphite wander like writing across the canvas, their indecipherable scribbly style and rebus-like look evoking hidden meanings in our mind. Various shapes--a mouth with red lips, circles like breasts, phallic forms--lend a breezy sexuality which is reinforced by the sensual application of the light-brown paint in the upper quadrant of the picture. This paint, obscuring some marks as clouds would the sky, and the blue crayon in the lower half of the painting, create a landscape setting for what is essentially an interior landscape; a landscape strewn with the detritus of the mind's thoughts over time. One tends to read a painting like this as one would a poem, scanning it over and over again, lighting where one picks up a thought or a phrase that is particulary attractive, attempting to read the artist's mind, only to lose track, move on and return to one's own thoughts.