The Painter on the Side Street

Rosanna Borzelli at the canvas

Rome has a way of ambushing you. One moment you're killing time before an evening flight, a long Stockholm layover gnawing at the horizon. The next, you're stopped cold by something so beautiful you forget airports exist.

That's what happened this afternoon. I was wandering the city center, letting Rome do its usual trick of scrambling my sense of direction and purpose, when a small gallery window stopped me mid-stride. Inside, a woman greeted me with a warm buongiorno. She was in her sixties, salt-and-pepper hair, round glasses, and the quiet assurance of someone who has long since earned the right to take her time.

I asked who had painted the tall, luminous canvas that had caught my eye. She said—so modestly I almost didn't believe her—I did.

Her name was Rossana Borzelli. Born in Rome, she now lives and works in Oriolo Romano, a small town north of the city. She studied under Leonardo Aprea in Naples and later with Giovanni Crisostomo in Rome. Her large-scale paintings span oil on canvas, wood, even iron—mediums that sound like they should fight each other and somehow don't. She began showing me her work one after another: sweeping movements of color and light, at once ancient and immediate. The kind of art you could imagine in a modern villa or a forgotten chapel, humming quietly to itself.

She mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that her exhibitions had traveled across Europe—France, Belgium, Finland, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Greece—and to the United States. I nodded as though this were entirely expected, while privately wondering how someone so evidently accomplished could be sitting so unassumingly behind a small desk on a side street in Rome.

When I finally asked about prices, she quoted figures that made me suspect I'd missed a decimal point. I told her I'd love to buy something, but my luggage was already overloaded. She smiled—the knowing smile of someone who has heard this before—and handed me her card.

To console myself, I wandered into Feltrinelli, one of my favorite Roman bookshops, only to find their card readers down. That felt less like bad luck and more like interference from above. So I turned around and walked straight back to the Galleria Borzelli.

I chose the piece that had first stolen my attention. I asked, somewhat tentatively, whether she'd consider a small discount. She graciously agreed. And just like that, I became the owner of a Rossana Borzelli.

I left grinning and slightly dazed, thinking how completely Rome had outwitted me again—making me fall in love when I was only trying to kill time.