Cultivating Genius

tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com - Cy Twombly painted some of the 20th century’s great works in the hilly Italian coastal town of Gaeta. All the while, Nicola Del Roscio, who watched over him, quietly created his own Eden.

Photo

Credit Simon Watson

Nicola Del Roscio’s first memories of Gaeta, an Italian coastal village wedged into the hills some 60 miles north of Naples, were formed when he was a teenager, in the 1950s. He spent summers there with his parents, and the landscape — pale green grasses, fishing boats in the harbor, full-spectrum sunsets — had forever imprinted itself on his imagination.