the city he chose as his home for most of this time. He had been there as a child, with his mother and brother. He admitted in the early 1960s that his return there after the tragedies of the war and his rejection of the “American dream” involved a complete rejection of “the material”. In Venice, Congdon was brought into contact with the great Venetian tradition that runs from Vittore Carpaccio to Francesco Guardi; and at the same time, he saw how modern painters – from J. M. W. Turner to [Claude Monet]- had rendered this incomparable subject. The quality of his St. Mark’s Squares, his Palazzi, his views of the less usual sights of Venice was soon recognized in America. His decade-long relationship with Venice was interrupted on occasion. Suddenly the city would cease to reveal itself to the artist, and the need to travel would make itself felt again. Religious Conversion In 1959, after a trip to Cambodia, Congdon returned to Assisi(Italy), where he was received into the Roman Catholic faith at the Pro Civitate Christiana. Congdon, who had often gone back to Assisi during his travels, would write repeatedly about how, admiring and depicting the Franciscan landscape, he had uncovered the bone of his own existence; how he had learned the truth of certain values and the confidence to see himself as he was. The origins of his conversion lie in a series of meetings with the founder of Pro Civitate Christiana, Fr Giovanni Rossi - meetings that would then be followed by others with Jacques Maritain and Thomas Merton. In 1961 Congdon's work was included in the Smithsonian Institution’s traveling exhibition 20th Century American Painting. In 1962 the book In My Disc of Gold, an account of Congdon’s spiritual and artistic life, was published both in Italy and in the USA, and an exhibition of his work was held in Milan. Two years later, his paintings were exhibited in the Vatican Pavilion of the 1964 New York World's Fair. In the spring of 1962 he went to visit Subiaco, Lazio and the monasteries overlooking the Aniene Valley, near Rome. The Representation of the Crucifix Even after returning to landscape painting, until 1980 Congdon continued his artistic reflection on the Cross. Over two decades, there were developments and changes in the handling of this subject. Putting things very simply, one might identify the following phases. In the