View Through Doorway, Montecastelli was painted in the Tuscan hilltop village of Montecastelli. Craigie Aitchison acquired a property there in 1977, initially making annual painting trips and later in life spending extended periods of his time there. This work is closely related to another large-scale painting made a year later, Crucifixion, bird bath, Montecastelli (2004, Private Collection). Both works place a small crucifixion scene – probably studied from one of the many cheap plastic devotional icons that Aitchison acquired – in an axis with a dove (the holy spirit) and a bird bath. The landscape is laid down in atmospheric hues of green (earth) and dark blue (sky) in both paintings, with poplar trees and a washing line at the horizon as pictorial embellishments. View Through Doorway, Montecastelli is distinguished by the rectangular hole in the upper half of the picture, which apparently represents a doorway leading to a heavenly paradise. The sun is bright, the distant mount in purple, and one of Aitchison’s Bedlington terriers is there.