Artist: Agnes Buchan-Hepburn (Scottish, 1838 – 1926)
Title: Road to Frattocchie (Italy)
Medium: Original pencil drawing on wove paper
Signature: Titled and dated lower left
Dimensions: 3 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches
Framed Dimensions: Approximately 14 x 16 inches
Framing: This piece has been professionally matted and framed using all new materials
It’s not all that common, I suppose, to take a seat at a fast food joint and hear a screeching voice, “Mom, look under your place. There’s a skeleton!” But look forward to it. Joy is everywhere. If you drive between Rome’s Ciampino Airport and the Castelli Romani along the SP77b, you’ll come to the little town of Frattocchie. There is a McDonald’s in the center, built over a very well-preserved bit of the Appia Antica. The McDonald’s excavation unearthed the skeletons of three adult males buried in the 2nd-3rd century A.D. along the stretch of road. Each was in his own grave, with the three graves relatively close together towards the center of the surviving road section. Casts of the skeletons have been placed in the locations of the original graves along the road in the underground museum. — This Roman road brought to you by McDonald’s at Frattocchie south of Rome… If you’re not thrilled about having to eat at a fast food joint when you’ve spent all that money getting to a place that brags about the quality of its traditional grub, be aware that you can see the road and the skeletons, which aren’t real, of course—who would stand for that?—because the museum is separate from the restaurant. But still, McDonald’s did finance the whole deal…
Agnes McDouall (n. Buchan-Hepburn) was a Scottish gardener and plant collector.Agnes was the daughter of Helen Little and Sir Thomas Buchan-Hepburn as the second of five children. After the birth into a family of keen gardeners and plant collectors at Smeaton Hepburn, East Linton, her father extended the forests by introducing new conifers that were found by Scottish plant hunters like Robert Fortune and David Douglas. In 1869, she married a landowner James McDouall and relocated to his historic family estate at Logan, close to Stranraer. She brought her own collection of roses, lilies, and shrubs, along with the connections with plant hunters. The plant collection at Logan was later to become famous under her sons, Kenneth and Douglas’s management. She was the first one who grew delicate exotic plants in the garden, and she is also credited with starting the collection of Southern Hemisphere species by planting Logan’s first eucalyptus tree, Eucalyptus urnigera, beneath the ruin of Castle Balzieland in the walled garden (now is called the Logan Botanic Garden) which became a part of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. In 1969, Agnes’s tree was cut down in 1994 due to safety concerns.