Just as the Romantic poet William Blake wrote of seeing “a World in a Grain of Sand,” so the 20th-century Italian painter and poet Filippo de Pisis said, “Sometimes a chicken feather, a poor dusty feather picked up from the street and contemplated in a moment of grace, can become the spark for the composition of a beautiful painting, a beautiful still life, full of that secret spirit that feels like eternity.” There is a sense of eternity in De Pisis’s landscapes and still lifes, conveyed through wispy brushstrokes and casts of muted colors. His work evokes the realities of different worlds, as well as the devastating effects of two World Wars. —E.C.