In 1973 Salvatore Fiume travelled to the Babile Valley, also called the Valley of the Lions, in Ethiopia where he carried out quite a large painting on the rough surface of a group of rocks. A year later, in a retrospective at Palazzo Reale in Milan, he exhibited a partial recontruction of the painted rocks inside the huge Sala delle Cariatidi. On the same occasion he also presented for the first time his African Mona Lisa, a tribute to the beauty of African women, now in the Vatican Museums.