Il Santino, via Santo Spirito

We eat out a lot on holiday:
places that we have researched in advance,
recommendations from locals,
menus that catch our eye.

My best meal during our week in Florence
was a spur of the moment choice:
Il Santino on Via Santo Spirito.

Il Santino is a tiny wine bar
attached to a well known restaurant,
Osteria del Santo Bevitore.

We stopped for a light Sunday lunch:
a tomato salad, glass of wine, good bread.

The food is freshly prepared in front of you
and the wine is chosen according to what you eat.

There was a curiously zen atmosphere,
very peaceful and relaxing.
We read 'Il Messagero'
and planned our week in Florence.

I finally permitted myself to breathe out
during that hour perched on cafe chairs.

I can't promise Il Santino will transform your life too
but I can definitely recommend
the tomato and mozzarella salad.

In the Renaissance Workshop

I approached the first day with trepidation.
Painting is not my recreation of choice.

Did the sight of goose feathers and oak gall ink
increase or decrease my confidence?

"Decrease" is the correct answer.

But all was not lost!
I have not forgotten how to use tracing paper
and so could fearlessly copy masterpieces
and reinterpret them in the Basic style.

This is Ellie, History of Art graduate,
demonstrating crazy quill and ink skills.

The Renaissance Workshop used a variety of ingredients:
silverpoint drawing on a surface of crushed bird bone,
oak gall ink, lamp black ink,
rabbit skin glue, ox glue.
sienna, ochre, umber, vermillion,
lapis lazuli, azurite, orcein,
lime white, lead white, gold leaf.

And egg yolk.

Here is a master class
by Professor Alan Pascuzzi,
academic, artist and teacher,
on how to crack an egg.

The egg yolk is used as emulsion
for pigment in tempera paintings.

First apply gold leaf to your icon
and then paint.

With egg yolk.

Simple. No?

This is the lovely Marianne
carefully re-creating an icon.

I should explain that egg tempera dries quickly
so you have to know what you are doing.
Which I did not.
(Imagine a learner driver on the M25)

Wet fresco plaster dries even quicker.
You need to finish painting within an hour.
Which I did not.
(Imagine a learner driver in the fast lane of M25)

Here is MrM concentrating hard.
I think he looks quite adorable.

I must regretfully admit
that MrM's icon was better than mine.
Mine looked like Wendy the Witch.

*****

We both had a most enjoyable week
and the informative lectures,
site visits and practical sessions
have completely changed
our appreciation of Renaissance art.

Many thanks to the British Institute
and to Professor Alan Pascuzzi
who was incredibly patient
with his Renaissance 'apprentices'.

Florence en plein air

We have just returned from a week in Florence.

I don't want you think this was
a week of hedonistic sight seeing, shopping
and sampling the various gelateria.

Oh no.

MrM decided that we needed to do an art course,
looking at masterpieces in the morning
and learning the techniques in the afternoon.

What could possibly go wrong?

Renaissance Art for Beginners
is not for the faint-hearted reader.

I thought it was only fair
to give you a day's warning.

Get a good nights sleep.
Have some rescue remedy at hand.
You have been warned.

In the meantime
here are some photos of Florence.

You're welcome.

Venice by night

It is dark when you leave the Jazz club.

Signposts have disappeared,
swallowed by shadows...

you must find your way back
by the sound of a party
crowded outside a bar,

masks which gleam
in dark shop windows,

light from a restaurant
which has closed for the night

angular shadows creeping
across marble bridges,

lamplight reflections on water
and a lute player nearby,

and then you see the hotel
at the edge of the canal
and another day is over.

*****

for Diktynna
who loves Venice too.

Venice by day

We walked and walked
along canals, over bridges
under low passageways
and through narrow alleys.

It is easy to lose your bearings,
to find youself unexpectedly
at a dead end beside the water.

You follow people who seem to know
as they cut across empty squares
and disappear down alleyways

Unconsciously you find markers
for the way back,
a purple flower, an orange shirt,

chandelier drops in sunlight,
marble leaves that curl and twist,

gleaming almond tarts,
a lion staring from a verdigris door

and curvaceous cherubs
frolicking joyfully
in the bright November sun.

Venice at High Water

Right, let's get this over with, shall we?

MrM was right.

It was very high water in Venice.

A record flood in fact.

We needed wellies.

I shouldn't have argued.

Wellies are cool in Venice.

Even the gondoliers wear them.

Luckily, I was forced to take mine.

There, that wasn't so painful was it?

A Dream of Venice

"Oh yes, it was my Venice! Beautiful,
With melancholy, ghostly beauty...

White, misty palace-portals here and there,
Pillars, and marble steps, and balconies...

I saw the grey dawn shimmer down the stream,
And all the city rise, new bathed in light,
With rose-red blooms on her decaying walls,

a water-wilderness—
Islands entangled in a net of streams—
Cross-threads of rippling channels, woven through
Bare sands, and shallows glimmering blue and broad

The lapping of the tide—the dip of oars—
The sad, sweet songs, and sadder city bells,
Mellowly borne along the water-streets:—

there rose a vapour from the sea—
A dim white mist, that thickened into fog.
The campanile and columns were blurred out..."

*****

extracts from
'A Dream of Venice' by Ada Cambridge

paintings by J. M. W. Turner RA (1775 – 1851)

*****

We are going to Venice next week.
Will you come too?

Views from the Boboli Gardens

I had forgotten how huge the Boboli Gardens are.

It is easy to lose your bearings
among the dark cypress walks.

There are no intimate spaces
and no lush plantings;
it is a world of statuary and gravel paths,
opaque water and clipped hedges.

It is a garden to promenade in,
to be impressed by,
to be seen in.

When I visited as a child
I saw only the interior space:
the obelisk, fountains and grand staircases

but now I look outwards to the city,
to the Duomo and the Baptistery,
and beyond to the Apennine mountains
and I understand the bold design of the garden.

It is essential to continually challenge
your understanding of the world around you
and travel offers that opportunity.
There is no more appropriate place than Florence
to observe, to enquire, to explore
and to discover a sense of perspective.