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| Cherries with Turquoise Dish Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 13 x 18" 33 x 46cm |
Two Views of the Garden
View East from Stimigliano Blair Pessemier Acrylic/linen 16 x 20" 40 x 50cm
View to the Tiber Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 10 x 20" 25 x 50cm
Butterflies in the Lavender Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 11 x 16" 27 x 41cm
The Hills with Olive Trees Laurie Fox Pessemier Acrylic/linen 10 x 20" 25 x 50cm
and, the real thing, in photo :
We were disappointed a friend couldn’t make it to visit this
week (he may come later) so we took a motor trip ourselves. A painting friend lent us his villa in the
hills outside of Rome.
We stopped halfway at Arezzo (2 hours), where Piero della
Francesco’s fantastic frescoes adorn San Antonio’s basilica. It was the feast of St. Anthony of Padua (the
patron saint of my elementary school, in Winsted, Connecticut), so the church
was open to all and women were selling rolls at a big table. For a euro, I got a holy card and a
roll. It was quite lucky, because were
we to pay the fee to see the murals with the lights on, it was 11 euros each,
and we’d seem them already, just in natural light, which is how they would have
been seen when the artist painted them.
Piero della Francesca’s flat footed, carefully drawn figures made me
think of Degas. I hope to pursue that
comparison on my own, from pictures, later on.
Afterward, we ate pici with calcio and pepe (big square spaghetti with
generous grindings of pecorino romano cheese and fresh, roughly ground pepper),
at a nice little restaurant.
It was quite hot on our trip, 100F/38C at times; it is
almost as hot where we live. The pool was still filling, but I managed to
dip several times, just to cool off. Harika
loved these gardens, like Monet’s at Giverny, with unobstructed views and no
intruders. We could buy a 600 square
foot house (no garden) in Stimigliano for 29,000 euros, only one hour away from
Rome by local train.
We went to the MAXXI museum in Rome, designed by Zaha
Hadid. I mostly wanted to see her building,
but there was a very good contemporary Architecture show going on, from the
museum’s permanent collection. There
was a series of contemporary drawings on antique paper, black and white, which
made me think of what I do with my ledgers and ships’ logs. Also, the installations and the Sol Lewitt work
made me realize I am better off thinking myself, without explanations. After I read the Sol Lewitt description, I
couldn’t see the picture anymore.
The next day, we drove a half hour to the palazzo Farnese in
Caprarola, but it was so hot we couldn’t feature climbing the steps. We continued on through groves of hazelnuts
(Nutella on the hoof) and went to a nearby lake to swim: always bring a bathing suit.
Traveling with a dog makes you take the sensible route – on
the way home, the three of us ate at the Autostrade restaurant: arancini, spinach lasagna and red wine. I’d packed last night’s pork chop for
Harika. We saw a priest in summer white
robes near the side of the road with a broken down car: it must be Italy.
