Two Months in Italy and Istria
July 15, 2007
We are staying on the third floor of an old palazzo at the corner of a piazza in a typical Roman district, close but not too close to the ‘madding crowd’ in Piazza Navona. It is unbearably hot with a heat that doesn’t diminish at night when the neighborhood youth talk loudly below our windows. It is difficult to adjust to these conditions so different from London. But it’s worth the discomfort to survey this stage-set that is Rome on which so many scenes from our history have been acted. As the youngsters disappear around midnight, the disquieting screams of flocks of gulls fill the piazza.
The moment I arrived at the apartment in Rome I saw the subject of my first painting: a view out the opening in the stairs on the third floor. This view looks towards the roofs of the palazzo. The old walls are scarred and discolored by the years. Tired walls but fascinating like the city.
Yesterday I arrived at Poggi (the store with all possible art supplies near the Pantheon) a few minutes after it closed. Its very difficult, almost impossible, to find turpentine on the weekends, so I was very upset. By chance I found a little gallery specializing in eighteenth and nineteenth century paintings. The proprietor, old and melancholy, was a craftsman who worked gold leaf. I asked him if he could sell me a little turpentine. He sat silent a moment then agreed. He gave me a little solvent but refused to accept payment. By way of thanks I gave him a card with two reproductions of my Tuscan paintings on it. He examined it. He pointed a finger at the red earth in the fields.
“The colors are too intense.” He observed. To avoid an argument I replied.
“But I have an imagination.”
The Walls of Rome