Living artfully in Italy

The Rape of the Sabine Women at the Piazza della Signoria is such a powerful sculpture that it's difficult for me to look at the humanity of it.

In Italy, art surrounded us wherever we went. At the villa, the main house had paintings that were hundreds of years old, as well as beautiful painted ceramic tile floors and frescoes on the walls. In Florence, our wonderful hotel was just around the corner from the Piazza della Signoria. The piazza has a fantastic outdoor sculpture gallery and one morning, we got up early to take photos there. It was such an amazing experience to get to explore the statues by ourselves.

We also got to meet and hang out with an Italian/American scultor at work on a plaster cast for a bronze he was working up. And in Deruta, a town dating to Neolithic times, painted ceramics were everywhere, being sold and also used as decoration on buildings. Ceramic workshops have existed here since the 15th century.

Given that we were in Italy, after all, magnificently adorned churches were in every town we went to. The frescoes in Orvieto’s Duomo were particularly beautifully rendered. It was good to be back in the art world again. (All the Italy photos, by the way, were taken by Robert.)

Hand painted ceramics from Deruta in what's known as the grotesque style.

A mosaic on the front of Orvieto's magnificent Duomo.

Tagged as: An American traveller, Art in Italy, Sandra Carpenter's book, travel writing