The paintings……..

…………….I crassly shocked my dear Italianate friend before we left for Italy …. “if I have to see another religious painting I’m going to close my eyes”!!!! She said “how can you consider Italy without experiencing religious art”??? Indeed, she is completely right……nothing prepared us for the Italian frescoes…….they are everywhere churches, private houses, street walls, public venues….. the sheer beauty aside, one has to consider the physical difficulty of painting something that you can only mix enough paint for a limited period, complicated, intricate and often executed on a curved ceiling lying on a scaffold many metres above the floor! The beauty, softness and intricate story telling almost made me want to embrace the Church once again. Some are vast and cover huge areas of wall and ceiling, others gracefully enhance architectural features, others are beautiful in their shy modesty………
The Renaissance painters never fail to move us and seeing Botticelli’s “Venus Rising” was definitely a highlight. It is quite weird to get so sated with amazing art that you have to say “enough” and take yourself off somewhere completely different to digest what you have seen……….to be continued xxxxxxxx