Newsletters

In 1223 St Francis went to Rome to seek approval from Honorius III for his new order of friars; he also asked the Pope’s permission to create a new and special kind of church service. He had recently returned from the Holy Land where he had been profoundly impressed by his visit to Bethlehem. His […]

Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco, the painter known as Giorgione – Big George – died, most probably of the plague, in 1510 aged about thirty-two. Of the sixty or so works of his thought to have survived, contemporary art historians only attribute five or six paintings to him with absolute certainty. Yet several of his known

Flying with Alitalia recently I was interested to see that there was no thirteenth seat row — and no row seventeen either. I’m told seventeen is the unlucky number in Italy (in China it’s four). Of course if you did have the misfortune to be in row thirteen or seventeen on a BA flight, where

I am writing this in my house in Italy. As I put the finishing touches to the first draft, there is a fox barking huskily from the valley below; a little owl is whooping in broad daylight from a nearby roof-top – when I try to peep at it from the window, it glares at

In Florence last week there were posters announcing that the renovation of Donatello’s David will at last be finished in November of this year (a former newsletter described this work in progress). The posters show the head and shoulders of the statue, brand new with the gilding discovered during the clean-up; it will be very

Quando mi sarò deciso d’andarci, in paradiso / ci andrò con l’ascensore di Castelletto (‘When I have decided to go there, to Paradise, / I will go by means of the Castelletto lift’) These lines from Giorgio Caproni’s poem ‘L’ascensore’ are inscribed on the wall of the long and gloomy corridor which is the entrance

Some Italian pronunciation Unlike English, Italian is an entirely phonetic language, except in the case of ‘h’, which is never pronounced, but serves the purpose of changing the pronunciation of ‘c’ and ‘g’. For further elucidation, please turn over. Non vale un’acca (not worth an ‘h’) signifies utter worthlessness. Hard C a        cane             

Learn Italy’s fifth study week in Florence took place in late January this year – it was cold, but dry and bright. As on former trips, Renaissance sculpture was one focus of our interests. Intent on enjoying some of the most famous statues in the history of western art, we visited the Bargello museum, looking