I never come upon the duomo from any angle without gasping a little bit. It is so large, so in charge!

This day from this angle, once again I lost my breath. And then I focused in on some subtle details that are often hard to notice when the whole complex demands your attention.

Il duomo!

Alla prossima!

There’s a glorious exhibition in Florence right now dedicated to one of my favorite artists of all time. Fra Giovanni Angelico.

The Strozzi Palace and San Marco are the dual hosts of this current show, which runs thru January 25, 2026.

The show is popular here in Florence and often very crowded. Of course that’s a good thing, unless you want to take good pictures. I did the best I could, fighting the groups of stationary people and the lighting.

Over the course of the next few weeks I will post about this amazing show, which is the largest critical reexamination of Fra Angelico’s work in the past 70 years.

The exhibition begins with a look at some of the painters who were contemporaries of or precursors for Fra Angelico. Key among them, Lorenzo Monaco, whose altarpiece for Santa Trinita is shown above and below.

Often in the predella, or the horizontal grouping of smaller paintings that underscore the larger one above, we find some of the most interesting scenes in art history. The next 4 slides show Lorenzo Monaco’s predella paintings.

Another precursor and favorite painter, Gentile da Fabriano

I would love to dress like la donna above, just once in my life!

I’m going to keep these posts short. It is an overwhelming subject to treat properly.

Alla prossima!

Once one of the most fabulous of all cinemas. Today it serves as a great bookstore and meeting place. All lit up for Christmas!

My reading has fallen way off, especially compared to last summer, as I have jumped into a new hobby for the past couple of months. Still, I’ve managed to read a few very good titles since summer.

Kristin Hannah, True Colors. Captivating and satisfying.

No picture supplied here, but I liked Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym. I enjoy 20th century English novels and appreciate a sly wit. I liked this book, set in the countryside in the 1950s, quite a lot.

Excellent Women also by Barbara Pym. I equally enjoyed this jaunt back to a small English village in the 1950s. Quite comical.

Clare Pooley’s Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting. Charming, a jour, complete frisch. I loved this book. J’ai adoré ce livre. Ich habe dieses Buch geliebt.

Elizabeth Strout, Tell me Everything. I liked it. It has wisdom and it has heart. I just wish they wouldn’t put Oprah’s name on every book she endorses. Who cares?! I like to make up my own mind.

Paul Murray, The Bee Sting. Wow. Whoa. Quite a book. The lack of punctuation in many of the chapters was a literal drag: it took several readings of a sentence to understand the meaning of the words when there was no punctuation. Didn’t not like that part.

Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine is a completely wonderful book. One of the best I’ve read. And that’s saying something. I’m showing you the Italian version book cover, but I admit I read it in English.

Patrick Ryan, Buckeye. Magnificent, sprawling novel, filled with wisdom and understanding. This is why I read.

I’ll be back soon with more recommendations. Happy reading, fellow addicts!

The things that we love tell us what we are.

Happy December everybody!

And the persimmon tree.

The confetti of the season!

Persimmon tree! I remember the first time I saw a persimmon tree in the autumn. It was in a garden behind Giorgio Vasari’s home in Arezzo.

I thought then that the tree looked like nature’s natural Christmas tree: shorn of its leaves but with large round bright orange balls!

This beautiful specimen is in a garden not far from my home in Florence.