A short note on Pietrasanta and the artist Romano Cosci

February 26, 2019February 25, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

Yesterday I had the chance to see the Carnevale parade in Pietrasanta. I want to add a short note on the town itself.

Above and below are picture of Pietrosanta’s duomo. A service was ongoing when I stopped inside. It is actually a pretty rare event that I find a service going on in the many churches I visit throughout this country. Who’d a thunk it?

It was nice to observe. And, il duomo is quite wonderful, filled with interesting paintings and sculptures.

As ever, the simple local bars serve cappuccino to die for. Starbucks, eat your heart out.

The deconsecrated church of Sant’ Agostino today serves Pietrasanta and environs as a beautiful exhibition space for local artists. I first had the pleasure of joining my dear friend, Grayce Murabito and her friend, the actor Eddie Albert (was in Roman Holiday), in viewing an exhibition there about 35 years ago. I hadn’t been back until yesterday. Somewhere I have photos of lovely Grayce standing in front of the sign advertising the exhibition of her husband’s works: the painter and sculptor, Rosario Murabito.

(The church itself is fascinating: Built in the 14th century, it was annexed to the convent and the ospedale dei Mercanti. The façade recalls architectural and sculptural decoration of the Cathedral of San Martino di Lucca. There are numerous tombstones on the floor and sections of fresco cycles from the 14th-15th centuries. The former church was deconsecrated before the mid 1980s, and has subsequently been used for temporary exhibitions, especially in the summer months. For information you can contact the “Russo” cultural center, in via sant’Agostino 1, call 0584.795500 or visit the website http://www.museodeibozzetti.it. See also www.comune.pietrasanta.lu.it and official page http://www.facebook.com/comunedi.pietrasanta?fref=ts )

Romano Cosci, painter and sculptor, was born near Lucca in 1939. He was trained in the fifties in the stimulating atmosphere of the sculpture workshops and the art foundries of Pietrasanta (where he worked and lived) under the guidance of artists – prestigious artisans like Leonida Parma and Ferruccio Vezzoni and had as a teacher and friend Pietro Annigoni. Until 1986 he taught pictorial disciplines in the artistic high schools of Carrara and Grosseto. His work, with equal parts of talent and poetry, make use of an extraordinary range of expressive media, passing through fresco, marble, bronze, terracotta, mosaic and every other kind of 2-d design. He died in 2014.

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A couple other views of lovely Pietrasanta:

Carnevale in Pietrasanta!

February 25, 2019February 25, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

Think of Carnevale in Italy and you are sure to think first of Venice. I know I do!

But the season is alive throughout the peninsula and the small ones have a charm that Venice, for all its glory, lacks.

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Yesterday I had my first taste of a smaller, home-grown version of the Carnevale parade in the lovely little artsy town of Pietrasanta. This small town is part of Versilia on the coast of northern Tuscany, about 20 miles north of Pisa and 15 miles south of Carrara. Only 2 miles from the coast, you can quickly reach the beach of Marina di Pietrasanta and the fashionable Forte dei Marmi. But those two places are best reserved for a warmer time of year.

The Carnevale in Pietrasanta is composed of locals, young and old, and devoid of pretension.

That’s what I liked most about it!

Of course it didn’t hurt that it was a beautiful, almost spring-like day with cerulean skies and puffy white clouds.

Now, here’s the thing: I don’t know what I was expecting, but the Pietrasanta parade was made up of about 6 major floats with companies of participants associated with each float. The floats ranged in subject matter from the Moulin Rouge, to Dr. Spock, to Michael Jackson’s Killer.

To me, it felt more like a Halloween parade than a celebration of a religious matter.

But, it was unabashed, and I loved it for that. It reminded me of my home town, way across the pond in the prairie states of the US.

A fun time was had by all!

New York, New York

February 24, 2019February 10, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

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📷@killianmoore

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Chess with the Queen of England

February 23, 2019February 10, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

Inside Brunelleschi’s dome, Florence

February 22, 2019February 21, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

Last month found me climbing the millions of steps to the top of the Florence cathedral dome. Wow, what a hike and what an incredible view from the top!

One of the many treats of that worthwhile climb is the opportunity to see the Vasari frescoes of the Last Judgement, that adorns the interior of Brunelleschi’s magnificently engineered dome. This post is dedicated to the Vasari paintings.

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Trevi Fountain news

February 20, 2019February 10, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

ROME – Most of the tourists who have tossed coins over their shoulder into Rome’s Trevi Fountain over the past 20 years probably did not know that they were helping the city’s poor. But the Rome city government has said no more.

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Beginning April 1, the city said, the coins will no longer be delivered to the Rome diocesan Caritas for funding homeless shelters, soup kitchens and parish-based services to families in difficulty.

Instead, the city plans to use the money to help with the upkeep of monuments and to fund grants to “social projects,” which are yet to be defined. It also will hire workers to sort and count the coins, something that Caritas volunteers did for free.

In 2018, the international collection of coins added up to about 1.5 million euros or about $1.7 million.

Interviewed Jan. 12 by Vatican News, Father Benoni Ambarus, director of Caritas Rome, said, “The first thing I want to say is thank you to the millions of tourists who created a sea of solidarity with their coins.”

The priest was still hoping something would change before the change dried up in April. After all, the city council voted in October 2017 to start keeping the money in city coffers, but after a public outcry, the agreement with Caritas was extended to April 2018 and again to Dec. 31, 2018.

https://www.catholicregister.org/home/international/item/28763-rome-government-makes-a-wish-trevi-fountain-coins-will-no-longer-go-to-the-poor?fbclid=IwAR3yHYw2uL8vsnOFKSewOl3XMPQZNVIRNKfQx-DwNbbxo1X6AYrNZjk3g0Q

Venetian Carnevale, 2019

February 19, 2019February 21, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

Il Duomo, Firenze: urban climbs

February 18, 2019March 14, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / 1 Comment

My birthday was last month and I marked it in a big way this year. A fellow-January birthday girl and I got tickets to climb to the top of the Florence cathedral dome. It is a bit of a hike. You climb up more than 1200 steps, many very steep, and, even in January, the stairways are crowded. It was worth every step!

You must be very careful on these stairways, some narrow, some steep, some filled with people going down while you are going up. I was very, very careful, bc who wants to fall on a stairway from the roof of the duomo?

This post covers the exterior, a separate post is coming soon on the interior of the dome.

So, the first stopping place is the terrace level below the dome, as seen here:

The views, even from this lesser level, are outstanding! There’s the dome of San Lorenzo:

Beguiling views of the baptistry:

So, as I said, I was extremely careful as I climbed up the duomo stairways. And then, 2 days later, I missed a step on a small stairway in my apartment building, lost my balance and twisted my ankle. And I’ve been laid up ever since! I finally got an X-ray and nothing was broken, thank goodness, but the ligaments were torn, so we think.

Anyway, feeling sorry for myself with my foot elevated for several weeks, I haven’t felt like talking about the dome climb. I am almost back to walking well by now, and this is my post to celebrate that fact!

Above and below, shots of the January skies over Florence:

Ahoy down there!

Looking to San Lorenzo: when I’m high up above Florence I realize again how small this city really is!

Looking toward Fiesole:

Looking up and thinking: “can I climb that many more steps to get up there?” Not completely convinced.

The quality of the sculptural details at this height was amazing to me. The architects and sculptors could have been excused for skimping on details: I mean, how many people will ever see the work from close-up?

But they skimped on nothing:

So, okay, chicken, let’s keep climbing. You made it this far. So, up we go, and the climb got more severe:

This sweet woman encouraged me every step of the way, which was a lot of steps!

Above: Looking south, way across Florence, we see Forte Belvedere with its tower:

Below: looking across Florence to San Minato al Monte:

Looking over to the synagogue with the green dome:

Looking towards Santa Croce:

In the middle ground, the Bargello and Badia:

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Looking toward the Mercato Centrale, with the green roof:

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San Lorenzo with train station in background:

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Looking way across town to the church of Santa Maria Novella:

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Another shot of San Lorenzo with its entire complex shown:

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Orsan Michele in foreground, Palazzo Pitti in front of forest (Boboli Gardens).

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Below: looking to Piazza della Repubblica:

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Below: details inside the Giardino Boboli:

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An Italian opera director turns a painted Renaissance masterpiece on its head…

February 17, 2019February 10, 2019 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

And much, much more.

PARIS — You can’t always expect to understand the work of Romeo Castellucci. But you’re sure to be awed by its beauty.

Especially when the Italian director — really, a polymathic theatrical artist — stages opera. His productions are rich in symbols and enigmas; each movement leads to a picture-perfect tableau….Mr. Castellucci’s latest project, Scarlatti’s “Il Primo Omicidio” (“The First Homicide”), which continues at the Paris Opera’s Palais Garnier through Feb. 23, is…relatively direct, yet still striking.

“It’s a portrait of Cain,” Mr. Castellucci said of Scarlatti’s 1707 oratorio, an account of the Cain and Abel story, in an interview under the ornate chandeliers of the Garnier’s grand foyer. “But it’s really about innocence.”

The switch from adult singers to children happens the moment Cain murders Abel. “We are in the domain of childhood,” Mr. Castellucci said. “It is a childish mythology.”

A story of jealousy and murder, in his telling, becomes one of rediscovering lost innocence, of adults in search of their youthful doppelgängers….a journey abounding in imaginative stage magic — with layers of lighting and scrims, Mr. Castellucci conjures vast Rothko canvases that have the soft seamlessness of a James Turrell — reaches its end.

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The soprano Birgitte Christensen, center, as Eve.CreditJulien Mignot for The New York Times

For the scene in which Eve learns she will be a mother, Mr. Castellucci thought of the Annunciation — the angel Gabriel delivering the news to the Virgin Mary that she would give birth to Jesus. So he turned to “Annunciation With St. Margaret and St. Ansanus,” an Italian Gothic triptych by Simone Martini and Lippo Memmi that now hangs in the Uffizi in Florence.

But he turned it upside down. As Eve sings of her coming motherhood, the massive altarpiece is lowered, slowly, above her head. “It’s a kind of guillotine,” Mr. Castellucci said. “A menace.”

The Venice Carnival, opening February 16, 2019

February 16, 2019October 24, 2018 / get back, laurettadimmick / Leave a comment

These are my pictures of the carnivale from 2017. I can hardly believe that I never got around to posting them. It was a wild, exuberant experience I will never forget.

Here’s everything you need to know about this year’s event: https://veniceevents.com/news-blogs/venice-carnival-2019-dates-and-events

And now, finally, 2 years late, my photos:

I was in Venice in 2017 for the water parade. Amazing floats skimmed along the Rio di Cannaregio waterways. It was quite a spectacle. I managed to get a bird’s eye view in the 2nd floor home of a perfect stranger, a delightful Venetian man and his wife! All of these images were shot from their window.