It seems like in every season, something wonderful is in bloom in Italy. Right now it is mimosa.
Also beginning to bloom are the camellias
I walked down a wide avenue in western Florence yesterday, where I noticed a long line of street trees that have been severely pruned in the Pollarding method, a pruning system involving the cutting of long branches of a tree, done to promotes a dense head of foliage and branches.
Pollarded trees look brutal against gray winter skies.
The Italian Alps and the Dolomites will experience some of the lowest temperatures of the winter in the next week and many domains will also see significant fresh snowfall. The heaviest snowfall will be above the Aosta Valley where Cervinia (1,520m) can expect up to 45cm of fresh powder. The resort already holds close to 4 metres of snow base beneath top station at 3,480m and when the visibility is decent the skiing is epic. However next week the daytime temperatures here will be far below 0ºC, -7ºC the average high at resort level, so skiers will need to bulk up thermal layers. Today in Cervinia all 15 lifts are open and skiing is on fresh and dry groomed snow at all elevations.
Read this interesting article by Dr. Susan Steer, an art historian specialising in Venice. Her MA concentrated on the city’s art and architecture and her PhD on Venetian Renaissance altarpieces.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/tours/venice-things-to-see-and-do-beyond-st-marks/
If you admire great paintings, you’ll be even more in awe when you consider that for most of history, artists had to make their own paint from oil, pigment, and sometimes eggs. Watch this video to see the process and as a plus, you can practice your Italian skills!
Here it is:
The National Gallery in London celebrates how it hid priceless paintings from Nazis in a Welsh mine. The gallery’s display will recall the summer of 1940 when, following Dunkirk, the British feared invasion.
The new exhibition shows 24 archival photographs detailing how paintings were removed, packed, transported and stashed in a disused slate mine in Snowdonia, along with a picture of how it looks today.
A new 30 minute film about the rescue mission, capturing an “immersive” dance and spoken word performance, has been commissioned to accompany it, to be broadcast on BBC Two.
In 1940, the Bristish feared for the safety of the national art collection: Winston Churchill is known to have personally intervened to veto a plan to take them to Canada by ship, fearing a u-boat attack could leave paintings lost at sea.
Instead, curators agreed to hide works in the Manod mine, enlarging its entrance with explosives and building small brick “bungalows” inside to protect them from damp.
Monitoring the conditions the paintings were kept in further led to “valuable discoveries” about how best to protect them, a spokesman for the gallery said, explaining air conditioning was then added to the renovated London gallery after the war.
The technique and materials are made clear in this excellent video. Then, all you need is talent!
We all know that Easter is coming. When I was a little girl, Easter was fun because it happened in spring–which meant that the long ghastly winter was on the wane–and usually involved a great new fluffy pastel dress and matching shoes. Sometimes even a hat (or a bonnet?) and gloves were involved. One year I got pale blue patent leather shoes and I loved them so much, I can still remember them!
At this point in life, Easter doesn’t mean much to me. No holiday does, for that matter. Ennui, I suppose.
But Easter is a Really Big Deal in Italy. Really Big.
I came home one day recently to find this notice on the door of my building. It tells me that tomorrow, on Tuesday, 20 February, between 4 and 8 p.m., the parish priest will come to my building to give the blessing to anyone who wants to receive it, in advance of Pasquale.
I mean really, the priest comes to my apartment to bless me? I would love to be a party to that!
I may or may not be able to be home for this blessing. I have already rsvp-ed to an invitation to visit Michelangelo’s tomb in Santa Croce with the art restorer who recently finished cleaning the monument and I would hate to miss it. But, I also hate to miss the blessing.
Decisions, decisions! And both are such exquisite offerings only to be found here, in Florence!
get back, lauretta! 
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