Salvatore Ferragamo, Shoemaker of Dreams

If you're in Florence, Italy, I recommend you visit the Ferragamo Museum. It is a gem of a museum and small enough that, when you  finish viewing the exhibit, you will still feel fresh.   

The current exhibit is on Salvatore Ferragamo himself, which I found interesting and fun.  Salvatore began his career as a 9-year old making shoes for his sisters' confirmation.  He was a visionary and shoemaker to the stars.  He believed there was no limit to beauty, yet he also believed shoes should be comfortable.

The above two pair do not look very comfy to me 

To learn more about Ferragamo, click here and also click to watch the trailer here of one creative aspect of the current exhibit.

Museo Salvatore Ferragamo

Palazzo Spini Feroni

Piazza Santa Trinita, 5/r

Firenze, Italia

(6 euro entrance fee)

www.museoferragamo.com

  

Playdate with Watercolor Paint

I had the pleasure of meeting Nancy from Indiana a couple months back. Nancy is a creative and energetic retired schoolteacher, who spends most of the year abroad. Somehow in our conversation that first meeting she told me about her watercolor project: She paints her travelogues on postcard-sized paper! Nancy shows me a sample of her work, and I fall in love with the concept.  I think it a creative way to imprint lasting memories.

Maestro Nancy

Watercolor has always been the paint medium I prefer; my artistic talent is sorely lacking, never graduating from stick figure drawings.  Nancy insists her approach is so simple and easy that even I can do it. I ask Nancy to show me her technique. I challenge her to teach me.

Nancy's work in progress based on Villa La Petraia visit

Today is our playdate. Lucy and her daughter, Elizabeth, and I traipse on over to Nancy's home for our painting lesson. Nancy tells us this is a new art form for her which she incorporated only a few months ago when she returned to Europe. As she explains her techniques, we follow our maestro's guidance. The first thing we do is section our postcard-size paper into at least five sections. That way the blank page is less daunting. Nancy makes a postcard for each side trip she takes. I choose Italian subjects that require minimal skill to sketch. We have scheduled an hour for our playdate, but we stay five. We each go home with our own miniature capolavoro ("masterpiece") after also sharing ideas, laughs, and getting to know one another a bit more.

Elizabeth has talent

Notice the detail in Elizabeth's first masterpiece

Nancy shared with me an entire book filled with her miniature paintings. Each one is priceless.  Because I doubt my artistic ability, her point was to show me the evolution of her skill in poco tempo (little time). I do have hope. Even I could see the evolution of her style and technique as she grew confident in her newfound skill and learned how to handle the brushes and paints. Thank you, Nancy, for sharing with us. 

Elizabeth's

My creation.  Um, can you recognize any objects???

A picture is worth a thousand words; each miniature picture here tells many, many stories.

Lucy's creation

Many stories

Keep an eye on your mailbox. You just might receive an original piece of artwork in the mail from me one day soon.

Villa della Petraia, Florence, Italy

April 25th was another holiday here in Italy, Liberation Day, which marks the end of Mussolini's regime. Five American women chose this holiday for a field trip. From Stazione Santa Maria Novella, we took one of two ATAF buses, the   No. 2 or 28, to visit one of more than 25 Medici family villas throughout Tuscany. We visited La Petraia.

The bus arrives about 15 minutes after leaving the station. A short walk up the hill past another Medici villa, the Villa di Castello, and past the onetime home of Collodi, the author of Pinocchio, will land you at the entrance of La Petraia. Free admittance and a free guided tour. Our tour was in Italian. I did my best to follow along, grasping 60 to 70 percent, enough to fascinate me to discover more. The villa previously belonged to the Brunelleschi family, the architect who built the dome on Santa Maria del Fiore ("the Duomo"). The villa is worth the visit for its frescoed courtyard .

However, what particularly interests me are the gardens. Italian gardens are not quite what we think of as gardens in the U.S. A few hundred years ago, they were rarely full of flowers, though flowers were included. Instead, they were about order and beauty, geometric designs of landscape architecture. They were designed to impress, and they were about power. The larger the garden, the more power the family had. The Italian-style gardens were later copied throughout Europe (French Renaissance Gardens and English Gardens). One more art form to be appreciated in this city, the birthplace of the Renaissance (thanks to the Medici family).

Villa della Petraia
via della Petraia, 40
Castello, Firenze, Italia

Museo di San Marco and Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia, Florence, Italy

San Marco is a 15th century church and convent, previously the home of two medieval convents.  The convent is now the Museum of San Marco.  In 1436 the Dominicans of Fiesole took over the convent.  Fra Angelico from Fiesole moved into the convent, had his own "cell," and painted the majority of the freschi you see there today.

Museum of San Marco

Buildings are always being restored

A year later Cosimo de' Medici took on the financial burdens for the reconstruction of a new church and convent, which were desiged by Michelozzo.  Even Cosimo de' Medici had his own private cell here even though he lived just down the road at the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi.

Many of the freschi we see have been removed from their original location and placed in museums elsewhere and are often severely damaged from the elements and time.  Most freschi at San Marco are still on the wall and in near-pristine condition.

 The Miracle of the Lost Key Found Inside the Belly of the Fish

 Various rescued freschi

Looks almost Salvador Dali-ish  to me

Juxtaposed? Blindfolded? Crystal ball? Free-floating hands? 

 Fra Angelico's "Annunziata"

Girolamo Savonarola also had a cell at San Marco.  He gave many of his speeches during his brief reign of power from the pulpit of San Marco.  He was first hanged and then burned at the stake in Piazza della Signoria in 1498 not long after Savonarola ordered the second Bonfire of the Vanities.

 Inside one of the courtyards

Another, smaller courtyard

After leaving San Marco and having a hearty soup for lunch, my friend and I strolled back in the direction of  home when we decided to pop into the Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia.  I have passed by the nondescript building dozens of times but never felt a pull to visit.  The term "cenacolo" originally referred to where the monks and nuns ate meals; today it refers to "The Last Supper."  Leonardo da Vinci is not the only artist who painted a famous cenacolo (located in the church in Milan). There are more than a few around town. The cenacolo located in this building was painted by Andrea del Castagno in 1447.  It is an important piece of work for Florence because it was the first Renaissance cenacolo in Florence and represents a fundamental moment in Florentine painting with his expert use of perspective.  I saw immediately, even to my untrained eye, that the table linen looked three-dimensional, and I wanted to reach over to touch the linen.  My friend commented that she wanted to "pull the wrinkles out of the tablecloth."

 The room in which "The Last Supper" is housed

 Close-up sectional

 Another section of the cenacolo

Just what is this bimbo reaching for?

You know how you visit places only when on holiday, but never your hometown?  (Even though other people come from elsewhere to see the things you never get around to seeing?)  We all likely believe that those sites will always be there, and eventually we will get to them, but usually we never do make the time to go.  I have visited Florence, Italy, many times over the years -- and live here for the past three years -- and still there are many places I have yet to see.  Today, though, I finally made my way over to the Museum at San Marco in Piazza San Marco and to the Cenacolo di Sant'Apollonia. Each is a lovely way to see a little more of Florence, learn a little more of this town's history.  And with an Amici Degli Uffizi membership, you get to visit each site for the best price, free.