Category Italy
Janky (but lovable) spolia in Trieste’s San Giusto cathedral
There’s an architectural term—spolia—which basically means “janky combination of material scavenged from various historical periods”. A perfect place to see spolia in action is the Cathedral of San Giusto in Trieste, Italy. If you look at it from the perspective of early Christian builders, it makes sense. Your religion is new and you’ve got to […]
The answer is Udine
Complaining about overtourism is a thing now. This is annoying and lacks self-reflection because—duh—did you think being a tourist was only okay for you and not other people? I mean, I get it because within the past year I’ve been to both Florence and Barcelona and those are some well trodden destinations but even in […]
The Ravishing Madonnas of Emilia-Romagna
There’s a big slice of the pie chart in my brain dedicated to hilarious renditions of the Virgin and Child. While I saw plenty of these in my recent trip to the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy, I ended up being astonished by the knockout gorgeous Madonnas instead. There’s a charming (free!) museum in Bologna called […]
A Time for Despair: Lamentation Over the Dead Christ in Bologna
What does despair look like? In 1463, Niccolò dell’Arca’s answer was this: The Lamentation Over the Dead Christ is tucked into a side chapel inside the Church of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. The terracotta figures are life sized and, while no one is sure of the original arrangement, they were clearly meant to […]
The grape harvest sculpture in Ferrara is better than a costume history textbook
One of my many failed careers was theatrical costume design. While my design skills may not have been noteworthy, I excelled at costume research, pouring through art history books for artworks made at the same time period as the setting of the play I was designing. I could have used a costume history book—textbooks with […]
Picnic at the Cathedral of Modena
When we arrived off our flight from Chicago, we planned to take a short train ride and spend the night in nearby Modena. We bought train tickets from a machine in the Bologna station but we couldn’t find the right departure track because it wasn’t posted on the electronic board, so I asked a station […]
Venice is not ideal for picnics or Parkinson’s
When I booked our trip to Italy, I had a choice to fly out of either Milan or Venice for the same amount of frequent flyer miles. As a smaller and car-free city, Venice seemed like the best option for HOB, who has Parkinson’s Disease. We had visited Venice one other time, and that was […]
Teatro all’Antica, Sabbioneta: ideal city as theater
Vespasiano I Gonzaga had a lot going on for him; he was a duke, he had an awesome name, and if this statue of him is realistic, he was a total hottie. But was he satisfied? Nuh uh—Duke Hottie Gonzaga wanted his very own ideal city, so in the mid 1500’s he commissioned Sabbioneta. Sabbioneta […]
Empress Theodora in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna deserves her halo
If there was Venn diagram of things I can’t get enough of: Byzantine architecture, Western art history and Sears catalogs from the 1980’s, The Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna would be right in that sweet spot where they come together. It was built 540 in a double octagonal Byzantine-stye design that was all the […]
Art history tumbles forward with Giulio Romano’s giants in Mantua
Here’s how they did things in Italy for around 1400 years; popes, baby Jesus, really fancy places to put the popes and all the church people in, saints, more baby Jesus, everyone dies from the plague, more baby Jesus, oh hey, look— some ancient stuff—maybe we should rediscover it, let’s make some art and buildings […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 