|
|
|
|
| |
Site & Content
©2002-7 Learn Italy Ltd. |
| |
| Se
cercate il sito Learn Italy della Societa Dante Alighieri
- Comitato di Siena, clickare qui
www.learnitaly.com |
|
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
| Investigating Bergamo for the
best hotel for a long weekend visit, I found that the jewel
in the crown of that city's art collection, the Accademia Carrara,
was chiuso per restauro. So our visit to this pleasing double
city (città alta and città bassa) will have to
be delayed until the art gallery is re-built. Likewise a tour
of Sicily was proving just too expensive, and will have to be
postponed for a future year. |
| |
| A week of language study is
offered, at several levels, in a small but professional language
school: we will travel out on the Sunday to start work at A
Door to Italy on the Monday. Classes last all morning, leaving
plenty of time to explore the city in the afternoons. Genoa
has a huge medieval quarter, a labyrinth of narrow alleys, small
squares and churches; it boasts half a dozen seventeenth-century
palaces that were the architectural wonders of their day - three
of them are now art galleries; and it is also a busy, thriving
modern city. If interested, please contact me before 15 January. |
| |
| To celebrate the five hundredth
anniversary of Giorgione's death, his home town has organised
a unique exhibition of painting by him and his contemporaries.
Of the 120 works on show, 17 have been attributed to him, including
famous paintings gathered from all over the world. Participants
could easily build this short trip into a longer stay, in Venice
perhaps, or any of the other cities nearby - Vicenza, Mantua
or Verona. If you'd like to join this venture, please contact
me before 15 January. |
| |
This study week will focus
on the architecture and frescoes of the city where the Renaissance
began, and where this thrilling development can be traced in
the buildings and their permanent decorations, elements which,
unlike easel-painting, can be seen properly nowhere else in
the world.
Tutor for this holiday is Patrick Doorly;
the closing date is 15 January. |
| |
| I am still trying to set up
a weekend course dedicated to this fascinating subject, to take
place in Cagliari in Sardinia. |
| |
A full two days to visit this
vibrant city, including special visits to Giotto's Arena Chapel.
The University, the baptistery, and the huge Basilica of St
Anthony, packed with beautiful paintings and statues, as well
as a wonderfully interesting historic centre, comprise the other
interesting sites in this lively city.
Tutor: Emma Rose Barber
|
| |
We will stay in the charming
small town of Città del Castello in Umbria, the ideal
centre for a visit to Arezzo, where there is the frescoed choir
of the church of San Francesco, usually considered to be Piero's
masterpiece, and to Sansepolcro, home of his Resurrection, to
Monterchi (the Madonna del Parto), and Urbino, where Federigo
di Montefeltro's magnificent palace is now a major art gallery
that houses two more paintings by Piero.
Tutor: Alice Foster
|
| |
|
|
| |
| Giorgio Barbarelli da Castelfranco,
the painter known as Giorgione - Big George - died, most probably
of the plague, in 1510 aged about thirty-two. Of the sixty or
so works of his thought to have survived, contemporary art historians
only attribute five or six paintings to him with absolute certainty.
Yet several of his known works seem to have broken new ground
in both technique and subject matter, so that he became a serious
influence on his fellow Venetian painters. An exhibition mounted
in Castelfranco Veneto offers the chance to consider and judge
his status as an artist. |
| |
| The Castelfranco Madonna
is an altarpiece in the form of a sacra conversazione,
with Mary flanked on either side by figures of religious significance
(in this case Saints Francis and Nicasius); this kind of picture
was pioneered by Giorgione's master Giovanni Bellini, but Giorgione
places his figures against a vivid landscape, an idea copied
by Bellini in his later paintings. Landscape and sky also feature
in Giorgione's small painting called The Tempest, usually
in Venice's Accademia. A sitting nude female with a baby is
separated by a stream from a clothed and standing young man;
the town behind them is framed by darkening storm clouds. Some
art historians regard this puzzling work as one of the first
landscapes in European art. |
| |
| In 1223 St Francis went to
Rome to seek approval from Honorius III for his new order of
friars; he also asked the Pope's permission to create a new
and special kind of church service. He had recently returned
from the Holy Land where he had been profoundly impressed by
his visit to Bethlehem. His plan was to offer a living representation
of the nativity so as to bring to life the mystery of the Incarnation.
On Christmas Eve 1223, near the rough buildings where he had
built his community, against a backdrop of rocks, St Francis
staged an open-air nativity scene with a crib, and a real ox
and ass. This innovatory act of worship was the origin of the
diorama, models and dramatic performances of the Nativity in
Christian countries and communities all over the world. |
| |
| But where do the ox and the
ass come from? These animals do not feature in either Luke or
Matthew's description of the birth of Jesus, yet they are present
in artistic representations of the scene from the earliest days
of Christianity. Old Testament prophecies are the source. The
eighth-century non-canonical gospel called Pseudo-Matthew puts
it thus: |
| |
And on the third day after the birth of our Lord Jesus
Christ, Mary went out of the cave, and, entering a stable,
placed the child in a manger, and an ox and an ass adored
him. Then was fulfilled that which was said by the prophet
Isaiah, "The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master's
crib." Therefore, the animals, the ox and the ass,
with him in their midst incessantly adored him. Then was
fulfilled that which was said by Habakkuk the prophet, saying,
"Between two animals you are made manifest."
|
| |
| In Italian homes and town innumerable
presepie - models of the nativity of Jesus, from the simplest
to the highly elaborate, constructed in almost every imaginable
material - will be on show in the weeks leading up to and after
Christmas. |
| |
| |
|
For further information about any of these study holidays,
please contact Martin Gray:
|
Telephone:
E-mail: martin.gray9@btopenworld.com
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
