by Valerie | Jul 16, 2015 | art, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel
Everyone who has been to Venice has looked out from the Piazzetta, the Doge’s Palace on the left and Sansovino’s magnificent library on the right, over the bevy of gondolas across the lagoon to Palladio’s San Giorgio Maggiore. It is marooned on an island – seemingly... by Valerie | Jul 1, 2015 | art, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, poetry, travel
Not long ago I was leaning against a wall warmed by the sun and reading a dog-eared copy of Keats’ poems. I have visited the house in Rome where he died – the Keats-Shelley Museum – many times, and each is profoundly moving in a different way. That is why I return... by Valerie | Jun 24, 2015 | art, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel
Our long affair with Giambattista Piranesi began when I gave John a book with etchings of Rome. I wasn’t at all sure whether I should have done this. The collection had been given to me by a former boyfriend, but it was to change his life – and mine. Many hours were... by Valerie | May 23, 2015 | art, General interest, history
For some time I have been excluded from my own emails, treated as an intruder on my own life, or as a negative alien. Hence my blog silence. This happens the moment I take my notebook away from its home base in Beverley. It starts playing up like a recalcitrant child.... by Valerie | May 1, 2015 | art, General interest, history, Italy, people
Every spring I traipse into a thirteenth century castellated building and follow the signs to ‘Tributi’. For many years I climbed up worn stone steps to the second floor, but now they have fitted a slim lift into the stairwell following decades of complaints from the... by Valerie | Apr 1, 2015 | art, General interest, history, Italy, museums, people, travel
Of all portraits of popes that fascinate me, one stands out above all others. Shudder at the sheer power and frustration of Titian’s gnarled Farnese Paul Iii , and the fear of the cardinals around him, now in the museum in Naples. He was the pope who ordered the...
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