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... by Valerie | Jan 26, 2015 | General interest, history, Italy, people
Days are getting longer, very slowly. I’m told it begins on my birthday, 29 December. The sun is setting every day nearer to five. When it sets at five I begin to feel the first intimations of spring. I note there are a few tiny yellow crocuses peeping up through the... by Valerie | Dec 5, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people
When we first met, I had no idea that this man in oatmeal tweeds and with sparse fair grey hair was a spy. He owned a semi-ruined property near Cortona in Tuscany. Someone had tipped us off that he had an uninhabited farmhouse to sell off the road leading through the... by Valerie | Nov 24, 2014 | General interest, history, Italy, people, travel
Olive picking in Tuscany has been the high point before Christmas. It happens in Keats’s ‘Season of mellow fruitfulness’ before the trees are bare and the earth hardened by frost. Or so it used to be. The persimmon tree in front of the house was laden with orange... by Valerie | Oct 17, 2014 | General interest, Italy, people, travel, writing a novel
It’s so mild that men are still wearing shorts, and we’re well into autumn! This morning I gazed at the chestnut tree in front of the Minster from my writing desk in front of the window. This week saw the start of serious editing of the finished manuscript. Already... by Valerie | Aug 19, 2014 | art, Italy, museums, people, travel
We climbed up the side of a hill, and it was hot. Rock tombs this time, not tumuli like the ones we had seen at Tarquinia. Then, in the Etruscan necropolis near Pitigliano, we came upon the temple front carved out of tufa, columns only stumps sticking out of the...
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