Palazzo Massimo

The photographs kinda speak for themselves - the Palazzo Massimo is beautiful.

On the top floor is Livia's room, along with other frescoes roman houses - one of which may be Agrippa's and although less stunningly breathtakingl is still quite amazing.

There are stunning mosaics, in black and white and colour, of geometrics and fanciful scenes.

Further down are statues of a quality much higher than I expected from all the "roman statues are just poor copies of the greek" stuff you read in art history books - the portraits are particularly fine and interesting.

A trip much recommended - especially as the place is lovely and cool, without all the crowds you can get in some over museums (yes, Galleria Borghese, I'm looking at you!).

Morandi in Bologna

Last Thursday we went to Bologna - and it took five hours.

But was most definitely worth it. And I got to share the bus with Sharon and her group as well as being able to watch the lovely Tuscany landscape, so it wasn't all bad.

Once there, we went to MAMBO , which was mainly full of all the sort of stuff you see in GOMA - what is it with these capital letter acronym places? - but also had a set of rooms set aside just for Morandi. The above is some of my notes from this - fascinating stuff. Lots of ideas to steal for my next still lifes. If you ever get the chance, go. It may change your life . . . or at least your painting.

After that I wandered up to the old town. It was 41C, but all those colonnades made it comfortable even for me. There I went to the Munipical Art Collection which was quite fascinating - there wasn't really any stunning, big name stuff, but instead lots of charming very old altarpieces and icons, very competent portraits and a lovely little room at the end, painted to be like standing in the middle of a particularly well looked after wood. There is also an art gallery, but sadly I was running out of time (or so I thought) so went back to the meeting place, drank wine and chatted about the Slade School with a charming gent who knew Coldstream and Uglow amongst others. Its a hard life . . .

Civita Castellana - The Terrano Studio Center

This is my little studio while I'm here. Stunning, no?

It is however a twenty minute walk from the old town - and my shoulder still isn't really up to carrying my painting equipment for this length of time. Oh well. So I have moved most things back up to the Palazzo and am mainly using the studio for lining up the paintings once they are done.

So far I do feel they are improving - there are so many things to learn here - not least the logistics of what to take, where to find a shady spot and so on.

Think it may well be like New York, where it wasn't really until I got home that I felt my painting really started to improve.

Civita - First Day Painting

This morning was my first day painting - these were really just little experiments to try and figure out what paints to carry with me. Everything is so much bluer here - guess I'm going to have to ditch the sap green!

Above are some drawings from yesterday as I was wandering about, getting my bearings.

Roma Day 2 - Barberini Palace

Day 2 I spent in palaces - the Barbarini , the Spada and the Corsini.

All three of them are lovely buildings - the Barberini has famous stairs, as well as a guard cat, but I think it would be the Corsini I would like to live in the most - the views looking up to woods is lovely. However, I presume the garden at the Spada down towards the Tiber must have been rather great, too - but the whole place was much pockier than the other two.

All three had lots of paintings. Lots and lots, crammed all together, mainly of saints wringing their hands/being killed or Magdalenes repenting with bare bosoms. Not to my taste but as I've said before, looking at second rate paintings can be very useful in my own painting - they are much easier to analyse as to what works and what doesn't, and why - for example, I saw two St.Francis's by Caravaggio - one in the Barberini, one at the Capuchin Crypt - and I felt that the Barberini one was preferable - it is less sharp, has more humanity and mystery to it - and was pleased to note that the scientists agree. And this is something I need to remember when painting - lack of definition can be a good thing (his hands, for example, have a clearer junction between the fingers in the copy than in the original.)

If you can only go to one of these places, choose the Barberini. The Corsini was nice, had some lovely stuff including one of Rubens heads, but the Barberini has a nice Caravaggio or two. As well as few more stunners - and I never got to see floor 2, so there may well be even more than I saw.

Roma Day 1 - Capitoline Museum

And finally I've arrived.

Pretty knackered after all that hanging about airports (it was a ten hour journey from my house to the hotel) so decided to go wandering towards the Capitoline Museum . The walk was shorter than I expected - seems the center of Rome really isn't very big - so I got to enjoy a couple of hours there. It was very quiet, especially up with the paintings, which was great for me as I could get very close and really peer at them - something the guards (who were both more stylish and more numerous than the tourists) seemed quite happy for me to do. The selection is limited and almost all bible themed but getting a close look at a maybe Velazquez partially finished self portrait and an early Caravaggio alone would have made the trip worthwhile. Was also very taken with the dragon in Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo's Portrait of a Woman - a very early photo bomb?

JSS in Civita Residency

As you may have gathered by now, I'm off to Italy.

This is for a residency for two weeks with The Jerusalem Studio School , or JSS for short. They have been going there every summer for quite a while as Israel Hershberg who runs the school felt that his students needed more access to some of the masterpieces of western art - an awful lot of which hang out in Italy. For the last few years the school has settled on Civita Castellana , a town an hour or so north of Rome and not far from the road to Florence. Naples, Sienna, Bologna, Arrezo, San Seplochro and Urbino are also all on the excursion list - the two planned trips when I am there are Florence and Bologna.

This is the first year there has been residents - and the first year Terrano Studio Center has been open. So its quite an honour for me - especially as one of my co-residents is the amazing David Kassan who has been busy wetting my appetite over the last few weeks with his postings on facebook.

Also there will be students and teachers of the masterclass and also there are the students of the affiliate group run by Sharon Sandberg who is an american painter of lovely, calm still lifes. So, plenty folks - all of whom are representational painters. I'm guessing most will be oil painters like myself and most will be concentrating on landscape (also like myself!). This will be a first for me - even in life drawing there tends to be few oil painters - and I am really looking forward to talking to everyone else and seeing how they work. Lets just hope I don't spend so much time gassing I don't actually do any painting!