We went on Sunday morning (March 9, 2015) to visit Orvieto, a classic hill town, less than an hour and a half from our place in Rome if connections are brisk, which they were. Here we are at the super-modern transportation hub, Tiburtina (Rome).
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| Olivia on left, Julianne on right, and me behind the lens. Building by Paolo Desideri, 2011 see also Rome the Second Time |
It was sunny but cold in Orvieto. We complained just a little - well, some - oh all right, we complained a lot. Why was it so cold? With wind? Sunny with a bright blue sky, but frozen fingers and toes, earlobes, noses. The churches inside were colder than outside. The coffee shops were unheated. Silly us, to be fooled by the mild Roman weather! Orvieto is a thousand feet higher than Rome, and very exposed on its high mesa. We could have thought of that.
So we did the best we could in the circumstances. Once we took the funicular to the top, we split up. Julianne went to a museum, I didn't - I was focused on painting. Olivia was sightseeing and looking for gifts.
I was looking for something to paint that I could actually paint, that I could sensibly simplify. I spent a fair amount of time trying to find a good subject, in the sun, out of the wind, where I could sit and spread out paper, palette, water. Just forget it. I settled for wonderful subject, sun, and spreading out, and just put up with the standing, and the wind.
After considering any number of alleys with mysterious doorways and shafts of sunlight, and house facades with interesting windows, and so on, I found myself in a children's playground (Piazzale Carducci) overlooking the spectacular view, still scanning for my subject.
There it was, definitely - the buildings perched on the edge, the fallen-away cliff, the trees rooted in scree, and the far-away hills. This little watercolor sketch needs a few things, but I like it best of the ones I did.
5"x7" -- it's not easy getting the whole world down into such a tiny space! There's a level of frustration in trying, too. Besides, children were running around noisily, English-speaking parents were yelling, and I was slowly turning into an icicle, so I finally packed up.
I found a sunny bollard to sit on where I could paint a century plant in front of someone's doorway. That was OK, and I got a little warmer, but a century plant doesn't say 'Orvieto.' Happily, then it was lunch time, the time we all look forward to in Italy, 2 pm.
The restaurant warmed us up, and we recommend it to anyone going to Orvieto, the Trattoria del Moro Aronne. Olivia had a particularly beautiful meal, pasta rolled around spinach and ricotta:
Over lunch I got to hear what the others had been doing. Julianne, a ceramist in an earlier life, had searched out the Museo Archaeologica Nazionale.
People have been making pottery in Orvieto since before the Etruscans arrived. In the museum she found what she thinks of as real pottery, honest, functional, simple, well-designed. Here are two pictures, one of a range of Etruscan pots found in burials, and one a fragment of a pre-Etruscan pot, just the handle, which she praises as beautifully designed.
Olivia had walked all around the town, and bought some majolica plates that were so well wrapped we didn't see them, so taped and ready for packing they were. She was able to tell me the building in my painting was the Church of San Giovenale. Now the closest I can get to information about San Giovenale is a Wiki article about St. Juvenal of Narnia, and that's not too close, or it's right on the mark, I don't know which.
After lunch I took a tourist-type picture of the cathedral, a huge landmark in a small town. A bit of history: Begun 1290 and finished in 1451 or so. The cathedral marks the town's importance at that time, when Thomas Aquinas taught in the local seminary and popes used the town as a retreat from danger.
Note its stripey sides of two stones, tufa and basalt. It's got some interesting details:
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| Bronze door, detail, by Emilio Greco, 1970 |
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| Far end of the facade, Creation story, I decided |
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| A wealthy place, to include such details! |
And, a couple shots of the town, which is rather stark and full of interesting shapes and angles. Merchants put out lots of colorful flowers, lights, potted plants, and wares to brighten the place up.
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| Orvieto is almost all plain or plastered stone with beautiful and odd details |
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| Can we have some good cheer? The economy of Orvieto is tourist-directed, and the district also produces a very nice white wine, also red. |
So that was our day in Orvieto, cut a bit short by the cold, but warmed considerably by the wine. We came back on a crowded train to a milder climate and, though happy that we went, we were just as happy when we got home.
by Nancy, photos by Nancy except the ceramics photos by Julianne
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