Piero della Francesca (ca. 1416 – 1492) has long been one of my favorite artists, one whose works I’ve gone out of my way to view. (Finding the Madonna del Parto – a pregnant madonna – in the Tuscan village of Monterchi is not simple.) Piero was from San Sepolcro, on the Umbrian border of Tuscany. While he spent some time in Florence and worked in many cities in central Italy, San Sepolcro was always his home. He is probably best known for his frescoes in the Franciscan church in Arezzo but he also painted portraits and altarpieces. His works span a good part of the fifteenth century and his backgrounds evolve from flat gold to detailed scenery and clever use of foreshortening for perspective. There is a luminous quality to his art, a particular stillness that seems to highlight emotions and even, paradoxically, action. Last year the Frick, which includes four Piero works in its collection, had an exhibition with paintings Piero made in San Sepolcro, mostly panels from the San’Agostino altarpiece. Now, at the Met Museum, there is a small exhibit (four paintings) called Piero della Francesca Personal Encounters. Two paintings are devoted to Saint Jerome and two are Madonna and child. You can get very close to the paintings and it’s fascinating to see the detail in background landscape (reflections in water, shadows) and Piero’s use of light. There is a calm and apparent simplicity in these works that, for me, confirms Piero as one of the more moving painters of the early Renaissance.
Category: News (page 8 of 24)
Maurizio De Giovanni, an author from Naples, has written many well-received gialli (mystery novels). He is known for a series set in the 1930s featuring Commissario Ricciardi, a diligent investigator cursed with the supernatural ability to see the last moments of the dead. This strange, loner detective and his faithful sidekick Maione are brilliantly depicted as is the fascist era in its menace and limitations. Also playing a vivid role is the city of Naples itself. Fans of noir fiction should like this bleak series – which has been translated into English. De Giovanni has also started a new Neapolitan series, this time, set in the present. The “prequel” Il metodo del coccodrillo (available in English) introduces Ispettore Lojacono, a Sicilian detective transferred to Naples. The following two novels feature Lojacono and his colleagues at the precinct of Pizzofalcone – a precinct which has a last chance to validate itself to the authorities and is staffed by people with “issues.” I like this series better: it’s an Italian police procedural, there are no paranormal phenomena, while grim the plot lines are slightly less dire – there’s even (a little) comedy – and the characters are developing and becoming more three-dimensional. As always, it’s great to be immersed in the wonderful chaos that is Naples.
I was amused by the kerfuffle over Mayor De Blasio’s use of a knife and fork while eating pizza in Staten Island. New Yorkers seemed to be universally appalled by this odd behavior – after all New Yorkers (and maybe Americans in general) use only hands to devour pizza. The mayor defended himself by saying that by using utensils he was being true to his roots because in Italy pizza is eaten that way. He’s right: Italians who visit or live in New York often comment on the odd custom Americans have of eating pizza with their hands… In an informal survey of Italian friends here in NYC, all (from Romani to Torinesi to Perugini to Napoletani) eat pizza with a knife and fork. That is, pizza al piatto (an individual pizza on a plate eaten in a pizzeria) is eaten with a knife and fork. The typical Roman pizza al taglio (fast food pizza, cut into rectangles and wrapped in paper, eaten as a snack or at lunch) is eaten with the hands, usually while standing or walking. So, is there one true way to eat pizza? Not really: it all comes down to culture, habit and preference.
The Open Roads Italian cinema event for 2013 will run June 6 through June 12 at Lincoln Center. This year’s movies cover a wide range of styles and subject matter, from romantic comedy to fantasy to drama to satire. Among the dramas are Marco Bellocchio’s take on the malaise of contemporary Italy, Bella addormentata, starring the brilliant Toni Servillo, and Marco Tullio Giordana’s reconstruction of the Piazza Fontana bombing and the subsequent investigations into it. Paolo Virzi’s endearing and quirky comedy Tutti i santi giorni opens the festival on Thursday.
© 2024 italiano per tutti