My Newly Saltless Diet

So I'm going to do a quick runthrough of the week so far:

Monday: class with Giovanni, did research for a paper, and a whole lot of studio.

Tuesday: Studio desk crits, more studio, get lectured at as a class for not working enough even though no guidelines have been given to us...blah blah blah.

Now the good part of the day- Watercolor class!!!
Luckily for us, we have to get out of class about 20 minutes early in order to make it to Garbielle's class since his house/ studio is aways down in the valley. We didn't get to go to class last week since we were in Rome, so we were a little rusty on our painting skills...or lack there of. As always, we found Gabrielle in his studio, cheerful and eager to help us learn. The past two weeks had been a bit rough for his family. He had surgery on his nasal passages the Wednesday we were in Rome (which he had mentioned being scared for but then he said it wasn't bad after all) and his father-in-law had passed that weekend at the age of 91. I guess the show must go on! We painted for awhile, mostly off of examples of his own work, and then were given pie and tea as usual (which we weren't expecting given the weekend they had). Gabrielle talked a bit about current events, politics, and classical writers/musicians... mostly from American culture. It never ceases to amaze me how much he knows about history and literature, ours in particular. We watched him play with his black cat for a bit; it's the fattest cat I've ever seen! I'd be fat too if I ate his wife, Maria's, baked goods everyday. Sooo good. We painted for a bit longer and while trying to show me some techniques, Gabrielle whipped out a 1 minute masterpiece, which he signed for me. Yay! By this time it was close to dinner so we had to leave. The walk home from his house is always rough because we have to go up some really steep hills, but it was especially cold and WINDY this evening. This just made dinner even more rewarding than usual.

Wednesday: Today we traveled to the little Etruscan city of Perugia. It's a hilltop town like Orvieto with beautiful views to the valleys and mountains beyond. Our tour guide was Mara, the same one we had in Orvieto. We first walked into a medieval, underground remainder of the old papal palace. Mara told us stories about Pope Paul III, who started a war in the region by drastically increasing the price of salt. The locals revolted and learned to make everything without salt, which she said explained why there's no salt in the bread in our region (Umbria and Toscana). I have been wondering what the deal was with the tasteless bread this whole time! Now I know. Apparently this Pope also required all the locals to disassemble their own homes (under penalty of death) in order to put the materials towards his own grand Papal Palace. Since the Palace was always a symbol hated by the people, the Grand Palace was eventually torn down but some of the lower passages (which is what we went through) remain.

Next we went to a museum to see some frescoes from Perugia. Mara explained that painters at the time didn't sign their work, so a lot of them have been given nicknames since their actual name isn't known. The individual whose work we saw the most of was dubbed "Perugino". I wonder where he was from. Apparently, he was the first to organize the local painters and really create a business out of it. He was also Atheist, but knew that pretty much all commissions would be of religious nature, so that's what all of his work was. The paintings were in the Baroque style of the region- basically super ornate and everything had gold backgrounds.

After the museum, we went up to a tower to see views of the landscape and then went off to lunch. The place we went to was called Dal Mi Cocco and it was one of those restaurants where you pay a flat amount and get whatever they're serving that day. Only 15 euro for a 5 course meal and wine. It was AMAZING! First, three different types of bread, then two different pastas, pork roast and potatoes, biscotti for dessert, and a cafe. We were so full we barely ate any dinner later. There wasn't much else to do in Perugia, it's one of those towns that all but completely shuts down during seista, which happens to be during all of our field trips. We had to take a tram down to the bus, but the tram looked like a roller coaster. It was super cool. Also, the mechanism that turned it around at the end of the line was like a giant lazy susan. I don't know what I would use it for, but I kind of want one.

This weekend, our friend Rachel Cooper (hey girl, hey!) is coming up from Orvieto to hang out with us and we're finally going to the antique fair in Arezzo. Yay!

Arrivedarci!