La Cappella degli Scrovegni
(not much from the outside, but houses the incredible Giotto cycles of the lives of the Virgin Mary, her parents and Jesus).

The Antiques Market is on the grounds of Villa Contarini
(the whiter middle-section of the villa is by Palladio).

The villa had a music school, with apartments for the students.

Possible XMas gift?

Mary gets to go to the market, too.

L. and I drive to Padova in a car from good old Citicar Rentals. We actually got the car yesterday, hauled all the T’Giving stuff to Josh and Audrey’s in the trunk. Now we are going to see the second of three regional Mantegna shows. The first we saw with Mom in Verona and the third is in Mantova- we had planned to hit that show with Roberta and Michael. Mantegna did his major works in and around these three cities, thus the theme.

We also want to see the famous Giotto frescoes in the Scrovegni Chapel, so beautifully written of by Henry James in his Italian Tales. Padova is a cool city, larger than Verona but no urban jungle. The old center is largely porticoed and has that intimate, meandering Medieval quality. The more urban shopping area has the same fin de siecle vibe one gets in Milan, with streetcars, grand stone edifices, gilt-edged cafes with mirrors and vast, shining bars. Whereas many commercial interiors in Verona seem to have been cheaply renovated in the 80’s, willfully discarding any flavor of recently old Italy, Padova retains traces of the early in the 20th Century along with the truly antique.

The Mantegna is underwhelming, though there are one or two doozies, in particular a set of finely rendered profile portraits by Mantegna and contemporaries. A wall display shows attempted reassembling of a huge Mantegna fresco from the nearby Eremetani Church which was blown to bits near the end of WWII. Maybe a quarter of the original work still remains in the chiesa and one can imagine how awesome it must have been. There were black and white photos taken of the opera entire and the destroyed areas have been projected in real scale on the soaring chapel walls.

We swing through the greater museum in which the Mantegna show is housed. The Padova Museum is situated on the grounds of a small Roman Arena. Not much remains, only a scrap of stone wall and the oval imprint in the landscape. Many other structures came and went over the years. There was a palazzo, now entirely gone, which adjoined the Scrovegni Chapel and this is where we go to see our good friend Giotto.

We do Thanksgiving dinner at Josh and Audrey’s. There are several of their friends there, Sara, Fabio, Fausto and his wife Silvia who just had a baby, Silvia’s folks, Chiara and her ragazzo (?) Andrea – who else? L. makes her Nanna’s famous rolls, a tray of delicious puff pastry appetizers, green beans, plus she gives Josh free use of her giant Cooks Illustrated cook book to help him achieve a perfect turkey.

Josh and Audrey chose to hold the event on Saturday rather than Thursday since everyone would be free on the weekend and, in any case, the sanctity of the Thursday and it’s glorious promise of football and four-day weekend is a moot point here in Italy. We try to explain the day’s significance to the Italians, especially the part about the Xmas shopping season firing up next morning. Somehow, it gratifies me to see that they didn’t know the story. Why the Hell should they care? I really did miss Peg Spera’s house and the football games. I’ll never be able to groove on “calcio” like I do the NFL.

The Italians are funny about the food. The idea of filling your plate all at once with turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes, rolls, and stuffing, then dousing the whole mess with gravy strikes them as slightly distasteful, I think. Italians usually eat in courses, the antipasta with bread, the pasta, the vegetables and meat on separate plates, the dolce and grappa, everything in set order. Certain of us Americans can tire of this time-consuming method. When it comes to food, we’d rather grab it and growl, wolf it down, and hit the easy chair for a snooze. (For myself, I’m a slow eater with a bottomless appetite so the Italian way is a perfect fit.) Also, the pumpkin pie is a dud. Fortunately, Silvia brings some genuine Italian apple-cake so no one must go without. Another fun night with Josh and Audrey.

L. Note: Josh and Audrey cooked a perfect turkey. Ringraziamente to J&A, to Cook’s Illustrated, and to locally grown food. Steve forgot to mention our game of Pictionary – on top of that too-full Thanksgiving feeling, impossible!

We have dinner and a lesson at Rosa and Catalina’s pad. Rosa’s sister Maria is there, a funny and boisterous lady with a mouthful of metal-capped teeth. They are frying a bread and cheese concoction from Moldavia which is heavy and greasy and delicious. The sister keeps saying that this is how they eat back home, this is the real deal. The Italians with their pasta! Breakfast, lunch, and dinner – Maria is incredulous. Rosa pours us brimming cups of this super-sweet red wine and we go over the details of Catalina’s application to the Arts Institute at Bournemouth. Would be so great if we could help get her accepted!

For no good reason, I started a series of sketchy pastel and graphite pics., totally for myself. Fun, but it’s something of a distraction from the commission work I have to get done. L. has been encouraging me to return to my looser line touch. The fifteen graphites I finished just after Mom left Verona, which were intended for a new SLM Comic, are mostly too tight, she thinks. I have been rendering my subjects rather carefully of late, tracing and retracing and maybe “taming” my line too much. Sunday, when we get back from Rosa’s, I work on a new Tanguy Houseplant pic, a fantastical dude with three heads and a big arm. I have a Triple-Dog, a Devil Dog, and an Angry Tourist in the works as well. Need to get started on my commissions!

I decide to back out of the whole Licia Massella, Bussolengo gig. Anna has a friend who saw the cards I gave her on Monday – now the friend wants a portrait. This is Sonia. She wants a portrait of her two daughters and their new little dog, Penny. I’m to meet them Friday. Then there’s Leslie’s Lions and L. and my stateside friend and frequent client, Susan Fleury, who wants portraits of her two Shi’tzus for an Xmas gift. Can’t remember the exact date, but around this time I got a note from my pal in Chicago, Josh McGee (not our Verona Josh) who wants some design for a company he’s starting up. These gigs are sure money and there’s no way I can do a whole new series of Gum City pastels on top of all that work. Licia doesn’t seem to mind. Maybe we’ll do something together in the new year.

Mariella and I drive out to Quinzano to the offices of Il Secondo Circoscrizione. Lucia Cametti receives us in her spacious, window-filled office on the second floor of a stately old building. Quinzano is really a suburb of Verona, only five minutes from Bixio by car. There’s a good pizzeria right next door to Lucia’s building at which we’ve eaten a couple of times. How do I know Signora Cametti’s a right-winger? Mariella told me she’s a member of Alleanza Nazionale, almost the most right you can get in Italy.* Forza Italia, Berlusconi’s party, is on the left hand side of Alleanza Nazionale. They’re particularly committed to kicking out all the Muslims and Africans and Gypsies – the Eastern Europeans can stay as they make excellent housekeepers.

Maybe I should have turned down the chance to meet with her on the grounds of her noxious politics, but I find that I’m not much disturbed. I’m sure I won’t be asked to do propaganda for the Italian right-wing, so why not use the connection? As it turns out, Lucia really likes my work and immediately offers me a show in another little outlying town called Parona for next March. Her assistant Maurizio Flora is in on the meeting too. He’s a pleasant, nerdy sort of fellow with a withered right hand, came here to Verona from Milan because he couldn’t take the urban crush. I tell him I felt the same way when I used to live in New York. He responds, in Italian, “at least there, you could see the ocean.”

*L. Note: There are actually two more parties (that we know of) farther right of Alleanza Nazionale: Forza Nuova who are the equivalent of skinheads, and Lega Nord, who want to make the Northern part of Italy its own country. Ugh.

I met up with an Italiana named Anna who wants a portrait of her dog, Ulisse, as an Xmas gift for her husband. She heard about me from the ladies of San Giorgio, got my number from Mariella. I show her my samples and she digs ‘em, orders two portraits, one in color and one in graphite. Also, Mariella has hooked up a meeting with the head honcho of Il Secondo Circoscrizione (The Second District) of Verona, a very right-wing politician I’ve met once or twice before in the park. Her name is Lucia Cametti and Mariella is sure she can hook me up with some art opportunity.

I am working like a madman on a new set of Gum City pastels. Must get these done quickly if I am to make Licia Massella’s Bussolengo gig. Had to tear up a new version of Red Plane after more than two hours’ work. The red crayon I was using, not my usual brand since one cannot easily find Rembrandt Pastels here in Verona, is too waxy to blend. I decide to do a Floating Car instead. I am re-hashing old themes for my Italian audience. It’s no joke how unpleasant it can be, working in this style. There is dust everywhere and I am bent and aching from the awkward positions I must assume when rubbing in the tone. At the end of a Gum City session, I feel spaced out, focus shaken, kind of uncertain as to where or who I am. The first bit, choosing my colors and
drawing them in, imagining how cool this one is going to turn out- that part’s okay. It’s the other twenty or so hours I dislike. Guess I’ll never be satisfied. When nobody seemed to care about or want my work earlier in the year, I griped about having to motivate myself in a vacuum; now I am facing real demand and I feel all burdened and stressed.