Wandering around Lucca

When we were wandering around Lucca last September, I kept noticing several interesting flyers displaying a painting of an Italian villa posted in the windows of bars and gelaterias. I was impressed with the image and discovered, upon further examination, that the flyers were advertising an art show, a "mostra", that was currently being held in the courtyard gallery in one of the numerous and unmemorable churches that Lucca has to offer. One of the things I love about Italian towns is the way they casually offer up art exhibits with out pretense or a lot of fan fair. It seems that around every corner, there is an open door, with a lone artist sitting at a table reading a book, waiting for the occasional passerby to enter and gaze upon his work. As we made our way in and around the nooks and cranies of Lucca, we ourselves often dipped frequently into these virtually deserted rooms, decorated with unusual and interesting landscapes and portraits.

On our second day in Lucca, I was particularly keen to track down the show advertised on the flyer that I had seen while sharing a eggplant panini with my husband. So, after we had been fortified by a stiff jolt of espresso, we navigated the labrinth of Lucasian streets until we finally located the cloisters of the Basilica of S. Frediano. We entered, and not surprisingly we were yet again greeted by a lone artist; this one sitting at a table with a bottle of wine and a sandwich in his hand. He had just been about to close the doors and return home for a nap, but our arrival caused him to change his plans, either out of boredom or by the prospect of perhaps selling us one of his paintings. The artist turned out to be an American, who had moved to Italy in in the 1950's. He had quite a lot to say about his work and his life in Italy; the people he knew and the places he hung out in and where he painted. While the rain began to fall in the open courtyard, we walked around the covered pathways viewing the paintings hung on the exterior walls of the church. After we had finished looking at all there was to see, with our personal escort still close at hand, we thanked him and retreated out the door. Back onto the streets of Lucca we continued our wanderings and evenutally found ourselves in a small piazza where some inventive artist had assembled a miniature medieval fortress, complete with turrets and towers, but at this point, sadly due to the rain, a soggy and collapsing miniature medieval fortress. I had no worries. Within hours I'm sure, after the rain had stopped, another Lucasian would put up another "mostra" to amuse and entertain all the wanderers and causal observers that find themselves strolling in and around Lucca, without any particular direction or motive.


An acrylic study I did, from a poster I saw in a gelateria advertising Robert Shaw's show