A Week in Tuscany: Chasing Beauty

Off for a week in Tuscany to get my yearly dose of high culture.  We are staying in a Fourteenth Century restored borgo, Borgo di Vagli, on the Tuscan - Umbrian border in the mountains behind Cortona.  It's within fairly easy distance of Florence (by train), Siena, Arrezzo, Orvieto, Perugia and Assisi.  What more could you want!  Will post more when I get back next week.

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Ole Espana

Went to see The Discovery of Spain: British Artists and Collections today at the National Galleries of Scotland on the Mound in Edinburgh.

The exhibition was excellent with some really outstanding work by Goya - including the terrific portrait of Wellington - El Greco and Valázquez, together with work by the Scottish Colourists and other British artists done in Spain.  These included what I thought was a rather horrible partial copy of Valàzquez’s masterpiece La Meninas.  Omitted were the two Court Dwarfs shown in the right foreground: perhaps it was considered too indelicate for Victorian tastes to show dwarfs.

In addition the Gallery was also showing a wonderful collection of drawings Raphael to Renoir from the private collection of Jean Bonna, considered by many as the best private collection of drawings to have been created in the last 20 years.  I never cease to be amazed how drawings, the raw end of art, can be so compelling and satisfying.


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