Arezzo building closeups

By request, here are some closeup shots of Arezzo's beautiful buildings. The designs and colors are still current, wouldn't you say?

Sorry that the shots are not in the best focus, but they'll certainly give you a good idea.

Left side:

Right side:

More...

For additional photos of excellent quality, see the book The Painted Facades of Florence, written by Eleonora Pecchioli and photographed by Antonio Quattrone. It is full of stunning photographs of Florence's exquisite sgraffito facades. As the book's introduction says: "This phenomenon, particularly in the case of sgraffiti, derived from the late fifteenth century discovery of frescoed underground rooms ('grottoes') in Rome, which were decorated with stuccowork motifs of flora, fauna and monstrous figures mostly dating from the Imperial Age; those found in the Domus Aurea, the splendid palace built for the Emperor Nero in the heart of Rome, attracted particular interest. Fascinated by this innovative vision of polychrome antiquity and by the imagination that it revealed, late fifteenth century artists were quick to imitate it, referring to their own decorative work influenced by those models, as 'grotesques'." (ie: grottesca) I will be posting on this favorite type of art in my upcoming post on our visit to Rome.


Here are a few peeks at the book's photos.

Theresa Cheeks, over at the Art's the Answer blog, just posted about her grottesca class with Carolina D'Ayala Valva, of the Artelier Studio in Rome. The class was held at the San Antonio studio of Leslie and Nicola Vigini. Both Carolina and Nicola are the best of the world class grottesca artists. (Can you tell how much I love it?)

I want to live here!

I just fell in love with Claire Basler’s studio/home when I opened the March 2010 issue of Elle Décor UK. An old iron works building on the outskirts of Paris houses this wonderfully talented artist. Claire’s love of flowers and her garden are certainly reflected in her work.

Being surrounded by so much natural light and having the subject you love to paint right at your fingertips sounds heavenly.

The colors mixed with the grays, the old and the new, the shiny and the textured… the combinations work.

Here it is! (All photos from Elle Décor UK, photos by Mads Mogensen)

A few of her paintings (courtesy of http://www.clairebasler.com/):

I love the silver and gold leaf backgrounds in these photos!