One Smaller, One Larger
Lucca’s walls make an ideal subject for an artist
interested in the juxtaposition of clear, almost abstract, manmade forms and an
ordered Nature. Built to resist cannon fire, they resisted demolition in the
nineteenth century when many other cities, like Florence, pulled down their
medieval curtain walls and replaced them with viali—allowing the city to
spread (or sprawl) outward in modern periferie. Lucca’s walls instead
became a raised promenade, and their compelling exterior image almost demanded
that the city maintain a greenbelt around them, isolating them from the
inevitable sprawling development beyond. It is this rapport with Nature that
the walls represent, as much as their image as crown to the city, that I
celebrated in my
Palio for this year’s feast of S. Paolino. And it is a subject I happily
return to, in various seasons, to watch the light change and the forms assert
themselves against their green frame.
These are two images, the first a smaller sketch,
the second larger, painted on successive summer days (note the grass was being mowed in patches from one day to the next) at around the same time,
6–8pm. The photos show the work in progress. I’m outside the northern mural
circuit, looking toward the church of S. Frediano.
Bella
Lucca, quanto mi manca!
