PIRANESIAN PASSAGES
Lucca’s walls make great subjects, whether in
summer or winter. Simple, prismatic forms, they provide poignant ruddy contrasts
to the green that crowns and surrounds them. Less attended to are the spaces
below/within. The walls were designed to resist artillery attack, but like all
defenses they also provided for counterattacks (sorties). Troops could slip out
in the space between the polygonal bastions and the walls themselves; to get to
those spaces one passes through the vaulted passages (the rest of the walls
are, contrary to popular belief, solid earth) that link intra- and extramural
worlds. Not designed for aesthetics, nonetheless they offer dramatic
architectural experiences that Piranesi would have loved.
I drew this scene last summer under the Bastion of S. Martino,
where the vaulted passage opens briefly to the sky and a portal for crossfire
offers a glimpse of distant grass in front of the walls, before the sortie path
disappears again through the arch on the left. I returned to paint it last
weekend, and will probably do so again. It’s an interesting, challenging
subject; part of the challenge was looking from the brilliantly lit subject to
the canvas in the shadows where I stood, which involved constantly adjusting my
eyes to the light/dark.
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To really understand what you’re painting, you need
to know your subject; right now there’s a show on the walls, with original
drawings and models, at Lucca’s State Archive:
