Thursday, September 7, 2006

I had talked to Liz about getting up early at some point and going down to look at the beautiful light of Pistoia. I was excited when she announced that this was going to be the day.

We met earlier than all the other students and headed off on the bus together. It was nice to see the photo group together, but I must say that it is a lot bigger than it has been in other semesters, so it may be interesting trying to vie for time with Liz. I’m sure that I will be able to manage though.

The photo class walked around Pistoia for a while looking at the way that the light hit different buildings in different light. We then spent quite a bit of time evaluating and photographing two particular subjects.

I eventually convinced Liz to take us to the food market. Even though the lighting wasn’t the best, it was fun to take some candid shots of people as they buy and sell food. I enjoyed my time there. The class then headed off to the photo store called Foto Lux in Pistoia.

We met Jeffrey later on in the morning in front of one of the churches. He took us in. It was a very simple church. I liked the feel of it though. It wasn’t big and full of ornate things, but it gave the feel of a holy place and the art in it was fabulous. One thing of note was the masterpiece of Della Robia . Della Robia carves things out of terra cotta and then glazes it to look like marble. The sculpture that we saw by him was really nice.

When we left the church, we went to another building that has been turned into a museum. It used to be a church, and in a recent restoration, it was discovered that there were some really amazing frescoes. They were well preserved. We spent quite a bit of time looking at them and trying to make out the scenes that they depicted.

We headed up to the villa at about 13:00. Lunch looked really good, but of course I was not feeling well, so apples became the lunch for me.

After lunch, we had more basic lectures in writing, drawing, photography and art history.

Dinner was corn grits and mushrooms, fish, chicken, carrots, potatoes, salad, cheese and fruit.

We read more Dante after dinner.