Artistic Boot Camp

Trudging through the disciplines of the Institute of Art Restoration

What could be more powerful than the Midwestern winter winds blowing me out of my country, away from my homeland, my language, my parents and friends? The answer sat on the welcome desk of the Italian Consulate in Chicago: a two year program at the Institute of Art and Art Restoration in Florence - the school and city of my dreams. All the art books that my mom had put in front of me when growing up, to flip through, to copy figures, to study colors, to know the stories of the Renaissance artists, the evolution of sacred to secular - it was all right there in Florence waiting for me to indulge without thinking of the sacrifices it would take to leave all behind and venture out into another country. It’s the courage a young 23 year old could have, together with innocence and unawareness to push the stuff of dreams forward. 

But really - I never could have imagined the difficulties studying art conservation,  science and humanities in Italian, mixed with the rugged practices and discipline of old masters’ techniques. The restoration institute packed in the work, there was no doubt about it, and there was no doubt that I had a sergeant for a drawing instructor - no wait - a general that insisted that we need to win the war of control over our drawing hand and pencil. Drawing upon drawing, outlines of figures and hands and feet and legs and arms, then shadows upon shadows and chiaroscuro upon chiaroscuro, drapes and folds and ratios and spacing and overall drilling pushed me seriously into past centuries. It took me quite a while after I enrolled in artistic  boot camp to realize I was in a place where ancient figurative art was respected to an extent that I could never have understood in the world I had left. 

Then there was Professoressa Passero, an unattractive site when she walked into the lecture room with her under-chin wobbling underneath a dried potato-skin face. Her short unkempt hair had scattered white tufts on top of her head, and her small wide-open beady eyes gave quick glances around the room that made her look like a contemplating chicken. We all stood up until she took her place behind the podium, put her glasses on and nodded her head for us to sit back down (yes, in Italy you stand when the professor walks into class). 

But once she started talking, her features disappeared and the art world opened its big ancient doors. Sitting in her class, she led us into the pyramids, into Greek and Roman temples and palaces.  She was our captain, our Ulysses, sailing us through the Mediterranean with boats filled with pigments to let us off in the trading markets of southern Italy. From her podium, Professoressa Passero built a house in Pompeii, and marched us through Pliny’s encyclopedia while we wallowed in hot spring pools decorated with the finest mosaics. She introduced us to the artisans of Herculaneum’s  encaustic frescos, taking a stab at their mysterious techniques and how the waxy wall paintings could have remained so lustrous and eternal after the vulcano Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD - ashes,  rock, and lava burying all that it encountered - all the way to sea.

Prof Passero turned the pages of her notebook to become one of the first Christians, and we her disciples, hiding from persecution in Rome’s underground catacombs. Primitive frescoed scenes of Christ as a Shepherd, his story and his sacrifice, may have been sketched by the very hands who had heard His voice. She read us  inscriptions in Latin, which my Italian classmates had studied in their public high schools, a far cry from my public education in Michigan. I trudged behind, while they happily  pulled me along, helping with any questions I had to keep up with our professor’s historical journey. She became the leader of our crusade, and pieced together remnants of madonnas and saints which the iconoclasts had voraciously destroyed.  We followed her words to the gothic cathedrals, and observed the making of Italy’s finest medieval frescos. Through her enthusiasm we could imagine the artists mashing every mineral  pigment available - from Siena’s earthen colors to Afghanistan's lapis lazuli painted on smooth fresh plaster so the artist’s image would eventually harden to a smooth stone wall. I’ll explain the details of making a fresco in a later post. 

At this point our Professoressa took us physically under her wing knowing any one of us students would help her  wobble up the steps to Santa Croce where we began to have classes in Florence’s real settings. Here Dante hung out with Giotto in the 13th century and wrote his hendecasyllabic verses while Giotto painted his frescoes (Santa Croce was Italy’s oldest university after Bologna). Giotto was the artist that kicked Florence into the Renaissance, and as we walked through his frescoed Chapels, Prof Passero’s voice whispered  a verse from Dante’s Purgatory: “Cimabue (Florence’s most popular artist at the time) believed to hold the powers in painting, and now Giotto has the applause, so that the other’s fame is dim”! 

She scoffed at Dante’s allegorical tomb, a hypocritical gesture on Florence’s part after the  Florentines had issued an edict of expulsion that forced the poet out of his native city forever- all due to his political views. It wasn’t until 2015 that Florence decided to officially make Dante an honorary citizen. Imagine that. 

This was only the beginning of my discovery of ancient Fiorenza through Professoressa Passero navigation of western art history by  walking the streets and into the city’s buildings. So few words for such a profound journey, so for now I’ll have to continue my adventures in artistic boot camp in my next post.

What’s your rapport with ancient art? Has a work of art ever inspired you to create something of your own? To write about it? Sing about it? I’d love to know - write your thoughts in the comments! 

Ciao for now!

Lily