Today's Artist at Uffizi Courtyard

Note: Kathy of Dream of Italy® has listed her favorite ten books for Italy. Don’t miss her suggestions.

Destination: Italy

Book: Art for Travellers Italy, The Essential Guide to Viewing Italian Renaissance Art by Ann Morrow and John Power, with Illustrations by Matt Morrow and Erin Round

Another lovely book by Interlink Publishing, Art for Travellers: Italy, provides a college-level class in Italian Renaissance that can be useful to the armchair traveler as well as the ones who actually get on the plane and land at Venice’s Marco Polo airport. (And wouldn’t the adventurer be thrilled to know an airport was named after him?)

Like the Italy history I discussed yesterday, this book is paperback size, but very heavy because of the quality paper used.  And now I have to tell you something that may get the most delicate book lovers rather upset.  I sometimes cut relevant pages out of books like this, so that I can take them with me, and stick a few in my purse on the day that they apply to the place we are visiting. I bring them back and stuff them back in the proper place, so I can refer to them in the future.

In my Italy book, pages 181-186, for instance, are loose because after surveying the book and reading other travel recommendations, I knew that I wanted to see the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice. It turned out to be my favorite site in Venice, and these pages, with their lucid descriptions of Tintoretto’s masterful work added a lot to my enjoyment of what can be an overwhelming experience. Walls, ceilings, even stairwells covered with the enormous crowded paintings byTintoretto, every figure telling a story…the Sculoa Grande turly inspires awe.

I also tore out the section on Florence, and used their handy guide, complete with floorplan to lead me around the Uffizi.  I laugh every time I think of a native Italian speaker talking about going to the office to view all these masterpieces of art.

At any rate, whether you approve of my method or not, I highly recommend Art for Travelers: Italy for a crash course in the glory of the Italian Renaissance.

So do you want to talk about tearing up books? I know that some people will not even mark on a book.  I make margin notes all the time.  It is a kind of conversation with the author. Just like we have here.

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