A Passion for Painting Billowing ruched fabric, pointy toes of dainty shoes visible from beneath flounced skirts hemmed in gold fringes and ornate trims. A bejeweled crown on a pillow festooned with gold fleurs-de-lis; and a red velvet tablecloth flowing downward, its gold trim cascading onto a floral rug. Sumptuousness at every turn. Painting in its […]
Tag: Parma
Given most European cities have been in existence for so long, it’s a bet someone famous lived within or traveled through the city limits at one point in time. Parma is a great example.
I’ve only visited Parma once but I would go back in a heartbeat because there is so much history to explore there. And one of the strongest literary figures to have lived there is none other than Petrarch. I know what you must be thinking: human suffering and unrequited love not the obvious reason to visit the Italian town lauded for the best prosciutto and Parmesan cheese in the world!
Though I enjoyed more than my fair share of these gastronomic marvels, one of my greatest pleasures was spending three days channeling the despondent state of mind for which Petrarch, one of the town’s most famous former residents, is known. Credited with inventing the modern sonnet and responsible for the second longest love obsession in the history of mankind—only Dante’s pining for Beatrice eclipsed Petrarch’s infatuation for Laura—the fourteenth-century literary heavyweight lived in Parma off and on as an adult. I love unearthing facts like this that fuel literary adventures in towns far and wide.
Narratives That Illuminate Design
Narratives That Illuminate Design If you believe that design-centric coffee table books contain nothing more than visual surveys of portfolios, I am out to change your mind today by presenting my choices for narratives that illuminate design. What has prompted this quest? Two intelligently written books in Rizzoli’s holiday catalog—both of which were published earlier […]
Poetry and Ceramics in Savona
The 16th-century poetry that sprung from Savona made a strong impression on Thomas William Parsons when he found verses inscribed on a statue of the Madonna near the town’s lighthouse during a tour of Italy in the 19th century. He was so moved, the American poet penned the sonnet “Savona: Vespers on the Shore of the Mediterranean” that […]
A Definition of Fleeting
“O nature, merciful and cruel mother, when do you have such power and such contrary wills, to make and unmake things so charming?” —Petrarch Petrarch, one of the best-known Italian poets of the Renaissance, built a legacy around the ephemeral emotion of grief. He once lamented that everything pleasing in the world was to him […]
Ally Coulter and the Opulent Salon
Ally Coulter’s grand salon on the first floor of the Holiday House NYC took my breath away the minute I entered the room. It was as if I’d stepped into a Romanesque nod to modernism that intermingles a smooth mix of time-honored and modern elements—Otto Naumann art and Newel antiques hold court alongside Fendi Casa furniture […]
Rococo Style in Italy
If I told you the most surprising thing I found in Parma, Italy, was France, would you think I’d lost my mind? I’m not speaking in concrete terms, of course; I know my European geography. I’m referring to a remnant of the French aristocracy tucked into the Riserva Palace on Strada Melloni, one of Parma’s […]