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From a trip to Rome in 2015
Tag Archives: rome
Castel Sant’Angelo, Rome
I rented an apartment on AirBNB in Rome with a partial view of Castel Sant’Angelo, an ancient structure later used as a fortress by the Popes. The view was very partial, you could really only see it by peering over the neighbor’s patio through some kind of spiky screen covered in plastic vines. To get around that for the painting, I stood on the rickety metal steps to the roof with my easel in a planter box, on top of the crusty remains of departed flowers. In gale force winds, but I didn’t blow off.
Overcast, Trastevere
Overcast and just before a drenching downpour. This is not far from the apartment I rented for the week in Trastevere.
Foro Romano
In no particular order will follow the rest of the pictures from my trip to Rome and Venice.
I wanted to visit some of the classic sites that inspired so many 18th century “view” paintings (or vedute in Italian.) That’s where it all comes from, a hundred years before the Impressionists, and those historical pictures got in my head a few years ago and started me painting them here in San Diego.
I didn’t realize it at the time but this isn’t the vantage point I had intended to paint. I think I should have been on the other side of the Capitoline hill, which is the vantage point (I think) from Turner’s famous version of this. That painting was on the cover of copy of The Silmarillion I stole from my sister when I was kid. I loved that picture.