In these post Nolan Odyssey times there is a lot of talk about translation. The thing about betweening – when one inhabits two languages simultaneously – is that sometimes access to lexicons is lop-sided. I find myself “missing the words” as we say in Italian, the verb entirely more romantic than a mere lack. A prosaic example of this is fish. I left the UK weeks after graduating from university. During my student years I never once purchased or consumed fingerless or uncanned fish and as a child it seems I was not paying attention to the menu. So now, bream or amberjack are just words, entirely uncorrelated to the schools of familiar orata or ricciola that swim freely in my mind, trailing recipes and associations.

In Italian, missing words is one thing but another is not having them at all, being rendered senza parole or speechless. This is what happened on my first FAM Trip in June. FAM stands for familiarisation and is not an acronym though a few spring to mind. What happens is this; a region or an entity decides to promote its wares to the travel industry. A trip is created around a concept and tour operators sign up to be invited. Inevitably where there are EU funds, there are politics and backs to be scratched. Red carpets are unrolled. There are free lunches – many many of them, often interminable, studded with local delicacies and punctuated by speeches from local grandees. Sometimes there are film crews for local television stations. Foolishly I signed a piece of paper agreeing to do Every Activity from Start to Finish. In retrospect travel that requires relinquishing free will should be regarded with circumspection. The organisation was essentially the opposite of a Learn Italy trip, with little regard for comfort, sleep, digestion or down-time. A typical day would start at 8am and finish at midnight, as we were herded from attraction to attraction. The word unicum was frequently bandied around to describe the singularity of everything that we were seeing.

The focus of this trip was the first anniversary of the 61st Italian Unesco Heritage site, the domus de janas – fairy houses (not my translation). There are more than 3,500 of these hypogean burial sites and necropolises in Sardinia, that date from between the 5th and 3rd millennia BCE. They are still being excavated and discovered. These rock-cut tombs reflect the funerary practices of the prehistoric communities and give a series of clues as to the domestic arrangements and lives of the living very little above ground has survived. The tombs can be in the shape of huts and rooms. We see faux beams and simulated pillars with no structural function, sagging pretend roofs and symbolic fireplaces, not unlike the stone beams and stone thatch of the roof of the Tomb of the Capitals in Etruscan Cerveteri (much later 9th century BCE to 3rd century BCE).

How fascinating, I thought and indeeed it was. The site of Sant’Andrea Priu was in active use until the 1960s; prehistoric tombs violated for millennia. Along with the ancient chippings of rock on rock there are scraps of early Christian frescoes, and traces of Roman and Byzantine occupation. The 18 room Tomba del Capo was repurposed as a church in medieval times and then used by shepherds until relatively recently for storing hay. The Tomba a Camera has a 20th century hole for a pole from which sausages were hung to dry.

An enthusiastic archeologist showed us newly discovered tombs from above, explaining that work was suspended since it was both unsafe and illegal with temperatures over 35°C. The collected group of tour operators, all wearing the wrong clothes, the wrong shoes and no hats, nodded in understanding but in truth we were all wondering why in fact we were there. We set off again, unwatered and incandescent. The temperature inside the bus was 42C.

After a sumptuous meal composed almost entirely of suckling pig and without a vegetable in sight, we were on the road again, before being deposited by a gate in the middle of nowhere. A small-town mayor appeared in a cloud of dust; on horseback, wearing bermudas and his tricolore sash. We dutifully followed him on foot through a prickly field, up a steep hill and some steps to a church that we could not enter. Under the beating sun at 2pm I began to question what I was prepared to do for a free tote bag and the gift of a calendar in the month of June. Sono senza parole, I whispered to my colleagues.

And yet, there were many new words for this Magpie. Along with domus de janas and the nuraghi (we visited many of these mysterious overground structures too) I was introduced to retabli, a type of pala d’altare that is specific to the island. An unicum no less. It all began in 1326 when the city of Cagliari, after a three year siege, was conquered by the Catalans, who ousted the Pisans and began a process of de-italianisation of the island. This is when the retabli first appeared, a far cry from the sobriety of the Tuscan art of the time. Retabli represent the vast majority of painting production in Sardinia from the late 14th century through the end of the 17th century. I learned about bisso, a precious sea-silk woven from the beards of massive mussels, apparently mentioned by Aristotle and the Bible. My Italian fish vocabulary now includes muggine (flathead grey mullet); we were served gelatinous amber slivers of the stuff, tasting of petrol and seaweed but somehow delicious. This bottarga was sourced from Cabras, a lagoon that already existed at the time of the Nuragic civilisation and was later developed by the Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans.

Sardinia is now on the radar for a future trip… but not in summer.

The Abbess picked up the phone and uttered the words: Sia Lodato Il Signore, Praise be the Lord. In retrospect, this formula was foreseeable and entirely on brand. My agnostic instinct was to hang up; reluctant to simulate belief and unsure of the correct reply. After a decent interval and some advice from the internet, I called again to book a visit to the cloistered monastery of Sant’Antonio in Polesine in the dreamy Renaissance city of Ferrara.

Ferrara is a panoply of russet, orange and reds. You have to admire a town that has agreed on its colour scheme. The red ruched blinds - la tenda alla ferrarese - are regulated by a council edict for the historical centre of town. Slim red-brick masonry abounds. We walked to the absolute outskirts of the town to reach Sant’Antonio. Benedictine monasteries are generally set apart from society and this area was once an island on the Po river, only encompassed by the city as result of a southern expansion, new city walls and drainage system started by Borso D’Este in 1438, a precursor to the more famous Addizione Erculea.

During our call the Abbess had impressed upon me that it would be best if the group was attuned to the spiritual frequency of the monastery before being admitted to the inner sanctum. She suggested that we come at 3pm sharp and hinted at a zither performance. In the spirit of underpromising and overdelivering which is a trademark of Learn Italy trips I decided to mention neither the music nor the admission process. The group filed into the dark church and sat down on a variety of chairs and creaking pews. The lights came on and we could see a grate behind the altar. An ethereal quavery treble filled the room, joined by other feeble voices of questionable musical talent. It was almost impossible to understand where the music was coming from, and only the odd cough convinced us that we were being treated to a live performance.

My guests looked around in some alarm and I motioned that this was a prerequisite for The Art, possibly confusing them by comparing the experience to the use of a verruca pool before swimming. There was a further moment of panic when it seemed as if we had signed up for a whole sung mass from an invisible aged choir. However after a blessing to the heirs of the Este family, the lights were turned off and it was clear that we had made it to Round Two. No zither.

We left the church, suitably cleansed, and stood in front of a green iron door. The bravest of us rang a very loud doorbell. A small nun appeared. She was almost completely spherical, wearing the black Benedictine habit that symbolises humility and dedication. Her winter mantle covered her hands so all we could see was her unlined face, framed by a white wimple. Her voice was high and monotone. It seemed as if she was still chanting, encircling us with a vocal lasso.

We followed her as she explained the history of the founder of the monastery, the Blessed Beatrice D’Este (1230-1262), who joined the convent when her groom-to-be died of battle wounds just before their wedding day. She was known for the magical properties of her dead body which did not decompose.. until it did. To this day 3-5 litres a year of “tears of Beatrice” are gathered and distributed to the ill. We were shown the ingenious collecting apparatus. Questions were not brooked.

Two nuns from the community of twelve have a dispensation to communicate with the outside world in conjunction with Mass and Vespers. The Abbess’ nun’s name was the patron saint of pharmacists and back pain, of purity and the resistance to temptation. It seemed that the temptation she was primarily resisting was sending us packing. Off she trundled, taking very small quick steps. We were marshalled into the area behind the altar and made to stand with our backs against the wall. The Abbess told us what we were looking at. It was not a conversation.

What we were looking at were frescoes of the school of Giotto, painted between 1315 and 1320, depicting stories from Jesus’ childhood and the Life of the Virgin Mary. In the central chapel the ceiling is decorated with grotesques, rather peculiar and worldy for a female ecclesiastical setting. The chapel on the right shows the Passion, again from two masters of the Giotto school, painted slightly later, with a rare western depiction of Christ voluntarily climbing up the cross. Giotto (1267-1337) explored the possibilities of perspective and pictorial space, bringing a new sense of realism to religious stories. His interest in humanism - what we might now call psychology - brought worshippers closer to God by making images that were instantly relevant to their lived experience. His figures are infused with an emotional quality never seen before in high art, an observed humanity that still triggers identification, centuries later. While merely School Of, the walls of the Polesine chapels show the influence of this new way of painting.

The quavery chant of the nun was infused with the same sense of shared humanity. She told us the Bible stories with disarming simplicity, fortified by profound belief in their absolute truth and unanaesthetised to their drama. Rather oddly she assumed that these stories would be unfamiliar to us. The Massacre of the Innocents was recounted with shock and absolute horror. A scene of Mary and Anna, described as a family picture for an anachronistic album, was the first time I had heard the word Nonna (Granny) to describe Anna. The Abbess showed us baby Jesus wanting to be carried by his mother like all babies do when they tire of one parent. On the northern wall some plaster had flaked away and, with tears in her eyes, she told us that they had lost the baby to the elements. Inadvertently she provided a completely different way for us to engage with the stories and frescoes than the jaded decoding of the practised viewer of religious art.

The Abbess was very clear that we take no photographs but I am left with a clearer memory of Sant’Antonio in Polesine than anything on a camera roll. I hope to return to her cloister to see the legendary cherry tree in flower and luxuriate again in Ferrara’s many shades of red.

Marco, my husband, sometimes reminds me of the character Marcovaldo, a text by Italo Calvino taught in most Italian middle schools. This 1963 collection of short stories feature an Italian contadino (not a pejorative term) who finds his life in an industrial city a perpetual challenge. Marcovaldo struggles to reconcile his country habits with urban life and feels deep nostalgia for the natural world and the ways of the past. Yes, my Marco once lived in Florence, and yes, we moved to Siena but he remains a man of his context, and that context is most definitely bucolic. This is a person who would never contemplate a walk that might involve coming home empty-handed.

In 2015 we moved from living at a winery in Montalcino to a small flat in a concrete suburb of Siena squeezed between the station and the hospital. Fortunately the following year Siena town council, in a moment of great foresight, decided to reduce their internal gardening budget by portioning off urban olive trees and allocating them to residents in exchange for their upkeep. A total of 300 trees were divided into 15 lots that would be assigned based on geographical proximity. Hopeful applicants had to submit a series of forms listing the number of their dependents and attaching a signed declaration that they knew how and when to prune an olive tree.

After this process, Marco was the proud custodian of a total of 48 trees in two separate plots in residential areas, one in walking distance from our home at the time, the other adjacent to the long avenue that leads to Siena hospital. He had to be insured in case of accidents and solemnly promise to take care of the grove “like a father” for a total of six years, with an optional two year extension. The final part of the agreement was that 10% of the Extra Virgin Olive Oil from his trees would be donated to a local charity, a food bank run by some very jolly nuns. And so, for years now, we have had the very great pleasure of our own EVOO for domestic purposes, and of being able to dispense it amongst our family members. Our eldest daughter set off to university with her own can of green gold and we never need to think about what to give my sister-in-law for Christmas.

Fast forward to this weekend. Marco had mended his nets, booked his slot at the amazing Montalcino press and was ready to pick. It is common knowledge that 2024 is a bountiful year for olives and he had been checking on his trees regularly. We were all looking forward to the rituals and celebration of the first new oil of the year.

Imagine his horror to discover the branches were bare. Someone had picked all the olives within reach. To be clear this was not some covert night operation; it had taken place over several days and in two locations. As many elderly signore walking their dogs were keen to point out, everyone knew the exact identity of the culprit; an electrician who was presumably enjoying an illicit bruschetta at that very moment. Poor Marco had to make do with the few olives left on the higher branches since the delinquent drupe thief was not equipped with a ladder.

I was initially amazed by how calmly Marco has taken this turn of events but then I remembered. No summer of ours has been without several pocketfuls of scrumped tomatoes. My beloved mother-in-law was perfectly capable of picking flowers from someone else’s garden. It is the reason that Marco only ever gifts foraged mushrooms and never sells them: a deep acknowledgement that nature is never owned.

Is this a sign of the times? Olive oil is not only health in liquid form but also expensive. A year’s supply of EVOO for an Italian family represents a significant saving. 2021 statistics are of an annual consumption of 7.5 litres per person and 2.3% of family food budgets spent on oil. Yields this year in the province of Siena range from 10% to 12% which redefines the concept of a labour of love; 100 kg of hand-picked olives yield as little as ten litres of oil. Factor in labour, transport and the cost of pressing and it is easy to understand why the current rate for EVOO bought directly from the press is €20 per liter. One of the attributes of freshly pressed oil is a beautiful bitterness - due to the presence of polyphenols - an indicator of both quality and stability. Our scant supplies of emerald green oil this year will certainly have a particular aftertaste. It is likely that we will have to buy some and I will be turning to my friends at Podere Il Ferrale - a tiny organic farm in the heart of Chianti. You might want to do the same.

And no, we will not be extending an olive branch to That Person.

It was already dark outside and the neon strips were on. The floors were shiny blue resin, the kind of surface that squeals like a rubbed balloon. The floor shimmered and it felt like being inside a ferry, underwater rather than underground. The parked cars were few and far between. In the corner the drycleaner’s door was shut for warmth, adorned with a large hand-written APERTO sign and framed by a rectangle of light.

As I turned to cross the parking lot, I saw an elderly woman pushing her trolley. I was looking at her back; her hair was a white cloud, her legs were spindly, her shoes were sensible. She was taking small steps and her posture was crooked. In the trolley there was a pot and in the pot there was a young tree. From behind it seemed as if her head was sprouting sapling branches, crowned by three white blossoms. There was something Hopper-esque about the scene; the ocean floors, the empty space and this human. I wanted to take a picture and was already weighing up the captions; Primavera or possibly Speranza. My mind’s eye was framing the scene from all angles but my phone stayed in my pocket.

I strode on, pushed through the door to be assailed by clean chemical aromas and the dilemma of whether or not to ring the bell to be served. I had a photograph of the slip but not the actual slip and not a little negotiation was necessary. Turns out that it is easier to pick up another woman’s child from school than to pick up someone else’s shirt. Finally, prize in hand, I left. My totem lady was now standing in front of a turqoise Panda, the tree still in the trolley.

Feeling the anticipatory warmth of benevolence, I walked back to her to ask if I could help lift the pot from the trolley. It was strange to hear my mother-in-law’s exact voice coming from her lips, “No, cara, faccio da me” and, just like that, I was dismissed. Denied, I left my symbol of frailty intent on moving seats. It was clear she would be planting that tree herself. I returned to the surface.

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Sometimes Italy allows access to fresco cycles that are being restored. Visitors climb scaffolding and finish up at eye-level with the artworks. It is such an amazing experience, a trip could be planned entirely around this opportunity. At the moment the Brancacci chapel (1425-1427) in Florence can be enjoyed in this unique manner. The Lorenzetti Sala del Nove (1338-1339) in the Palazzo Pubblico in Siena is also “open” until the end of January. Before you rush to book a flight, I am afraid the 54 timed entries permitted per day sold out soon after the initiative was announced. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing what else one might see nation-wide and certainly here in Tuscany every manner of subliminal hurdle is firmly in place; information only in Italian, open on alternate days of the week, kafka-esque websites, minimal advance notice. It is the usual Darwinian selection process, where only the truly dedicated will succeed.

Having had the incredible good fortune both to get tickets and to visit the two cantieri - the Italian term for construction site is the one used to officially describe this viewing set-up - I am now an absolute scaffolding convert, ruined forever for normal viewing positions. No more binoculars for me. Every time I have to look up I find myself longing for a raised platform. The reality of being face to face to these artworks, in the same relationship as the painters were themselves as they painted them, is immensely and unexpectedly moving. It is impossible not to feel kinship with the tiny number of people across the centuries who have shared this perspective and to feel the awareness that one will never see those specific works in the same way again, in the most literal sense of the phrase. Siena’s town council advertised their with a poster showing a headshot of a lugubrious Buongoverno staring right at the viewer. The brilliant caption reads: “Look me in the eyes,” the title of many an Italian song.

I have been thinking about looking, having just read A Month in Siena by Hisham Matar. In 1990 he was a young man at university in London when his father was abducted by the Libyan regime. “He was imprisoned and gradually, like salt dissolving in water, was made to vanish.” This was when Matar began a lifetime habit of looking at a single artwork for hours at at time.

“A picture changes as you look at it and changes in ways that are unexpected”

He becomes fascinated by the Sienese school of art which he finds foreign and bewildering yet full of hope and commonality. This slim volume recounts a month spent in Siena in 2016 and the pictures with which he engaged. He walks the boundaries of the town and discovers his own limits, sharing exquisite observations regarding life, art, friendship and grief. I am grateful to him for dimantling and articulating my own sense of unease when I encountered the knowing gaze of the baby in Lorenzetti’s Madonna del Latte and for his astute observations about the museum guards in the Pinacoteca.

“Has it not always seemed that these figures, and across national divides, in all the museums around the world, share the same private grievance, as though they have been let down by the rest of us?”

Yes.

Last year in Bergamo with old friends, I was introduced to the idea of observing a single work of art for three hours as an exercise in patience. This activity is promoted by Oliver Burkeman in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals, and was suggested to him by art historian Jennifer Roberts (more details and the tale of an attempt here). It has obvious appeal to my demographic1. I have yet to be provided a chair in a gallery but I do complete a jigsaw puzzle of the Lorenzetti Effects of Good Government once a year. It shows just one of the three walls in the Sala del Nove, split between harmonious scenes of urban and country life. As we were standing in our regimented group of ten on the creaky boards of the cantiere, face to face with images I had contemplated for hours, I realised that I had inadvertently trained my gaze.

Lorenzetti was the first artist to portray weather, recognisable realistic landscape and detailed architecture. There is no doubt that he is depicting his home-town, Siena, and in an inscription he is at pains to specify that he was from Siena (Ambrosius Laurentii de Senis). The Cathedral is there, as well as a team of safety-adverse builders in the act of building an unrecognisable Torre della Mangia with buche pontarie for scaffolding. These holes were rarely filled and are still visible on many buildings bordering Piazza del Campo today, a source of much joy to the pigeon community. Amazing @sienaartguide clarified that while Lorenzetti was painting the walls of the Sala del Nove, the tower was in the process of being built. She helped me see a cobbler’s assistant chewing leather to soften it, and pointed out Talamone, Siena’s much desired yet elusive port, and Monte Amiata. The details are astounding: plants on terraces, birdcages on windowsills, crenellated roofs and every shape of window. Industrious inhabitants are busy making, selling and studying. Censors at some point in history scratched off two scenes that showed gambling and a pawn shop. A special mention goes to the lady collecting rain water from her drainpipe, high up on a terrace. Scarcity of water was a huge issue for medieval Siena, evinced by the ubiquitous urban fountains and the bottini, a 25km network of underground acqueducts. These frescoes encapsulate the ideals of 14th-century Tuscany, and give a wonderful and exact picture of the daily life and customs of the time, including tools and footwear. I can’t wait to look at them again.

For the 2022 festive season Siena town council invested heavily in a video mapping of the Lorenzetti frescoes on the Palazzo facade. Civic dissent regarding the sum involved was instantly quashed after the inaugural screening. The success of the mesmerising video mapping, the sold-out cantiere tickets, and the brilliant 2018 Lorenzetti exhition that had to be extended for an extra month after 35.000 visitors flocked to Siena, are all grounds for optimism that while the Sala del Nove is closed to the public there will be something creative and wonderful organised in its stead. If you are feeling bereft, at the very least, invest in a copy of Nancy Shroyer Howard’s book for children, Mischief in Tuscany, or let me know if you would like me to send you a puzzle of your own. It will definitely take more than three hours, and you may find yourself joining the ranks of Lorenzetti fans.

Here I am, January 2023, with one foot on a yoga ball and the other on a moving barge, buffetted by the winds of Italian bureaucracy and my own doubts as I try to combine self-employment with self-fulfilment. The difficulty of this enterprise is represented by the too-small towel. It’s just a question of balance.

Why magpie? I am writing an A-Z about Montalcino full of shiny nuggets collected over the years, and the working title is The Magpie’s Guide to Montalcino….

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