(Community Matters) a Roman friend says 75% of the world’s art originates from Italy. I don’t know if this is correct, but from three days in Rome, I believe it could be true when including ancient Rome and the principalities which form modern day Italy.
Yesterday was action packed: a tour of the Church of San Gregorio (the first Pope Gregorio who successfully merged the Benedictine philosophy that the Christian church should serve the poor with the ambitions of political supremacy) including its frescos by Domenichino (a Bologna contemporary of Caravaggio), the Roman Museum and its collection of earliest Italian and Greek sculptures, the Casa Museo Giorgio de Chicico, a tour of the Rome Gagosiam Gallery’s *Made in Italy* retrospective of 60 years of Italian artists (celebrating Italy’s 150 years of Italian reunification), cocktails on a terrace on the Spanish steps, to lunch at the private club at the Broghese Palace, a private tour by Sandro Chia of his Rome studio, cocktails at the American Academy in Rome, and dinner & cocktails on what’s got to be the most exquisite terrace of a palace in Centro.
Our guide for the day equals my friend Ron Perry in Israel – Alessandro Celani brings a scholar’s knowledge of art, architecture, history and politics. His assistants were a graduate of Cambridge interning with Senator Kerry this summer and a Harvard junior of Venetian and Roman aristocracy, the latter who I inexplicably grew so fond of he’s a candidate for godson (not to mention a likely USA house guest).
This morning attended church (then lunch) with my friends Nicolo and Rita Compagni, Principe and Principessa Boncompagni Ludovisi. He went to St Ignacio, the cathedral built by his family, while Rita and I attended the English services next door at Caravita. After a tour of the Boncompagni Ludovisi Palace, lunch at La Scalla which just happened to be 2 blocks from my hotel (especially sweet after two bottles of wine).
All very heady. I love MM’s frame not to forget I’m B list just allowed to play in an A list world from time to time. Quite true and ever mindful how my friend Suzanne Deal Booth has introduced me to almost all my friends in Rome.
(I’ve also been working on plans to bring Steven here for at least 6 months in 2013. Rome is like Marfa for him – it inspires his creative energies and douses his commercial ambitions. This trip could only be better if he was with me.) Posted from my blackberry since I think the nuns are teaching me a lesson and denying me wifi access.
Community Matters 