After spending Easter day not leaving the house except to go to church because of the rainy weather, today (a legal holiday in Italy, as in much of Europe) Kim and I were taken by Professor Tonino Zampa and his friend Giorgio around the countryside of the Marche. Just driving around was a real treat. In 2o02 we had a rental car, but not so this time, so the drive through the countryside after 11 weeks was awfully nice. Tonino teaches in the AHA program, and he and Giorgio were part of the quartet that put on the concert for our students a few weeks ago.

Our first stop was Jesi, a town about 30 miles away, probably best known as one of the major producers of Verdicchio wine. We visited the local art museum, which is in a former palace. Surprisingly we were able to take pictures there, so I can include a couple of things. The top photo is the "hallway," with walls and ceiling elaborately decorated with paintings depicting the seasons, zodiacal signs, different trades - as you can see it was quite long, so there had to be a number of themes.

I though this piece was wood when I first saw it
but instead it was plaster. Most of the worksranged from the 1400s through the 1700s. I believe this was an earlier work.

This wood panel was an altar piece, obviously of Christ's entombment. This was by painted by Lorenzo Lotto in the early 16th century. Tonino told us that his work was not appreciated or valued much for centuries - until only recently. Just to the right are two pieces depicting the annunciation.

Interesting side note: this is a "culture week" in
Italy and a lot of museums are offering free
admission. Not this place.

Every ceiling in every room had frescoes. What you're looking at here is actually two dimensional. It's painted, and there are no statues. Not sure the picture does it justice, but the ceilings were amazing. I would have sworn they were 3-D, but they weren't.







Lorenzo Lotto also did this altar piece in 1531 of St. Lucy.

We have seen so many works of art and such spectacular palaces that this one probably doesn't warrant as much attention as I have given it, but permission to photograph inside gave me inspiration ;)





When we finished at the museum it was time to walk around Jesi a bit. Giorgio is on the left, Tonino in the center and obviously Kim on the right.

We had a little bit of every kind of weather today. We had sunshine some of the time, a little rain, some menacing clouds and even when we were up at Cingoli (referred to as "the balcony of the Marche"), our highest point for the day at about 2,000 ft, we had some snow.




The picture above was taken at the same place as this one, only here we are looking outside the walls rather than along the streets of Jesi.










After lunch at Cingoli we went on to San Severino. Before we went up to this point, we stopped in the piazza in the center of town below, had a coffee break, visited a historic church on the piazza, then headed up. The threesome repositioned themselves for this picture. I'll let you figure out who is who on your own.








There won't be too many tourism opportunities remaining. The class crunch happens this week and next. The last day for the students will be April 5.