Canvassing Cork: October 2014

Continuing my mini-series on Tuscan street art I found on my recent Italian holiday, I'm going to share photos I took of a huge mural that has been painted in Arezzo's scale mobile.

The scale mobile is a building housing a series of escalators that have been built into a hill on the north side of the old city. The escalators bring people from a car park at the bottom of the hill, up-up-up the hill to the edge of the old city, just next to the old Duomo (the Cattedrale di Ss. Donato e Pietro) and the nearby park or "prato" (the Parco della Fortezza Medicea).

Over a couple of weeks in October 2011, a group of 30 students painted the mural as a tribute to local art hero Piero della Francesca. Piero was born about 1415 up the road from Arezzo, in the town of Sansepolcro. His contemporaries knew him mainly as a mathematician and geometer, but today he is known for his art.

Wikipedia says of Piero:

His painting was characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes "The Legend of the True Cross" in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. ...

In 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456. The cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from legendary medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found.

As a tribute to Piero, the students re-created one of the scenes from the "True Cross" cycle, depicting the Battle between Heraclius and Khosrau. Here is a photo of the original fresco, depicting the Battle between Heraclius and Khosrau (compliments of Wikipedia):

The mural project was part of a broader effort called Scenografia Urbana (Urban Scenography) that seeks to enhance the historic centre of Arezzo. The project seems to have been run by the Scuola Europea dei Mestieri (SEUM) (European School of Crafts) in Arezzo.

The mural painted by the students is huge, 200 square metres, and it runs along one wall of the scale mobile, which is only 10 minute walk from the San Francesco church. The students came from Italy, of course, and from other countries, such as Argentina, France, Israel, Palestine, Tunisia, Morocco, Spain and the US.

Here are my photos of the recreated fresco in the scale mobile. These photos move from the left of the mural to the right, and from the bottom of the scale mobili up to the top.

Incidentally, there is a small observation platform on top of the scale mobili, and this is the great view from there, looking out over the city limits to the Tuscan hills.

LINKS!!

Here are some videos on YouTube showing the students and their advisors putting the mural together:
Official video, short version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtMpa-SUuL4
Official video, long version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF91KNvxNyo
Interviews and work in progress: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZhBPy8KftA

Here are a few links where you can find articles (in Italian) about the mural painted in Arezzo's scale mobile:
http://www.informarezzo.com/permalink/9116.html
http://www.lanazione.it/arezzo/cultura/2011/10/10/597632-ridisegnano_piero.shtml
http://www.arezzoweb.it/2011/il-nuovo-volto-dele-scale-mobili-70027.html

Here is an on-line 3-D interactive computer model developed by a number of academics that allows you to virtually "walk through" the chapel of the church of San Francesco and view the "Legend of the True Cross" frescoes:
http://projects.ias.edu/pierotruecross/

And here is the background to that project:
http://www.museumsandtheweb.com/mw2009/papers/lavin/lavin.html

Here from the Web Gallery of Art site are pages on:
The fresco cycle, "Legend of the True Cross": http://www.wga.hu/html_m/p/piero/2/
The Battle between Heraclius and Khosrau: http://www.wga.hu/html_m/p/piero/2/8/index.html
Here is a webpage called "Art in Tuscany" that gives an overview of the fresco cycle, "Legend of the True Cross". Strangely, it seems to be tied to a property rental site, but the photos of the frescoes are good:
http://www.poderesantapia.com/art/pierodellafrancesca2.htm

And, here are some Wikipedia articles about:
Piero della Francesca: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piero_della_Francesca
The "Legend of the True Cross": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_the_True_Cross
The Church of San Francesco: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francesco,_Arezzo

In this post, I'll share some of the graffiti/street art that I found while combing the streets of Arezzo in Tuscany during a recent family holiday. I captured a range of pieces, from commercial art to stickers to stencils and doodles. I'll just post them all here, grouped by type, and y'all can feast your eyes on whatever pieces you like.

On a side note, as an experiment, I took nearly all of these (except two?) with the camera on my Samsung SII smartphone. I think they turned out pretty well.

OK, first we'll look at some commercial art. The first three photos were taken of pieces at a gelato shop in the old city centre. The first pic - of the Rasputin-like character - is on an outside wall. The next one is inside, as is the drawing. They have a Manga kind of feel to them. There are some initials ("ZJK") on the drawing, which I assume is the template for the bigger pieces.

The next piece adorns the doorway of a dance clothing shop....

There is a name painted into the piece, but I had trouble making it out properly at first. After some searching, I found the painter seems to be Gianluca Bosello, a painting instructor at a place called Accademia 49 in Cesena, Italy. There is a mini-profile of him at this link: http://www.accademia49.it/index.php/docenti/gianluca-bosello-disegno-e-pittura.

Also, here is a link to the shop's Facebook page, where they have a folder with photos of this piece being painted:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.160494834147775.1073741828.160491677481424&type=3

Moving on, there were a lot of what I would call "doodles" around the city, and here is a selection of the better ones....

And now, here are the stickers. There were a lot of stickers....

Rough translation: "Revolt against the modern world!"

There was some old fashioned graffiti down around the train station, as you might expect....

And there was a bit of text on the city walls as well....

Rough translation: "The fact is that of all the ways to be happy I choose you".

Very rough translation: "You who of stars dressed the sky". Probably wrong, though!

The above phrase seems to be from a fierce romantic Italian pop song called "Non è mai abbastanza" ("It's never enough") by a band called Modà. Very passionate stuff. Here's a link to the video for the song on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NRQgnsKl9Q