Text and images by Suzanne Cerny
Suzanne Cerny was an assistant writer for the Yukon Daily News, in Whitehorse, Canada in 1968. Suzanne is a painter who has traveled, sketched and exhibited works in theYukon, California, Hawaii, Israel, Mexico, Russia, France and Italy. Prominent in Suzanne's repetoire is a collection of sketches of Jazz musicians. Questions regarding commissioned art including portraiture may be emailed to the artist at: fineart@suzannecerny.com.
Any books in the art section in the public library will give an overview of the Italian Renaissance. The 13th Century began a new period in painting with less idealized representations of biblical subjects. Christian art was shown in more humanistic representations over the next five centuries. The important lesson for me was to see everything live and in place. Before I went there, it didn't make any sense to me to hear about the northern Italian artists, the Sienese, the Tuscans, etc. I had in mind my favorite artists, Tintoretto, Titian, Giotto, Giovanni Bellini, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Mantegna, Massacio; I knew their works, but I have to say, the reproductions show little of what these works really are. These works really must be seen in the context of the country and the time in which they were created.
My entrance to Italy was by train. The train came out of London, entered France, changed stations in Paris, and traveled across the French Provence, passing through the Swiss Alpes. France is very manicured as they say. The countryside is exquisite, a special pastel green. There is much highway building going on around the Alps, probably for all the traffic going to the main ski areas. That part of Italy is farmland, with a few important small cities along the way. This evening it was kind of gray, and a little smoggy. There is industry in this northern part, and it seemed desolate. I felt disorientated at this point so my arrival in Milan was a little scary.
 My first night was spent in Milan, and I have a very bad memory of that time. I didn't speak well yet and I didn't have the general idea of how to get around in the metro. The metro there was busy, and somewhat unclean, at least compared to Moscow and Paris, and now New York, where the subways have been really cleaned up by the Italian Mayor Guiliani. There were beggars in this Milan metro too. These guys were like something out of a medieval painting, and really suffering. From my guide book, I knew that Milano was a center for fashion, that the famous Da Vinci ì Last Supperî was housed there and there were several other important museums too. I also knew that Milano was expensive, difficult to get around in, congested and that taxi drivers might rip you off. I had already looked for a bus, which seemed to be the only line that didn't exist, so I went down into the metro.
I made my way to the youth hostel, but not before I had to hassle the central station metro officers to show me exactly where the stairs were for my train, where the change point was and how to get to the next binario (platform). All this without knowing any Italian, just a few phrases, and pointing to my phrase book, while being polite, molte grazia, bene, and per fervore. However, after my wonderful 20 day experience in the rest of northern Italy, I returned to Milano on my last night, and I went to two museums and a church, the third largest church in the world, where I had a wonderful experience.
The first 8 days or so, I relaxed. I was in Cervia, a beach town much like Santa Barbara, but with Italian style houses. All streets led to the harbor on the Adriatic Sea. It felt great to be there, in Italy, and to hear Italian being spoken. It is truly a musical language, especially when spoken by children and young people. I found the things I needed: an internet cafe, an art store, a deli to purchase food that I could eat (not just pasta but bread and cheese, pizza, sweet pastries, and all the other good bad stuff which I knew would eventually make me ill because of my dairy allergy). I spent every evening at the White Corner Pub, which was owned by Silvia Bianchi, the friend I had come to visit. Silvia had been in Santa Barbara, and with her longtime friend Carolina, also from Cervia, she had been working as a mosaic artist, and had invited me to their country. I'm really glad that they did.
At the pub, which was really a large restaurant style pub, with long tables, and lots of people coming in all night long, I enjoyed the company of Silvia's friends and family, the waiters and waitresses and some American soldiers from a nearby base. I drew their portraits, and showed the sketches that I had done earlier that day. One of the soldiers liked the pastels which I was doing around the waterfront during the day, and he purchased 4 from me, for $50 apiece. This was 350,000 lira. This helped to pay my hotel bill there. Cervia had some beautiful homes and a few old buildings, and a big piazza in which I viewed a medieval festival one day. There was sword fighting and instruction, choral singing and booths where craftspeople made chain mail, leather goods, and other things which were popular during the middle ages.
From Cervia I traveled the twenty minutes north to Ravenna, a city known for its excellent Byzantine mosaics, the finest outside of Constantinople. Carolina showed me a few sites, and I glimpsed some of the fabulous golden mosaics. We walked through the winding streets, and I saw a tower, leaning very badly, because like Venice, Ravenna was also built on marshland and is said to be sinking slowly. After seeing this tower, I guessed I didn't have to go to Pisa.
From Ravenna I went north for another two hours to Venice (Venezia). On the train I met another backpacking traveler, a woman from Canada, who makes wire jewelry. She stayed at a hotel so I didn't see her again until we met up on the last night at L'Academia, - one of the larger museums housing the most famous drawing in the world, the Da Vinci, showing the anatomical man, spread eagled inside the circle in the square.
 Venice is made up of many islands connected by bridges called pontes, and separated by waterways. The major mode of travel is by ferry boats called vaporettos. My youth hostel was across the water from San Marcos Piazza, where there is a large church with 5 domes, and excellent inlaid marble geometric floors. I walked behind the piazza to an area which had a very plain looking church, called San Zaccaria. In here was a masterpiece by Bellini, showing the Virgin and infant, with a lot of other figures. You put a coin in to light the painting for a while. There was a flooded basement, because it was below sea level, and there was a 10th century tomb down there. In Venice, on the last day, I went to the old Jewish Ghetto, supposedly the oldest in Italy. The well kept synagogue was guarded behind an ordinary facade and you could only visit it on a tour. I bought some small glass pieces from an Italian Jewish shopkeeper of Judaica.
As I began to go through museums and churches in Venice, which was the first city I explored art in, I began to realize that the masterpieces of art that I studied in art history, specifically oil paintings, were only a part of the art of the entire renaissance. I began to see that the beatification, the symbolic representation of Christian thought and ideas, was central to the Renaissance. This included architecture in its minutest detail, in the largest churches (called chiesas) you can ever imagine, many altars, many fine decorations which were fine art and were created with love and incredible skill, floors of inlaid marble in exquisite geometric designs, stained glass windows in incredible colors, sizes and depictions; columns resulting in gargoyles, animals, lions, dragons, monkeys; frescoes on ceilings, cupolas, domes, doorways, caskets, tombs, mosaics, all fitting together in one great worshipping of the event which happened in Bethlehem and ended in Jerusalem, under the Roman Empire.
I began to have a feeling of love for the story of Christ and the Virgin. I began to realize that the belief in the saints and prophets, which was largely unquestioned, was a living entity for the entire Italian area. By the time I got to Florence (Firenze), I saw that this was no joke, no tourist trap, no set up to view art. I am sure that this was the intention of all of this art, to show the glory of the time and life of Christ, John the Baptist, and the other saints and figures of the bible. I understand that the artists who were commissioned to do this work were chosen through competitions, and they were paid by the family di Medici. Or paid by the Pope, or which ever village or city was deciding to erect a fantastic house of worship. I began to get the sense of belief, of caring, of real search within the subjects of the old and new testaments. Almost everything is in place, in the place where it was created and intended to be. Very little is moved and transported to another city or location.
 Italy is a country which remains unchanged since Roman times. Except for some new apartments built in some cities, and office buildings, no old houses have been torn down to make room for progress. What we call progress, the devastation of nature and historical areas in order to make malls and housing developments, doesn't exist in Italy. In Italy, things undergo restoration (restauro). Old things get restored and that's it. Preservation is the order of things there. And as Cettina said, these are the masterpieces of art in the western world. The Italians have a legacy to protect.
I could see as I traveled a couple of hundred miles on the train, from one city to the next, a countryside which was unchanged since medieval times. The farms and fields had occasional medieval villages on the hilltops, with the church steeple as the central object, and frequently a wall around the whole village. There were more castles alone on hilltops with those little turrets which identify the top of a castle, than I had ever dreamed possible. I started out trying to take camera shots from the train, but I gave up. I haven't even developed my pictures. I just have a lot of postcards of the art that I liked, so I would remember it specifically.
There are many small vineyards and wheat fields for the wine and pasta which is universal here. I didn't see any tomato (pomodoro) fields, probably too early in the season. The fields and yards around buildings are not trimmed and cut, no chemicals put down; instead there are many wild flowers and red poppies everywhere. Early spring is the time for poppies. California wild poppies are golden orange, but Italian poppies are bright red and I never tired of looking at them. They grew around the railroad tracks, and I spent a lot of time at train stations (stazione trenes)!
The intercity trains in Italy run on time. Daily and regular schedules are posted at every platform, with time, type of train (express, Euro Rail, Direct, etc.), the train number, platform number, the number of stops and ultimate destination. So no matter what language you speak, if you learn these words in Italian, Partenzo and Arrive (departure and arrival) you can chart your way through Italy. I had an eight day pass for $200, which meant I could get on and off as many times as I wanted during eight of my days in Italy.
When I arrived in Florence, I did not have a youth hostel reservation. I walked towards the area which my map indicated was the direction for the youth hostel near the train station. I was, however, heading in the wrong direction. In front of me was a young Japanese woman with a backpack, so I called to her. We found the hostel together and remained friends for the next three days. We became experts at navigating our ways through the medieval streets to find the Uffizi gallery, the Capella di Medici, Chiesas, monasteries, (especially one called San Marco which had incredible frescoes by Fra Angelica right at eye level, with lots of light on them so you could see the details, and L'Academia) the school which had a museum attached and which housed the David sculpture and the last works of Michelangelo, the slaves. I also went to Casa Buonaroti, Michelangelos' home, which was painted with scenes from his life, and housed his slippers, and early sculptures and marble reliefs.
 Florence is a medieval city, with many small winding streets. Craftsmen are still fashioning leather, cutting marble slabs in their studios right off the street, and creating wonderful art. There are many small cars, Fiats, and scooters, Lambrettas, and bicycles. The river Arno flows through Florence and on the other side there were museums also. We spent some time looking for gelato made from soy milk, which my guidebook promised, but never found it. We found rice gelato, and Italian ices. We found a small ristorante owned by an old Italian family, one whose name is known in the States for pasta and pastries, and we enjoyed eating there. Another time I went to the large synagogue in Florence, built in the 19th century by David Levy.
From Florence I took a day trip to Siena. This is a hillside medieval town with a big piazza in the middle where all the main churches, museums and restaurants for tourists can be found. By this time I was getting sick from the gelato and all the wheat and dairy, so I sat out in the sun and took homeopathic remedies and did some sketching. I found an old country style Italian restaurant here, and I had traditional fragiolini (string beans), boiled potatoes, chicken, zuccini and olives, plain and nourishing food.
My next trip was to Assisi, and here I stayed in a most peaceful hostel called Ostello della Pace, which means peace. Italian is so close to Latin, that even not having studied Latin, you can almost figure out some words, just from knowing English and the Latin roots of words. Assisi is a hill town, set above the farm fields, and it stands out with the sunlight on it as something very unusual. There I met a couple of older people from Taiwan, and together we followed the map and went to all the major areas in one day. There had been a bad earthquake there in 1997, and they were still rebuilding. The story of St. Francis of Assisi is very clear to me now, and I was able to visit the church built in his honor. Of course he didn't need a church, he was able to practise his worship with the birds and animals in the forest. On our walk down from Assisi to the ostello, it was very hot, and my friends from Taiwan and I stopped in an olive grove, and took naps under the shady trees.
From Assisi, I traveled for 5 hours through the Italian Riviera, on the Ligurian Sea, to Genoa, (Genova.) I spent an hour in that town, and went on to Lucca where I spent three days. In Lucca there was a wooded carving of Christ on the cross from the 8th century, by Nicodemo, and I wanted to see that, because it was supposed to be the nearest likeness to Christ. It is called the Volto Santo. I have some postcards of this carving. There is a story attached to it: The carving was put on a ship and miraculously survived rough seas, and arrived at a place called Linus or something like that. Then the carving, very sacred, was put on an oxcart, and the oxen were allowed to go in the direction they wanted, and so they went towards Lucca. That is where the carving was meant to be housed permanently. It is in a big church, and inside of a golden cage, like a bird cage. And now the simple carving has a gold crown, and a robe of gold threads and so on.
 Lucca is also a walled medieval city, with a Roman amphitheater inside. By this time I was very sick and coughing all the time, so I rested at the hostel, and I went to Chinese restaurants where the Chinese people spoke Italian instead of English of course. There were some extremely beautiful sculptures, and illuminated manuscripts in Lucca. The doorways alone, in all of these cities, which were so ancient, and the walls and the windows, were so marvelous, every step had hundreds of nooks and crannies to be admired and stared at, with material for drawing and using as background for later works. I was in a constant state of awe.
On my last night in Italy, I checked into a small hotel. By that time, after 20 days in Italy, I knew how to quickly get from where I was to a museum of my choice, and I saw the duomo in Milano. From the third largest church in the world, I said goodbye to Italy, with tears, and promised to return. I had heard that a nearby city called Cremano, had the name Giuriati and similar names, so that is an area I would want to explore some more. I treated my 20 days as a learning experience.
The flight from Milano to London was fine. Two of us traveling on to NY had to be met by airport officials and driven through Heathrow airport to our plane. When I got to JFK my baggage was not there, because the changeover in London had been too close, and there was no time to change the baggage. There is a lot of security in JFK, there was no place to sit down, the restaurants were non-existent, the air was cold and damp and I could feel the cold going into my chest. Also, for the first time in the whole trip I was in a bad mood. It was expensive to travel by cab into NY and I had to wait four hours late at night for my baggage. When I got to George's I had to stay in bed for three days. Finally I went to visit my old Chinese doctor on Canal Street, and she told me I had a lung infection. She made me eat some dim sum with meat, and drink some hot tea. She made up some herbs and gave me heat treatments with a special electromagnetic lamp invented in China. The treatments felt so good that I purchased a unit from her for $200. I am keeping up the strong healthy food. And I am going to Yoga and working out in the gym again.
I would like to study Spanish a little more. On my next trip I want to see Spain, the French Riviera, Sicily, Naples and Rome! In New York, I visited two cousins. Joan is a travel agent. She went to the High School of Music and Art, for music, and so I went there too. Marsha and Danny live on the upper west side, and I had visited them last time, on my way to St. Petersburg.
 St. Petersburg, unfortunately, is not exactly the same as it was before 1917. St. Petersburg was ravaged by the siege of Germany in the 1940's, and only some of the original art could be saved, with only 6 weeks advance notice to begin moving it to a safer outlying area in Russia.
I think many paintings and sculptures were saved, but perhaps other objects and certainly architectural masterpieces were lost. The bombing by the Germans almost devastated the culture there. The insides of the large Russian buildings such as the palace of Peter the Great had to be completely rebuilt and the walls, floors, ceilings and many of the artifacts completely re-fabricated according to photographs. Architecturally, there is a difference in the actual buildings that exist in Italy, and the restored buildings in St. Petersburg, which is very sad from a historic standpoint. But, the Russians have done a beautiful job in their restorative efforts. They have saved many paintings and actual works by Russian artists and I am very glad to have seen them in various museums, in both St. Petersburg and Moscow.
There is more to say about the people I met. Across the board, everyone was friendly and courteous. People were willing to help me, to listen to my pidgin Italian and give directions and interesting and pertinent information. Many remembered their English speaking experiences, and after a while many conversations were possible. I learned about their lives and they learned about me.
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