Opinion /Architecture / Italy October - December ‘20
RICHARD ENGLAND is an architect, poet, artist and the author of several books on art and architecture. His buildings have earned him numerous international prizes and awards.
ITALY
RICHARD ENGLAND
‘Italia! Oh Italia, thou who hast the fatal gift of beauty’
Lord Byron
The Covid-19 lockdown manifested a yearning desire to travel back to Italy and indulge in one of my favourite pastimes – sketching its marvelous historical townscapes. With the impossibility of achieving this in concrete terms, the alternative was to revisit its wonders through my old sketch books of previous visits. Working from home, I found time to rework these on-the-spot renderings into more finished drawings. Drawing depends on one’s seeing skills and the capability of analysing the essentiality of what one sees. One absorbs the whole, but documents the essence. What you draw remains with you, for what you document is not so much what you see but what you know. Italy, the land ‘the creator made of the designs of Michelangelo’, offers perhaps the world’s richest array of magical buildings. To travel to this land and appreciate its beauty remains one of the most enriching and ecstatic experiences. In these drawings I have attempted to recall and freeze past instants of my rapture and ecstasy, as a documentation of my admiration for a country that I hold particularly closely to my heart.
No.12__ Artpaper / 035
