Tuscan Glow

 
Tuscan Glow, a pale terracotta, is the name of the paint I chose for my dining room walls.

 It’s also the colour of Tuscan sunsets. 

 I know. I was there.

The view from our hotel restaurant onto vineyards and olive groves was wonderful and the food exquisitely...expensive. During the first night’s dinner a thin, bird-like woman from New York had sat at the next table. She reminded me of that Spitting Image sketch of Joan Rivers – the blond- wigged, red-lipped skeleton who clashes her bony hands together screaming, “Make-up, make-up.”

A choking noise suddenly interrupted this Italianate idyll.

It was her. Everyone froze, whilst I dashed over and offered,"A good slap or the Heimlich manoeuvre?” At which she suddenly began to projectile vomit all over the silver, the crockery and her ultra-designer outfit as her husband, with his arm protectively around her, looked on horrified, at the mess and, at me, looming large over this grotesque tableau.

Then, this horrible parody of Monty Python’s Mr Creosote blamed “just a little piece of steak, honey” and yakked on, sitting in her own personal pool of vomit, as if nothing had happened!
Later,playing chess with my petit fours, I wildly guessed that an eating disorder was the problem, and wondered if Anna Wrecksick realised what she really looked like.

Ah well, to each his own mask.

Grotesque (originally the style in Nero’s palace/grotto) is the artistic definition of the friezes we saw in the Uffizi gallery in Florence. My first view of Florentine art from our minibus as we entered this birthplace of the Renaissance was wall graffiti which read-

“Why do they call it tourist season in this shit town?”  What provoked that I wonder?

Perspective gives an interesting viewpoint and our guide explained its artistic beginnings as we gazed on the paintings (Giotto and Duccio, both Tuscans, are credited with introducing depth and volume in their art).

Florence is famous for its statues. Apparently American tourists love Michelangelo’s David because, as our guide was once told,“ He’s huge and he’s a winner.” Japanese tourists are not so keen on this in –your- face nudity and prefer to see discrete, smaller, things. The Russians have their favourites, different, as well. Fancy that!

Ah well, you see what you want to see.

Last time I saw a copy of David was in the V and A museum in London with my friend Ruth who commented, “Griff, doesn’t it make you feel totally inadequate?”Which is pretty much how Bandinelli must have felt when his constipated-looking Hercules statue was displayed at the same time as David and ridiculed as looking like “a sack of potatoes”in comparison.

My favourite portrait was Lippi’s Madonna and child. The model, a Carmelite nun in real life, had an affair with old Lippi who was a monk! Yet she looks so deceptively virginal. And as for Titian’s Venus of Urbino with her forthright gaze, pink cheeks and hand cupped over her pudenda...
Well, I understand why it caused a scandal at the time. I know what I can see.

The last exhibit I saw was this-

The Latin reads “To each his own mask."


After our day trip, back at the hotel, I, the only pale-faced Brit, sulkily refused to get into the pool in front of the svelte American guests who looked like extras from the Great Gatsby. 


Who was more vain, me or Anna Wrecksick, I wondered.

I waited until they’d gone off to titivate before dinner and then the pool was mine. 

I did my favourite party trick ( well it would be if I went to those kind of parties) – floating, buoyant in the water, aided by a magnificent pair of lungs supporting architectural domes and layers of substantial adipose tissue. With my golden hair flowing around my chubby pink cheeks and my delicate size three feet afloat, well,I have to say, I felt like a cross between Ophelia and Brunhilde. 

Back home I noticed how my tanned arms blended nicely with the Tuscan glow paint in the dining room. 

Wait a minute!

I disrobe, upturn a cream plastic bucket (my marble plinth), extend and elongate my left arm just so, look heavenwards with a suitably simpering virginal expression and...

Now I’ve tried my best to paint a picture for you.

Do tell me...

What do you see?