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Lucy Gordan

Former editor at the American Academy in Rome and at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization, with journalistic accreditation in Italy and the Vatican, I’m culture editor of the US monthly Inside the Vatican; European Bureau chief of Epicurean-Traveler.com, and regular contributor to KMT: a Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt, German Life, and the Italian food and travel monthly La Madia Travelfood. At the age of 9, I, born and bred in Manhattan, spent my first day in Italy on the unforgettable SS Saturnia going to Naples. I’ve been married to my abruzzese husband Luciano for over 47 years and we have two daughters and three grandchildren. To quote Robert Browning: “Open my heart and you will see/Graved inside of it, Italy.”

Italian Hours

Arts -

After Celebrating Food in Famous Paintings, the Uffizi Galleries Turned to Married Love

The Uffizi’s celebration started on January 29, when the Museums posted “The Doni Spouses,” narrated by the retired head art historian at the Uffizi, Marzia Faietti, on Facebook. As for Massari’s three-part sweet, “crema di bianca mangiare”, it’s a work of art in itself. Only an expert pastry chef like Massari could possibly skillfully combine the long list of ingredients and make it look like art as well…

Arts -

Dining and Drinking with the Artists at the Uffizi Galleries, but Only Virtually

“With these short videos, each lasting approximately five minutes, we aim to create an even stronger bond with our public thanks to these artworks by including them in a contemporary and vital context”, says Director Eike Schmidt… Fabio Picchi, owner of Cibrèo, Dario Cecchini, butcher and restaurateur of “Antica Macelleria Cecchini,” and pastry chef, Debora Massari teach you how to prepare the delicacies…
Nativity St Peter

News -

2020’s Nativity in St. Peter’s Square: Refreshing Change or Sci-Fi Horror Show?

The white metal roofing may protect the statues from rain, but it belongs at the entrance to an airport, shopping center, or hospital, not as the roof of a crèche. At night the lighting is very dim so the statues are in the dark. As for the stark scenario there is no backdrop and no stable and the statues too few, too far apart and all facing forward in a line-up so there is no story and no emotion. Yet I was saddened by the narrow-minded contempt from traditionalists.

Arts -

Callaway’s “The Sistine Chapel”: The Most Ambitious Photographic Project Ever Seen

They used a 33-foot tall scaffold and rig to capture every inch of the Chapel’s frescoes with advanced optics and digital photography. “The team was able to utilize three-dimensional reconstruction software to stitch together seamlessly all 270,000 individual frames to reproduce the Chapel to an unprecedented level of color [(99.4% accurate)] and detail [(1:1 scale)]. The result is the first opportunity in history for viewers to see the frescoes …with images so detailed and sharp and immersive that you feel you are there next to the artist, seeing in extreme close-up the precise colors, textures, even the artists’ individual brush strokes.”

Arts -

“Tu scendi dalle stelle”, Italy’s Beloved Christmas Carol and How It Was Born

When I moved to Rome after my college graduation, it took me only one holiday season to realize that in Italy there was no national repertoire of popular Christmas music. I was unaware that Christmas hymns praising the Baby Jesus had been sung during processions in central Italy since the 13th century. Nor did I know that, since the 16th century, numerous lullabies, particularly in Lombardy and the Veneto, and later in Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia, are dedicated to Him.

Arts -

Celebrating Alberto Sordi (1920-2020): A Beloved Roman Icon of Italian Cinema

Our preview visit was extra special because it was as if Sordi himself had invited us. As if any minute he would come down the magnificent staircase and beckon us to make ourselves comfortable on his plush velvet-covered sofas and armchairs. Everything was exactly as he and Aurelia had left it. From the front door and salone, we wandered through the dining room, kitchen, his gym with his favorite bicycle and mechanical bull, movie theater lined with Liberty-style statues of the Muses, and his study full of memorabilia….

Arts -

Celebrating St. Francis Today, When His Love for Humanity is Most Needed

This year the celebrations to honor St. Francis of Assisi on his name day are particularly festive. We can draw much courage and inspiration from his exemplary life during these difficult times. In New York City the Church of St. Francis of Assisi, in the Madison Square Garden area, first started humanitarian relief efforts during the Great Depression with a breadline. Today it continues to do so, making this the oldest parish in the United States to have operated a breadline continuously. Beginning in 1980 they also have provided housing in the neighborhood for the chronically mentally ill.

Arts -

Roberto Longhi Foundation Exhibits Its Caravaggios at the Capitoline Museums

Longhi’s lifetime ambition was the artistic re-evaluation of Caravaggio and his importance to seventeenth-century Baroque painting. He reached his goal by curating two mega-exhibitions in Milan: “Caravaggio e i caravaggeschi” in 1951 and “I pittori della realtà in Lombardia” in 1953. Besides Caravaggio, Longhi also put Piero della Francesca on the world map. Among the other artists he wrote about were: Cimabue, Masolino, Massaccio, Correggio, Carpaccio, Artemisia Gentileschi, the Futurists, The Roman School, and Giorgio Morandi.

Arts -

Gli Uffizi Galleries in Florence: How We’re Coping with the Covid-19 Pandemic

A virtual tour can never replace a real-life one.  “It’s the same for sports events or movies,” Schmidt explained. “Watching a game on TV is not the same emotionally as going to the stadium.....” Schmidt doesn’t expect a deluge of foreign visitors during 2020. He speculates that the visitors will be Florentines and Italian nationals.  Hopefully, the foreign visitors will be able to return in 2021 and it’s at that time that Schmidt thinks there will be a huge increase in visitors, just as there was after the 1966 flood (an increase of more than 1.5 million visitors) and the 1993 bomb.

Lifestyles -

“Il Canto Degli Italiani” Finally Unites Italy During the Coronavirus Crisis

My appeal to Onorevole Salvini: follow the example of your fellow citizens who are working non-stop, no matter what their politics, to save the lives of others. Unlike you, the virus is invisible. During these terrible and uncertain times, stop waving rosaries and criticizing the performance of our Government, which is yours too. Have the decency for once to go out on your balcony and sing “Fratelli D’Italia”. But I ask you: do you know the words?

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