Word: tuscan
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...That thought lands us in and around the Tuscan city of Arezzo, staring at the masterpieces of native son and inveterate traveler Piero della Francesca, who, after centuries of being overlooked, is now considered one of the masters of the early Renaissance. Art historian Carlo Bertelli says Piero was appreciated at the time for his innovative way with perspective, but he is now also prized for his "enigmatic" touch. "He is a painter of enormous clarity, but also of great reflection," says Bertelli. "You could say that it was necessary that he 'slept' in these centuries so that he could...
...sister Gertrude, Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt, portraitist John Singer Sargent, painter John La Farge, novelist Edith Wharton and British Gothic writer Vernon Lee (the pseudonym of Violet Paget, whom novelist Henry James, himself a frequent visitor to Italy, called "the most intelligent person in Florence") all clustered in the Tuscan town...
...structure from The Decameron and a good part of its spirit from The Kama Sutra. Let's start with The Decameron. In Boccaccio's 14th century compendium of tales, 10 people depart Florence, where the Black Death is raging, for two weeks of food, drink and storytelling in the Tuscan countryside. In Smiley's update, the Iraq war stands in for the plague. Los Angeles, the silkier parts, plays Tuscany. As the war begins, 10 people find themselves in Max's spacious house in Pacific Palisades, where they trade stories, make breakfast and couple--here's the Kama Sutra part...
...industrial stretch of flatlands east of Pisa, Cascina is hardly the postcard Italy of undulating olive groves. With an auto-parts store behind the cemetery and the stripped face of a gravel mine in the distance, the burial service last week somehow seemed more Texan than Tuscan. Summers was wearing a pink Wrangler cowboy shirt and black pants inside the closed white coffin now pulled beside the back of the black Mercedes hearse...
There are no sarcastic e-mails from Dublin, surprisingly, and no arrogant text messages from the Tuscan coast. As soon as Boston thermometers dipped below 40, I was half-expecting a “Wish You Were Here” postcard from Valencia. Instead, I didn’t get so much as voicemail...