Teaching Art in Florence, Italy

Cari Amici,

I mentioned before that I have been working as an assistant for Martinho Correia at the Angel Academy of Art here in Florence, Italy.
Martinho has been teaching a 2-week workshop on Painting Methods of the Great European Academies.


By day, we worked in the studio in the traditional method of learning how to paint by copying great artworks of the past. This teaches an artist so much more than copying a photograph! Martinho is shown here with one of his students. We had a great class – good energy with all of us.

One morning we all met Martinho at the mercato porcellino for a quick coffee or breakfast and then we walked to the Chiesa di Santa Felìcita, between the Ponte Vecchio and the Pitti Palace. I show you here some images I took in the church. The painting on the right is by Antonio Ciseri (1821-1891) titled “Santa Felìcita e il martirio dei Maccabei”. The bodies are fantastic and I like the zig-zagging composition. We also viewed the beautiful colors and figures of the Deposizione by Jacopo Pontormo (1494-1556), a lovely fresco on the right as you enter the church.

Our next stop was the Pitti Palace and her museums. Especially interesting was the section that the Medici family lived in. Martinho is very familiar with so many specific artworks and gave interesting comments on many of them, relating them to our current projects. Unfortunately for me, I missed too many of his art lessons because I tend to linger too long and can never seem to stay with a group for all of the time.



I often kept the studio open daily longer than promised so that we could try to get more painting done, but afterwards, we would meet one another for dinner and later, dancing. Pictured here are Ksenia, Isabelle, Martinho, and me at the salsa club Jaragua. We danced here many nights, but also visited many of the other clubs and aperitivos around Florence. One night at Jaragua, we got to see a performance by more professional dancers.

This 2-week workshop has been a great experience for me. But as much as I love to dance, the “getting-to-bed-at-5-am” routine is starting to wear on me. That said, I would probably make the same choice again because I met such cool people and we learned a lot and danced even more.