A Brush with the Black Death

By Marc Taro Holmes in Cortona Italy

The note on this sketch says “…sound of out-of-tune bells – how does this happen?”. It seemed to me that someone would have fixed such a thing over the hundreds years these bells have been ringing. Damn tourists! Like spoiled kids, right?! Always wanting a perfect experience 🙂

So yes – one of the days during our recent workshop in Cortona (Italy) we did a side jaunt to nearby Sienna. We’d already spent some time sketching on location with plenty of 1:1 feedback, so it seemed we might as well toss everyone into the pool and go on a sketching tour.

We got dropped off at the Plaza del Duomo and started by choosing a series of meeting points – circulating around a small area, and meeting at a visible landmark in an hour. So you could stick together if you wanted, or choose to have some alone-time with your sketchbook if you preferred. Either way, we’d be back together for the next leg of the tour.

It seemed like a good model for this group of sketchers – people could find their level of artistic freedom vs. instructor attention. Each time we regrouped, people could see what we’d all found in the way of subjects. One person spent each session sampling dessert at a different café. That’s a sketcher who knows how to have fun 🙂

When I’m touring a new place, I like to alternate between the big picture, (street views or architectural portraits), smaller details of structures (carved ornaments and such), and the “human element” – which is sketching people whenever possible – or in the case when it’s all tourists and no interesting characters – then I’ll draw statues 🙂

There’s great story I heard about this gate:

Apparently this free standing gate leading from the basilica square to the larger oval track in the city center (where Sienna’s famous horse races take place) was originally intended to be the side entrance to a huge cathedral that would have massively enlarged the basilica, making it the biggest church in all Italy.

Except. The Black Plague occurred, and killed off both the work force and general enthusiasm for that project.

The gate, and some walls are still there today, implying just how impossibly big this structure might have been. It’s astonishing to stand in the street and imagine it roofed over with giant arches.

It’s always kind of magic to me, the way you sketch things, and later come to find they have some fascinating story. If you wander an area and just draw the interesting stuff – you’re always finding great things. You don’t need a guide book. Just looking at stuff, you can tell – that thing is something important!

This kind of fortuitous exploration is really inspirational to me. I feel the finding by accident, and the sketching by instinct and interest, connects me to history in a way that I’ll never get from books or documentaries.

~marc