a letter from the Director
I first came to Italy a year out of art school. The two weeks that I spent in Rome and Florence gave me enough material to work on for a year in my studio in Brooklyn. Some of my teachers never stopped talking about Italy, and I now knew why. The light, the forms, the incredible richness of the museums and churches, and the atmosphere of art were a revelation to me. It was an experience that I felt compelled to share with other painters.
In 1988, the first year of the school, we started with the idea of a school of modern art in Italy, based on tradition and observation, that would be limited to painting, drawing, and sculpture. We would take weekly trips to Rome, Florence and other cities of art. The idea of the program has not really changed much since then. The International School has always been a place where painters could paint, and drawing would be the core of the curriculum. For the past 20 years, our students have been receiving a high quality art education in Italy, with an outstanding faculty, for a reasonable cost. Many have written to say that they learned more in six weeks at the school than they did in a semester of university.
Montecastello, a beautifully preserved medieval village halfway between Rome and Florence, is perfectly situated for a serious art school in Italy. Here you can work in a scenic environment that supports art. You are not alone in your studio, you have a community. And there is no lack of inspiration. For many, it's the incredible landscape that surrounds the school. And for some, it is the experience of being immersed in the world's greatest treasure trove of art. For others, it's the light. There is nothing quite like the light of Italy. It is rich, it illuminates, it is liquid, like a painting itself.
Where else can you see the art that has inspired painters and sculptors for more than a thousand years, in situ? Art in Italy is not just decoration, and it is certainly not a commodity. You have to experience it here to understand: it permeates the air, it infuses the light, and it even flavors the food. Italy is not an amusement park. They don't pull down the attractions at closing time. Imagine going to your local church each week and praying under a Caravaggio painting, a work that was painted four hundred years ago for the space you are standing in. In a nearby caffè, you can stand in the spot where Bernini contemplated, musing over the story of the buildings in the piazza, thinking about his next fountain, or sculpture. You walk down the same streets that so many artists throughout the centuries have walked: Giotto, Masaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Brunelleschi, Donatello, and Michelangelo; the giants of the Renaissance. They were tourists, just like you. They came to admire and study the work of the ancients, the work of the Roman and Greek geniuses, unequalled in quality, from the 6th century BC to today.
In the Letters of Anton Chekhov to his family and friends, he writes:
Here they bury great artists like kings in churches; here they do not despise art as with us; the churches provide a shelter for pictures and statues however naked they may be. It's a fascinating country. You see, Italy, apart from its natural scenery and warmth, is the one country in which you feel convinced that art is really supreme over everything, and that conviction gives one courage.
There is a church in Rome near the Colosseum, San Clemente. A 12th-century basilica, it was built on top of a 4th-century church, which was built over a 3rd-century Mithraic Temple. When you walk in here, and down the levels, you peel back the layers of Rome. In this one building are Renaissance frescoes, Byzantine mosaics, Early Christian frescoes, and Mithraic sculpture. And mass is celebrated 7 days a week. A short walk away, behind the piazza designed by Michelangelo, and overlooking the Roman Forum on one of the seven hills of Rome, is one of the greatest collections of antique sculpture in the world. Art is alive here, it is not freeze-dried, shrink-wrapped in plastic, and hung on walls. This is deep history.
An artist today may feel compelled to create something new. How thin and superficial is an art that is disconnected from the tremendous accomplishments of the past. We own the past, it is not something that is separate from us. “To embrace and absorb. That is Enlightenment,” writes Milarepa, the eleventh-century Buddhist poet and saint. We have inherited the entire history and knowledge of art before us. You belong to a tradition. Italy is the fountain. Come, and drink.
Marc Servin
