This picture was just done for fun one summer's evening on the roof of our home in Orvieto. I had met the two friends just that morning. German students from Weimar, they were travelling round Italy on a camping holiday. Lyz and Julie stepped out of their old 90s car and into my...
What is it like to pose for one of the Belle? Here is Katia's humorous story. A young journalist from Australia of Italian origin she posed for Correspondent and also for Klimtomania with fellow Australian, her friend Daniella also of Italian origin. I stand, naked, with a...
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was the beginning of the end for the White Goddess. Amongst animals only man is conscious of his place in the world, only man realises that time passes, that he is mortal. As the word took over, as Adam delved and Eve span, the superior power of...
There is a glade near Lake Bolsena of such uncommon beauty that all those who set foot there remain enchanted for ever. This is an Etruscan place, but it could well be even older as a place of worship. The Sacred Glade was Christianised, but something of the magic remained: the frescoes...
Before the advent of monotheistic religions peoples of antiquity held that gods resided in places and that their voices holding eternal truths could be heard if you only listened - what the Romans referred to as Genius Loci. In Europe this belief persisted in country districts until...
The flowing, wavy, complex, natural forms of Rococo are the antithesis of the rigid straight lines of Classicism and about as far away from Modernism as it is possible to get. François Boucher turned his hand at a variety of genres but always his playful style epitomised the...
I have been working on a new photo for the "Belle" series. The models were Monica and Samuel from Lugano, Switzerland who had seen a documentary about "Belle" on Swiss TV. They wished to do a picture together so I suggested the gruesome story of Diana and Actaeon. Why was Diana so...
Nicolas Poussin the Frenchman and I have one thing in common, like him I have spent most of my adult life in Italy and we arrived at about the same age. The Rome he found in 1625 was however very different from today's, with a population of little more than 100,000 - more of a town...
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