Charlotte Visits the Site of Piero della Francesca's Annunciation, Sant' Antonio polyptych

Charlotte Visits the Site of Piero della Francesca's Annunciation on the Sant' Antonio Polyptych

It is almost to the day 20 years since my friend Charlotte and I visited Perugia while spending a month in Italy.  Perugia is on a rocky steep hill, and at the top you can go down inside the rock.  There underground is a museum dedicated to one painting by Piero della Francesca.  My first thought heading in the door was, we've hiked up and down steep hills and into a cave-like space and paid an entry fee even to see one painting?  It is worth it.

What you see above is a parody of the uppermost portion.  In the interesting architecture were giant figures, Gabriel in the open space where Charlotte is standing and Mary in the covered loggia in front of the dark brown wall.  They filled the space almost to the ceiling of the loggia.  I stretched a canvas in the odd shape that you see here and painted the scene.  The sacred figures have left and Charlotte walks into the fictional space, camera in hand.  It's part of that series that includes the cats visiting sites from Duccio's Maesta (a few entries below).  This was done around 1994?  It's about 3 feet wide.

We spent a couple hours in front of that one painting (the Piero, not mine).  I was fortunate to have a traveling companion who approached things in much the same way as I liked to, slowly.  We would be in line before a place opened and the last to leave.  You could say we have been kicked out of the finest museums in Europe.  By dawdling we even managed to see the Sistine Chapel ceiling with the electric lights turned off and the room empty except for us.  The natural light was fine for viewing, perhaps more like it was meant to be seen.