Have Twins, Will Travel

Venice, Italy – Now I know what teachers feel like in the last week before summer vacation. We’ve reached the point where I’m ready to take field trips pretty much everyday. Honestly, nothing else is going to get accomplished here. We might as well just enjoy being in Venice for these last few weeks.

Today, Daddio had the brilliant idea that Twin V should do some “research” for his project on the Battle of Lepanto by going to the Gallerie dell’Accademia art museum. He knew that the world class museum has a famous Veronese painting depicting the battle. We would go look at it. And we might also get a peek at some of the other paintings on display.

This is not an easy painting to get your head around. But the twins spent nearly an hour studying and drawing it. They learned about allegory and identified the saints who represent Venice at the top of the painting. And while the details of the battle are too complex to discern, they did pick out the flags representing the various players.

So… never mind that we blew off our regular school schedule today. This is totally legit learning, right?

On the way home, we browsed some galleries in the vicinity of the museum. Most of them are very high end and quite contemporary. But we did wander into the studio of a folksy local artist, Enrico Orlando Martina, who stumbled out of the back room to chat with us. It was fascinating to watch him work.

Then we stopped for pizza. The sketch books are always the diversion of choice while we’re waiting, but especially after an inspiring afternoon at the Gallerie dell’Accademia and environs. By the time the pizza had arrived, Twin S had produced this gem. Just a little doodling while waiting for a pizza…