In the classroom....

Creative Writing: 

Spoleto native, Federico Papi, who attends college at DePauw University in Indiana, accompanied the Creative Writing group to Casa Menotti, the home of Giancarlo Menotti, the famous composer, who made Spoleto famous by establishing the Spoleto Arts Festival.  After Menotti died, the property was acquired by Monini Oil Co., the major funding agent fort the arts in Spoleto.  Federico has had an internship with Monini for the past two summers, assembling musicians for a series of free concerts in the house.  He took the writers to all three floors of the home, explaining in detail what function each floor served.  Concerts are held on level 2, where our writier, Katy performed for us on Menotti’s very own grand piano.  After our visit to Casa Menotti, we returned in the rain to the convent, where I conducted individual conferences with the students in preparation for next Monday’s performance class.

Arts and Ideas Class:

 

For the first week students in Art and Ideas classes have discussed the nature of art (as something distinct from non-Art), have the debated the process whereby specific works of art can be understood and evaluated and, most importantly, have refined their own aesthetic sense by responding to specific works encountered in Assisi, Siena and Florence.  At the same time they have read excerpts from the letters of Petrarch, part of Boccaccio's introduction to the Decameron and selections from Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks in order to better understand the cultural context of the art, architecture and music they have encountered.  It has been a very full week, indeed.  By providing space for reflection and analysis the class provides students with the opportunity to integrate what they experience as they travel with what they are thinking about and working on in their major classes.

Today class was held in San Domenico, a church right around the corner from the school.  A copy of Raphael's last work, The Transfiguration provided students with an opportunity to discuss aesthetic elements of a work initially completed by one of the Renaissance's great artists.  As students discussed the work from perspectives of both form and content, they were unphased by the stature of the original painter and commented on many of the same disparate elements that have caused such disagreement among art critics for the last several centuries.