La Foce Garden

La Foce Garden
8 x 8 Oil Painting
by Pat Fiorello
 $200

 

Part of the inspiration for my latest workshop, "Painting the Villas and Gardens of Italy" was seeing this book at the NY Botanical Gardens a couple of years ago.

I've been to Florence Italy and the Tuscan Region at least a dozen times and was not familiar with this particular garden. Turns out it has a very storied history which you can learn more about here. The gardens were exquisitely designed and one of the former owners, Iris Origo, was an author of the book War in the Val D'Orcia set in this part of Italy. She was a true humanitarian and used the home as a refuge for the pilgrims and peasants that had no place to stay. 

While we we were not permitted to paint on location in the garden, we did go on a private tour to better understand the history and design of the garden. I came home with lots of photo's and inspiration for future painting. "La Foce Garden" above was a small painting I did during the workshop, but I hope to create many more paintings of this special place in the days and weeks ahead.