9am 11 Dec 09
The village of Casole is well advanced in it’s preparations for the Christmas festivities. Would you believe it a village of 950 inhabitants has a temporary ice-skating rink in the castle square. Its put to very good use but after only five days the standard is not yet Olympic. Here is me taking advantage of the lull when everyone else is at supper. It goes on till 11pm.
me skating
The live enactment of the miraculous birth is something we do every few years here and this year is one of them. It is usually very well done and bus-loads come from afar to see it. Seventy bods in Biblical dress with plenty of live stock around to make the Christmas story come alive. Cows, donkeys, sheep, hens and on the 6th of January real camels, God knows where they come from.
The via San Michele and the piazzetta in front of the Centro, being the oldest part of the village, are transformed. Not so much as a modern drain-pipe is to be seen; all are masked off with reeds or sacking so we are in a very convincing medieval village if not quite Palestine. Old cantinas are opened up to create workshops for cheese making, dyeing, weaving and spinning (one can see that the old fingers are well practised in those arts) black-smithing and even sculpture are demonstrated. Walking up our street one can truly feel the buzz of a medieval market place. It happens on the 26th 27th of December & 3rd & 6th January, 15.30 – 19.30pm
My “Good Shepherd” was inspired by such a figure with a lamb across his shoulders some years ago. The sculpture is nearly life-size in travertine. He is about to be placed with my other two carvings “The Good Samaritan” and “The Return of the Prodigal Son” on the hill of San Niccolo just outside the village. The church has a delightful Romanesque interior decorated with 17th and 18th century, rustic frescos. I see the hill as a most generous acknowledgement of the second half of my adult life spent here in Casole. I never touched stone after I left art school in Britain till I came here. There is such an abundance of beautiful stone to choose from. I spend more than half my time on it now, I am captivated. The Tuscans certainly know how to use sculpture.
MERRY CHRISTMAS