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Ponte Alle Grazie

Last Year, when I attended The Michelangelo school in Florence Italy, I shot over 3000 photographs in and around Florence including the Tuscany region. I was hoping for material for future paintings, and after meticulously going over the collection reduced the 3,000 to 23. .....In 2011 I returned to Florence and painted one of the 23 called Ponte Alle Grazie (The Bridge of Thank You) which crosses the Arno River. It's just below the famous Ponte Vecchio the world reknown bridge with literally hundreds of jewelry shops lining both sides of the structure.

The photograph attracted me because it contained some wonderful elements combined to make a great composition, the skyline of Firenze including the Duomo, the Magellen Museum, the Uffizi Museum, and of course the Alle Grazie . But what intrigued me most was the perfectly still water in the foreground reflecting the bridge as if in a mirror. Tthe water at that point is only about 3 to 4 feet deep and so it is very still and provides a beautiful reflection. It was early morning when I shot the photo so there were dark blue -purple shadows cast on the water in front of me cast by the buildings behind me....The colors were spectacular.

I completed the painting in about seven weeks and shipped it back to the U.S. I hung the painting in my gallery from November to February 2012 and it started to bother me but it took that long to figure it out. The dark bluish-purple shadow on the water worked in the photo but did not work in the painting....your eyes were immediately pulled to the shadow in the lower third of the canvas and became the focal point..not a good composition. So I decided to re-do the bottom part of the painting, extending the wall across the bottom and eliminating the blue/purple shadow all together. The structure of the picture is now more in balance forming a " Z " configuration forcing your eye to see the beautiful skyline, then on to the bridge and then back along the top of the wall in the lower part of the canvas.

A brief History of he bridge.....First built in 1227 and re-built in 1345 with nine arches making it the longest bridge in Florence. Two of the arches were filled in order to widen the Piazza dei Mozzi. The bridge was destroyed in August 1944 by the retreating Nazi Army as they withdrew before the advancing Allied forces in World War II. The bridge in the painting was rebuilt in 1953.