This is the plein air watercolor “Giovanni’s Tower” I was working on when when the young man in the truck pulled up and showed me the pictures on his phone of his artwork. He may have been trying to tell me something of the subject I was painting but I couldn’t understand Italian.
Alas I did find out the story about it one evening at dinner with the boys when a gentleman from the company the guys were dealing with joined us for dinner at a restaurant in town near the school yard. I was telling them about what I was painting that day on the edge of town. The gentleman said… there’s a story about that tower… it was built as a rendezvous for a man and his mistress. Whenever he could get away from his wife he would go to the tower and light a light at the top of the tower and his mistress would see it from afar and know that he was waiting there for her. Eventually the wife found out about it and the tower was lit no more. (There was some sort of tragic ending to the affair… but I’m having a tough time recalling it as I’d had my share of good food and wine) but we all listened attentively and then there was more laughter and popping of corks, as no one had to drive that night. The walk home that evening in the warm Mediterranean air, Glen’s hand in mine, was wonderful.