art | Countries Beginning with I

This week I was in Grenoble, France, filming for Sun. Enrico drove over from Lecco to join me on Friday, and we spent the weekend there together. It was too cold to do much roaming around outside, so we went to Grenoble’s fine arts museum, which features a small but impressive collection of paintings, arranged by date and country.

Even as I approached it from a distance, I knew this “God Chastising Adam and Eve” had to be by an Italian painter, using Italian models.

I mean, just look at that Adam. His entire expression and posture are eloquently Italian, a cross between a shrug and Che ci vuoi fare? E’ stata lei! (“What do you want? It was her!”)

Yup, sure enough: Domenico Zampieri, aka il Domenichino.

picture source: Wikimedia Commons

above: Pippi Longcow with a junior art critic – Piazza Castello

Street art didn’t fare so well in Milan. The newspapers reported that Milan set a record for the number of cows vandalized, particularly during the night that the AC Milan football club won the European championships for the seventh time. The poor cows were variously burned, thrown into a fountain, or simply taken away. They had been intended to be sold to raise money for charity. Alternative ways to raise this money are now being explored.

Here are a few I managed to salvage photographically.