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Summer Workshops

The LdM Summer Workshops represent an exciting experience for people of all ages and all nationalities who wish to deepen their personal cultural experience and creative skills. Each workshop is a month-long exploration, balancing studio and classroom instruction on the school premises in Florence with field work in one or more inspiring Italian locations. For Summer 2010, LdM offers you the opportunity to explore the beautiful locales of Florence, Chianti, and Tuscania.

Discover your inner Dante Alighieri by expanding your writing skills with our Florence and Tuscania Travel Writing and Literature Workshop . This course provides an opportunity for participants to focus first-hand on the art and craft of travel writing. In Florence and Tuscania, students will explore places of historic, artistic, and cultural interest, which will inspire their reading and writing skills.

If you prefer painting, the beauty of Chianti opens up before you with rolling hills, medieval villas, and breathtaking vineyard vistas, waiting to be captured on canvas in our Florence and Chianti Watercolor Workshop. The Tuscany region is also home to 15th and 16th century paintings in need of restoration, which is the perfect opportunity for you to gain hands-on experience with our Florence and Chianti Restoration Workshop.

At LdM Tuscania, two special workshops give you the possibility to discover the ancient Etruscans. The Tuscania Archaeology Field School allows students to learn and work in an excavation environment. Or, take advantage of the varied architectural, historical and natural painting opportunities available near Lake Bolseno, Orvieto and Rome in our Tuscania Oil Painting Workshop .


Florence and Tuscania
Travel Writing and Literature Workshop

Throughout history, Italy has inspired writers to wax lyrical in ways that few other countries have done. Countless English-language novels, stories and poems have created a Œbel paese¹ of words around the Italian experience. This workshop allows participants to live in and write about the vibrant and cosmopolitan world of Florence, and to contrast their experiences there with those of Tuscania, a hauntingly beautiful hill-top town poised between Lake Bolsena and the Mediterranean, surrounded by archaeological sites that bear witness to Italy¹s most ancient civilizations.

This course provides an opportunity for participants to focus first-hand on the art and craft of travel writing, with particular emphasis on Italy, but also with excursions into other worlds - real or imaginary. Through reading, writing, and visits in and around Florence and Tuscania, students will explore places of historic, artistic, cultural and personal interest. They will learn "by example" from a selection of great travel literature from the world in general, and from Italy in particular. And they will learn "by doing", via a series of guided exercises and assignments that explore the distinctive qualities of travel writing ­ its combination of history, culture, information, rumination, musings and memory ­ and the ways in which this particular art can lead to a deeper understanding of their own experiences and cultural identity.

Dates for Summer 2010: 5/27-6/26
Application Deadline: April 15

Please click here to download the brochure for the LdM Workshops for 2010 and read more about LdM's Florence and Tuscania Travel Writing and Literature Workshop.

To apply, please download and complete the Study Abroad Application.

Florence and Chianti
Watercolor Workshop

This special summer course takes place both in Florence and in the Chianti region. The workshop focuses on observation with emphasis on the creative interpretation of the figure, architecture, object compositions, nature and open air painting. Form, value, line and proportions will be studied as means of determining space, shape, volume and composition. The lessons include the study of watercolor and mixed media techniques, the study of color theory (tone, light, value as well as interaction of color) and the analysis of the structure of a painting in its whole, in detail, and in the relationship between details. All work is based on observation and not on concept.

Three of the four course weeks will be held in Florence, where the class will work in the studio at the school premises, and one week (the second of the course) will be held in the Chianti region near the medieval villages of Radda and Gaiole in Chianti. The participants will undertake daily field trips in the magnificent scenery of the Sienese Chianti, hiking along the trails of one of the most famous and spectacular areas in the world. During this week, participants will be housed in a traditional and picturesque "agriturismo.² They will practice their painting skills through field work and theoretical lectures. The culture and history of the Chianti region will be analyzed for a better understanding of the human and architectural environment.

During the Florence class, the class will work with models, still life and other set-ups in the studio, and will occasionally work outdoors in ancient gardens, churches, museums and other places of historical importance in the city.

Dates for Summer 2010: 7/1-7/31
Application Deadline: May 15

Please click here to download the brochure for the LdM Workshops for 2010 and read more about LdM's Florence and Chianti Watercolor Workshop.

To apply, please download and complete the Study Abroad Application.

Florence and Chianti
Restoration Workshop

This special summer course can be attended at either introductory or intermediate level and is held partly in Florence and partly in the Chianti. Participants gain knowledge and practical skills concerning historical painting and restoration techniques. During the two weeks in Florence participants learn original fresco techniques, from the mixing of fresco mortar (intonaco), its application on support, to the use of pigments. Each participant makes a sinopia (preliminary underdrawing for fresco) and completes a small fresco on a terracotta support. Restoration techniques are pursued, in part through the detachment of the participant's own fresco from its support, a wall painting conservation method. Participants work with original works of art from the 16th to17th centuries as they learn how to use the principal modern painting restoration techniques to bring period paintings back to their original states. The course also briefly surveys the historical techniques used for making oil and tempera paintings, and the group learns to recognize the century in which paintings were created. Museum visits help to explain techniques used in class.

During the field workshop weeks participants will work in the town of San Gusmè in the Chianti region near the medieval villages of Radda and Gaiole in Chianti. During this period, participants will be housed in a traditional and picturesque "agriturismo.²

The class will ripristinate the original polychromatic surfaces of an important 16th-century altar in the principal church. They will remove the pigments of the preceding restoration of about a century ago, with scalpels, eliminating the chromatic distortion of this overpainting. They will then proceed to reconstruct the work with colored stucco and tempera, with a final wax stratum to complete the beautiful original effect.

Dates for 2010: 5/27-6/26 or 7/1-7/31
Application Deadlines: April 15 and May 15, respectively

Please click here to download the brochure for the LdM Workshops for 2010 and read more about LdM's Florence and Chianti Restoration Workshop.

To apply, please download and complete the Study Abroad Application.

Tuscania
Oil Painting Workshop: Painting Under the Etruscan Sky

This special summer workshop takes place in beautiful Central Italy and the participants will have the unique opportunity to sketch, draw and paint in an area that includes what was once the land of the ancient and intriguing Etruscan civilization.

The course will focus on observation of the landscape as well as on the architectural and historical richness offered by these locations. A great deal of attention will be given to the creative interpretation of nature, architectural details and historical sites. Color theory and line, form and proportions will be studied, all based on observation. Particular emphasis will be given to the interplay of light and color as key elements in a painting¹s mood.

The participants will be based at the LdM School in Tuscania and, when not on site, classes will be held here. Tuscania is an ancient Etruscan hill town close to the seaside, and nearby ancient towns of Tarquinia, Orvieto, Civita di Bagnoregio as well as the Bolsena Lake and the city of Rome are the ideal field locations for this exciting experience.

Dates for Summer 2010: 5/27-6/26
Application Deadline: April 15

Please click here to download the brochure for the LdM Tuscania Summer Offerings for 2010 and read more about LdM's Tuscania Oil Painting Workshop.

To apply, please download and complete the Study Abroad Application.

LdM Austin: North American Enrollment Services and Academic Relations
3600 Bee Caves Rd., Suite 205B, Austin, Texas 78746
p: 877.765.4LDM (4536)   f: 512.328.4638   info@lorenzodemedici.org

LdM - Italy: Main Campus
Via Faenza 43, 50123, Florence, Italy
p: +39 055 287360   p: +39 055 287203   info@lorenzodemedici.it


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