The Bottega

In September 2027, I’m turning my “happy place” into a Renaissance bottega.

I’m gathering some academic friends, some writer friends, some painter friends. Some new friends, some old friends. We’ll escape to my favorite corner of Italy, sip aperitivi in the garden, dine all’aperto, and set up our very own bottega, where we’ll paint, write, experiment, and create together. Mornings fueled by copious cappuccino, a demonstration, then paintbrushes and pens in hand until lunch and again after. Early evenings devoted to stories and the day’s work, shared over aperitivi. Dinner, and a walk through the town. Our teachers will be locals, artists and makers who know this place and its traditions.

The idea comes from the Renaissance itself.

The painters we all study in Florence didn't learn in classrooms. They trained in a bottega: a workshop that was also a shop, where masters and apprentices worked side by side, learning by doing, watching, experimenting, making mistakes, and making things together. Ideas passed from hand to hand. Craft became art. And art changed the world.

Perugino, who painted the extraordinary fresco in Panicale's little church, trained in the Florentine world of Verrocchio's bottega. So did Leonardo da Vinci. The Renaissance was made in rooms like these, where creativity was not a solitary pursuit but a collective endeavor.

I love that idea! Creativity flourishes in company. That we discover something about ourselves by making things alongside others. That the conditions for a personal renaissance might be an act of teamwork, undertaken in a beautiful place, amidst good company, a little courage, and the freedom to create.

So, for one week in September, we'll set up shop.

Our very own Renaissance bottega.

From Salon to Bottega

A salon is a house with the door open. People who make things and think about things, in one place, long enough for the conversation to go somewhere. My spring salons borrowed that tradition from Iris Origo's Tuscany. This one borrows from Umbria, which has always been quieter about its genius.

What carries over from La Foce: shared meals, Salon Conversations led by residents, days that are not full. What is new is the bottega, and what we do in it. Each of us residents will work on creating. We’ll paint, write, sculpt, and speak.

The Renaissance argued for a century about which of these was the highest art. We will do them all and skip the argument. The point is not mastery. It is range. The Renaissance ideal was a person who could draw, build, write, and hold a room. Most of us were that person at nine and then we specialized. For six nights we unspecialize. Yessss!

The place

Panicale sits on a ridge above Lake Trasimeno, walled, small enough to walk end to end in ten minutes. Perugino was born a few hills over and went to Florence to train. He came back and painted a fresco for this church in 1505. It is still there, a short walk from our door. His pupil Raphael left work in Umbria too. In Perugia the two of them share a chapel wall.

Tuscany and Umbria share a border, and that is about all they share. This is not Medici country. For three centuries it was the Papal States, governed from Rome, and it kept its own habits. Umbria is greener, quieter, and less visited, and its table shows it: Trasimeno Gamay and Sagrantino in the glass, the house's own olive oil, steaks from the Valdichiana, pasta rolled by hand, vegetables in season. Hannibal beat Rome on the far shore of this lake. It has been unhurried ever since. Get to know a special part of Italy.

Rastrello is a restored house at the top of the town. For the Bottega we’ll take over the Annex, with its own lounge, and the family suite in the main house. Nine rooms, one table, one studio. The Annex lounge becomes our bottega. Easels up on Sunday, down on Saturday.

September in Umbria is the olive harvest and the grape harvest. Long light, warm days, cool nights, the lake going silver at six.

What this is

Six nights. Limited to twelve residents. One bottega.

Each of us works on three dimensions across the week. Painting, in watercolor, the medium I know and love. Sculpting, with your hands, in a material that forgives. Writing and speaking, a page a day, and on the last night, five minutes on your feet. Teachers join us for each, all of them local. We rotate through all three. Nobody sits one out.

The shape of a day: breakfast, then a demonstration from the day's teacher. Bottega time until lunch, and again after. Aperitivi at six, when we share what we made and what we wrote. Dinner together, and a walk through the town after. One or two light days out in the week, no more.

The last night is the showing. Paintings on the wall, pieces on the table, and each resident reads or speaks. That is the bottega tradition too. The work leaves the shop.

We will not fill every hour. That is still the point.

What this is not: a tour, a retreat with a schedule, a class with homework. You do not need to paint well or write well or have ever held clay. You need to want to.

Logistics

Sunday, September 5 to Saturday, September 11, 2027. Six nights at Rastrello, Panicale.

Getting there. Fly into Rome or Florence. Panicale is about two hours from either. I arrange shared vans from both airports and you split the cost on the day, as at La Foce.

Bring nothing for the bottega. Paper, paint, brushes, and clay will be waiting for you here.

Who is this for

People who make things, or used to, or mean to. Painters who have not painted in years. Writers with a draft in a drawer. People who are good at one thing and suspect they were built for three.

People somewhere in the middle of something who could use six days and a table by a window. Residents of the first Salon, and the people they would love to bring.