Today’s outing came with homework. North of the lake, up the valley towards the Splügen pass, sits Chiavenna… for centuries one of the busy little doors between Italy and the north, mule trains and merchants and money flowing through on the old trade route.
And just outside it is Piuro. Or rather, just outside it was Piuro.
In 1618 Piuro was a wealthy town, made rich on trade and its soapstone workshops. On the evening of 4 September that year, the side of the mountain above it let go. The landslide buried the entire town, palaces, churches, workshops, and nearly a thousand people, in one act. They call it the Pompeii of the Alps. Of all the grand family houses, one survived because it stood apart on the slope: the Palazzo Vertemate Franchi, which you can still visit, frescoes, carved ceilings and all. The family’s weekend house outlived the family’s whole world.
This alley undid me a bit. Moss on stone, a staircase worn into slumping curves, and a single blade of sunlight across the leaves. As a composition it is almost too neat… if a student handed it in you would tell them to ease off the drama. Nature has no such editor. I stood in the cool dark making value notes and thinking about how you draw absence. Ink is good at that, actually. Ink is mostly deciding what to leave white.
Chiavenna itself was all texture: carved doorways, river the colour of green glass, and the local soapstone turned into everything from cooking pots to cathedral fonts. My reference folders got fat today, nineteen photos of stone, stairs and shadow, and barely a single one a normal person would frame.
The plan for the afternoon said: bike ride out to the ruins of Forte di Fuentes above the marshes. The legs, after a morning of valley cobbles, filed a counter-proposal. So the fort keeps its secrets for another day and I gave the afternoon to the Colico lakefront instead, which turned out to be no sacrifice at all… boats, swimmers, mountains stacked behind mountains, all of it movement. Then the part of the day that does not photograph well but matters most: hours at the table with the week’s photos spread out, starting to convert all that gathered movement into actual working drawings. Gather by day, produce by night. That is the deal I made with myself for this trip.
Most of the evening pages were rubbish, which is fine and normal and part of the deal. The bird up there is the one keeper. Four hundred year old tragedies apparently make me draw soft, sleeping things. I am not going to analyse that too hard.
Tomorrow, the big smoke: Como itself.
Sunday was meant to be a rest day. Instead: a red train over the Alps, a walk through a century of melting ice, and two donkeys with the best address in Switzerland.
A sketching day in Varenna on Lake Como. Train up, walking trail through the olive trees to Castello di Vezio, eagle owls at close range, then gesture studies on the ferry pier as the lake week wraps up.
A business day in Como and Cantù, where silk built a city and lace built its neighbour. Talks with a silk printing house about printing ink work on fabric, plus 62 reference photos for the studio year ahead.
