Cortona

And you're kind of living everyone's Tuscan dream.

We all remember that famous movie Under the Tuscan Sun where the California lady, you know, ended up divorced or whatever and visits Italy, finds this great villa in Cortona.

But you kind of have a very similar story, right? Last time you and I talked, it was a little too soon to say anything.

But you were in the middle of purchasing a property in Tuscany so you could return to your real estate.

So there's plenty of time ahead of you to do it.

And last year, after many, many years of work and sacrifice and saving and investing and whatnot, I was finally able to do it.

And yeah, so now I kind of split my time between Cortona and Boston when I'm not doing my tours.

Oh, how wonderful.

Can you give us the rest of the overview of what Avignonesi is?

We got about 170 hectares farmed, both in Montepulciano and Cortona, which are two areas contiguous to one another.

We are focused on Sangiovese.

We make a Nobile, which is 100% Sangiovese, and then we make a single vineyard.

Nicola likewise made the design of the church and covenant of St. Domenico and Arezzo for the lords of Pietramala who erected it.

And at the entreaty of Bishop Ubertini, he restored the Pia of Cortona and founded the church of St. Margherita for the friars of St. Francis on the highest point of that city.

Wherefore the fame of Nicola ever growing greater by reason of so great works, he was summoned in the year 1267 by Pope Clement IV to Viterbo, where besides many other works he restored the church and covenant of the preaching friars.

From Viterbo he went to Naples to King Charles I, who, having routed and slain Conradian on the plain of Bagliacoso, caused to be made on that spot a very rich church and abbey, burying therein the infinite number of bodies slain on that day, and ordaining afterwards that there should be prayers offered by the monks day and night for their souls.

And because I have spared no labor and no expense, considering myself bound to act thus in honor of God, this work, in my judgment, has in all those ornaments of gold, of carvings, of paintings, of marbles, of travertines, of variegated marbles, of porphyries, and of other stones, the best that could be got together by me in that place.

But returning now to Pietro Lorati, that panel finished whereof there has been talk above, he wrought in San Pietro at Rome many works which were afterwards destroyed in making the new building of San Pietro.

He also wrought some works in Cortona and in Arezzo besides those that have been mentioned, and some others in the church of San Fiore a Lucilla, a monastery of Black Friars, and in particular, in a chapel, a St. Thomas who is putting his hand on the wound in the breast of Christ.

A disciple of Pietro was Bartolomeo Bologhini of Siena, who wrought many panels in Siena and other places in Italy, and in Florence there is one by his hand on the altar of the chapel of San Silvestro in Santo Croce.

The ancient Etruscans always were married in the streets, before the door of the house, which was thrown open after the ceremony.

In the memoirs of the Etruscan Academy of Cortona is a drawing of a picture found in Herculaneum, representing a marriage at which a sorceress is practising divination with five stones.

The Syracusans, on about to enter the matrimonial state, used to go in procession to the temple of Diana, the goddess of chastity, preceded by chanters, musicians, and persons carrying flowers and vessels of incense, and accompanied by tame tigers, leopards, and the like animals.

The Acritus, in his second idyll, alludes to this custom.

In the convent of the Friars of St. Augustine he painted the panel of the high altar, which was a thing much extolled, and he wrought in fresco a Madonna della Misericordia for a company, or rather, as they call it, a confraternity, with a resurrection of Christ in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, which is held the best of all the works that are in the said city, and the best that he ever made.

In company with Domenico da Venezia he painted the beginning of a work on the vaulting of the sacristy of Santa Maria at Loreto, but they left it unfinished from fear of plague, and it was afterwards completed by Luca da Cortona, a disciple of Piero, as will be told in the proper place.

Going from Loreto to Arezzo, Piero painted for Luigi Bacci, a citizen of Arezzo, the chapel of the high altar of St. Francesco, belonging to that family, the vaulting of which had been already begun by Lorenzo de' Bici.

In this work there are stories of the cross, from that wherein the sons of Adam are burying him and placing under his tongue the seed of the tree from which there came the wood for the said cross, down to the exaltation of the cross itself, performed by the Emperor Heraclius, who, walking barefoot and carrying it on his shoulder, is entering with it into Jerusalem.

Whereupon they came to an agreement, and Laurentino painted him the saint, while the peasant brought him the pig, and so the saint provided the pig for the poor children of this painter.

Another disciple of Piero was Pietro da Castel della Pieve, who painted an arch above Saint Agostino, and a Saint Urban for the nuns of Santa Caterina in Arezzo, which has been thrown to the ground in rebuilding the church.

His pupil, likewise, was Luca Signorelli of Cortona, who did him more honor than all the others.

Piero Borghese, whose pictures date about the year 1458, became blind through an attack of catarrh at the age of sixty, and lived thus up to the eighty-sixth year of his life.

San Niccolo surrenders.

Piccinino attempts to take Cortona but fails.

While the Florentines were thus anxious, fortune disclosed the means of securing themselves against the Patriarch's malevolence.

The Republic everywhere exercised the very closest espionage over epistolary communication in order to discover if any persons were plotting against the state.

Wishing to have Perugia at his disposal he proceeded thither with forty horse and being one of her citizens met with a kind reception.

But in a few days he became suspected and having attempted unsuccessfully to tamper with the legate and the people of Perugia he took eight thousand ducats from them and returned to his army.

He then set on foot secret measures to seduce Cortona from the Florentines but the affair being discovered his attempts were fruitless.

Among the principal citizens was Bartolomeo di Senso who being appointed to the evening watch of one of the gates a countryman his friend told him that if he went he would be slain.

As I say, it's a leveller, but it allows people to kind of explore those hilltop towns.

There's a hilltop town which is slightly, you probably wouldn't ride it unless you were quite south in Tuscany, but it's called Cortona.

It's an old Roman town overlooking Lago di Trasimeno, which is Lake Trasimeno.

It is, I couldn't tell you what the gradient is, but it must be 40% at the top.

Under the Tuscan Sun is a movie set...

In and near Cortona, Italy, which is the little village where we stayed last week.

At this time last

week.

Oh, I thought you meant an old town in Italy.

2000 is kind of young.

The Etruscans were the first ones to establish the village of Cortona 900 B.C. Nice.

Yeah, so it's been around a while.