Today is mostly a driving day. We are traveling from Orvieto to Lucca. I am looking around for something to do along the way when I find Museo de Masaccio in the town of Reggello. It is about an hour and a half away and only about 20 minutes off the A-1. Yelp says it has restaurants so we should be set for lunch as well.
Masaccio is an artist whose work we will see in our upcoming trip to Florence. Masaccio, Masolino, and ultimately Filippino Lippi painted the amazing Brancacci Chapel frescoes just across the Arno from where we will be staying. Although he died at 28 he had a big impact on early Renaissance art. He was one of the first to use linear perspective and fashioned his figures using chiaroscuro making them more realistic. He helped to move painting away from the International Gothic style with its stylized figures set in gold backgrounds with elaborate ornamentation.
One of his earliest known works is the St. Juvenal Altarpiece which I came across while looking into St. Juvenal (whose church we went to in Orvieto and ran into the funeral.) He painted it when he was 22. It resides in the Museum of Masaccio in Reggello which is close to his hometown.
The museum is small but along with the altarpiece there are a few other “by the school of” works that are interesting.
A group of young people come in while we are there and turn on a video detailing the restoration of the altarpiece. They even set it to English for us. For some reason or other the curmudgeonly guy at the front desk only went so far as to turn on the lights for us.
After we are done at the museum we walk over to the Restaurant Masaccio. Sunday is a big day for families to eat lunch out and we are lucky to snag a table without a reservation. At around 12:45 it is pretty much empty but by 1PM it is packed with large family groups eating oceans of seafood.
Sarah and I order strezzopreti with zucchini flowers and shrimp and John has creamy risotto scampi. Although our dishes are good, John’s is worth swooning over. Sarah and I are filled with risotto envy. It appears to be very creamy risotto made in a lobster stock with a large prawn on top.
After lunch we finish the trip to Lucca and check into our hotel. We meet for free snacks around 6 PM and decide we would rather go to sleep than eat any dinner. I am asleep by 8 PM.