Clever Magazine, Vol. ll, Issue #2 "Pitti Palace Artist " (www.clevermag.com)

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Art Exhibit

A Conversation with
Vittoria Scaffidi:
in front of the Pitti Palace, Firenze

by Diannek

Vittoria Scaffidi at work

My most distinctive memory of Italy is the art. All those old paintings in the museums, the frescos adorning the buildings, the murals, the statues everywhere, and the even street vendors selling beautiful handicrafts. It seems like everywhere I went, somebody wanted to sell me a piece of artwork.

Vittoria's "Starry Nights"

There is a row of street artists just outside Firenze's Pitti Palace who paint outdoors and sell their work to passersby. The same artists are there day after day, it's almost as though they own their posts on the curbside.

I looked over their work several times and bought a few small paintings from one of them. She eventually began to recognize me. We struck up a conversation one day and I asked if I could interview her for my internet magazine. She agreed. She seemed young, so I asked her if she was an art student. She replied, "No, I'm not student, I'm a professional artist."

I excused myself, telling her I hoped I hadn't offended her, that my comments were not about her work, but rather I was referring to her age. She again looked at me strangely, and told me that she had a sixteen-year-old son who was an art student. She spent every day outside the Pitti, selling her work to visitors to make a living and to put her son through school.

I asked her what type of paintings were the most popular, and she told me the ones that sold the best were the ones that I had purchased earlier. She called them "Starry Night." They were small whimsical watercolors with Tuscany backgrounds and night skies, with kitten images floating where the stars should be.

"I work on those at home every evening, cutting the paper, doing the background washes, laying out the designs, and then I finish them here while I wait for customers. I've asked my son to help me with them but he won't. He thinks it is beneath him to spend his time painting this way." She shrugged the way most mothers do at the things their children say and went back to her painting. She was very busy and rarely looked up.

I questioned her about the kind of painting she would do if she had more time.

"You mean my real work?"

I nodded. She pulled out several other small paintings of open windows with shutters and laundry billowing beneath them.

"These are what I really like to do. See the laundry. I use scraps of old lace here. I glue the scraps onto the board and then paint them to resemble laundry hanging out to dry. And the window shutters are all different. Of course, I always paint a cat sitting in the window. These are what I love to paint. But first I must find just the right lace for each one. They are very much in the Italian style. You know, how the clothing hangs from the windows to dry, and the shutters and all."

"But the others -- the Starry Nights -- are what you do because they sell better?" I asked.

Laundry hanging from windows

"Yes, it's true. The tourists come by and they don't want to spend much money. They tell me a thousand times a day how much they like my little paintings, but not so many of them buy one. It's nice to hear good things about my work, but…" She shrugged and went back to work.

"So you must paint what sells the best and hope that somebody will buy some of the others too?"

"Yes, that's right. I also do large paintings of my cat. Here's one of him in my kitchen window. He's the proto-type for all my cat paintings. A little bit of him goes with every painting."

Vittoria's cat

I thought her work was charming and very inexpensive. She signed each piece "Vittoria Scaffidi, Piazza Pitti Firenze". Her customers would remember her that way. When I asked her if I could put her artwork up on in my magazine she looked at me skeptically and then said yes, it would be okay with her. More people will now be able to exclaim over her lovely little paintings. So the next time you're in Florence, stop by and say hello to Vittoria. Maybe one of her paintings will capture your fancy. However, if you don't think you can make it to Florence, I do have her phone number and address. Her paintings sell for about $35 US and I'm sure we can figure something out.