Painting The Amalfi Coast, Maiori Italy

Collegiate di Santa Maria a Mare

Maiori, was our home base for touring the Amalfi Coast of Italy form April 10 to 22, 2015. The above painting of the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Sea  is the back view as it sits on the edge of a cliff. I did a complete en plein air  pretty much as shown, but repainted on top of it back home in the studio to correct architectural features. I was standing on the edge of a bank's  hot asphalt parking lot off a side street on a warm day. The clock shows 1:20 pm (1320 European time). I also had a 

steady pain in my head and right side of my face (3 on a scale of 10) all day, perhaps related to my intermittent occurrences of trigeminal neuralgia.  It took a while to find this view. My first attempt a few days earlier I approached the church from a side street that led me up 200 steps to the right of the clock tower. Then when I  got to the front of the church I walked down the road used by the public to access it. I turned  around every now and then to check the view without luck.  Finally the road curved and  I came upon a soccer stadium for kids (maybe age 8 to 10). I could see that there would be a good view from the bleachers but the gate was locked.  After all that hiking pulling my painting equipment cart I was not giving up. I found an entrance door to the office section where there was a woman and man attendant (maybe in their 50's). They did not speak any English so I took out a canvas and paint brush and said I wanted to paint the Collegiate. The man made a phone call to someone in authority who spoke English and handed the phone to me. After explaining my objective  I gave the phone back to the attendant and he got the OK to let me in. Let me say that through the entire trip I found the locals to be very helpful  and interested. My wife and daughter have  a few favorably stories  about friendliness also. About  an hour into the painting  the kids showed up for practice (that's another story) along with parents and relatives who sat in the bleachers.  While I was a curiosity only a couple kids came over to peek. That painting was not a success. Even the best plein air artists who write the books state that only four out of five make it to the frame, the rest are used for reference for studio paintings. I saw the above view in a 1 inch  square photo in a brochure and was able to deduce  the location which turned out to be right in front of the little hardware store some locals walked me to when I was asking where I could purchase odorless mineral spirits. The very first day in Maiori, without having mineral spirits (airline restrictions) to clean the fast drying alkyd oils from my brush, I painted with watercolors. Below is my first painting of a small church  in Maiori and a pen and ink wash of a large home on top of a cliff above the main road SS163.

Church in Maiori
This church had no name on Google maps but it appears on the map to be attached to a rectangular structure ( on the left) with a central court yard area, perhaps a convent or school.

The structure (mansion) on the cliff is at the east end of Maiori  and  is also not identified on Google Maps, but Google has some great photos. Normally all churches and hotels are identified on Google maps. I sat on a bench at the end of the beach promenade in a nice shady spot and did the pen and ink drawing followed by a watercolor wash.  The main road along the Amalfi Coast (SS163), the road with a 1000 curves, can be seen rising at about a 15 degree angle. There is a traffic light at the bottom of this section and one at the top as traffic on this section is one way because  it is so narrow. This is the only traffic light  from the beginning of the coastal road near Salerno , all the way to Positrano, and perhaps further but we did not travel past Positranio by bus. While painting an Italian couple (upscale) from Rome stopped to see my painting. He spoke English but she did not appear to. He  took out his smart phone and proceeded to show me all his abstract watercolor paintings which were pretty good. It was only a hobby he said. I guess he was still employed. My trigeminal neuralgia was knocking the right side of my face at about a level 7 out of 10 and I was doing this because  I  was unfamiliar with the door lock on the apartment and could not let myself in. My wife and daughter had hopped the bus to Amalfi on this first day in Maiori.