8. The Real Work Begins

Now the real work starts.

A group of us headed out to a structure containing badly-damaged frescoes, which had been painted over. Our job was to carefully scrape off the over-painting, using medical scalpels, and to mix plaster to fill in the obvious holes, but in such a way as to have where we had done that be discernible, which is one of the basic principles of art restoration – that later generations can figure out what you’ve done to the original work.

Painstaking, but satisfying, and only one scalpel injury. I was comforted by the words of Jennifer, the co-leader and wife of the founder of this enterprise. “Everything is in such bad shape that you can’t hurt; you can only help.”

If it is true that the real joy of travel is encountering the unexpected, we had two such moments. First, as we were working two girls from the neighboring farm came over to sell Jennifer tomatoes. The older one was shy, but the younger one drove a hard bargain, complete with Italian hand gestures.

Second, on the way home, we stopped at a sheep farm to buy pecorino cheese. At least 10 working dogs there to keep the sheep safe, including from us apparently, judging from the racket.