Susan Carlson’s Bites of Inspiration: Fabric Collage Travels to the Renaissance

My October trip to Italy to teach a one-week class has been the source of inspiration for a lot of recent blog posts. Italy—the small corner I experienced—continues to inspire me. What I didn’t have the time to cover in previous posts was to sort through the photos and thoughts on how I came home with new inspiration from the art I had seen and how it could (maybe, possibly) influence my own work in fabric collage. And of course I wanted to share those ideas with you my readers.

So, this will be the first “Bites of Inspiration” post, a new blog category. The focus of this post will be the Renaissance art displayed at Città della Pieve Cathedral, an experience I never would have had if not for teaching a Strada Toscana Fabric Collage class around the corner from the cathedral.

This cathedral began as a small church, a “pieve”—first built between the 4th and 5th centuries and what gave the resulting town its name—Città della Pieve, city of the small church. The church since went through centuries of renovations and additions, much of which you can guess at as you look at the exterior.

I walked by this cathedral a few times and didn’t give it a second thought since it seemed unremarkable from the outside. Then the organizer of the class, Pamela Haack of Strada Toscana, gave my class a tour of the interior. I was hooked and made sure to return on my own a couple days later.

Having relatives in Germany that I’ve visited over the years, I’ve seen a variety of churches and cathedrals. When I walked into this one, I felt it had a particular warmth to it, more inviting to sit and hang out for a while which most other such spaces don’t have. I thought it was the warm colors of browns, peaches, and rose.

Click on any of the smaller photos to enlarge and to scroll through the photo gallery.

Pamela called our attention to the marble surfaces. Except they’re not marble. It’s all paint—faux marble and inlay, even the carved ceilings and decorative trim—I was captivated by the artistry of the walls and ceilings, columns and pillars, the altars and steps. I wonder if painted wood, even if we don’t know it to be, gives a warmer impression of a space than real marble would?

The first alcove houses a Renaissance painting and a portrait I had seen reproduced around town. I found out that this was the self-portrait of Pietro Perugino, a.k.a. Pietro Vannucci, a renowned Renaissance artist, born in Città della Pieve. A few of his masterpieces are housed right here in this relatively small cathedral. He was a contemporary of Michelangelo and DaVinci, a teacher of Raphael, a successful artist, attentive family-man, and all-around-nice guy—according to Pamela’s very engaging tour.

At the beginning of the week, I mentioned to my students to keep a lookout for artistic elements that they could add or adapt into their fabric collages—such as halos on a saint that could be interpreted as rays on their Tuscan Sun portraits. The saint above, is painted with a pretty simple halo but there’s also some nice folds in his robe—a centuries-old example for how to paint (or collage) fabric folds.

Pamela talked about the transition from Medieval to Renaissance styles of art. I look forward to hearing her explanation again with next year’s class, since my attention strayed to all that I was seeing. I think I’m relatively safe to say that the painting on the pulpit, above, is an example of Medieval art. In relation to the figures in the painting, below, the figure above does not have much roundness or form and the background is a flat color.

The altar painting, “Madonna Between Saints Gervasius and Protasius, Peter and Paul” ( 1514 ), is an example of a Renaissance artistic style, with attention given to a realistic and rounded form of the body, brighter colors, and a landscape background. Pietro Perugino so loved his Italian home that he often painted the landscape surrounding Città della Pieve, or the town itself, behind his subjects.

Pamela had us look at the feet—the feet of Perugino’s saints, above left, and the feet of the saints above right, in a painting attributed to one of Perugino’s students. I placed these paintings into a photo gallery above, so you can click on one of the images to enlarge both and be able to scroll back and forth to compare the feet. They’re almost exactly the same. But, as Pamela pointed out, that’s how students learned, by copying what others had successfully done.

So I tried to remember to take photos of other artwork I saw in my travels that had examples of well-defined feet, hands, hair, fabric folds, background ideas, and other aspects of a subject that perhaps my students could learn from (hands especially, right Grace? 😉 ). All are ideas for future “Bites of Inspiration” posts.

I found the combination of the large paintings and the painted surfaces to be truly quite awesome. I could have wandered around the cathedral for hours.

“More is better,” a reply I use when asked by a student or when I consider my own work, “am I done?”—probably not, more is better. Surrounded by all the color, pattern, and visual texture, I can understand the creators of this cathedral—more is better seemed to be their slogan too—they’re my kind of people, even though from the Renaissance, 500 years ago. Awesome.

Now that I’m home, I feel inspired to play with my art medium of choice—fabric— with all its own color, pattern, and visual texture. Ciao!

Next Year’s Return to Città della Pieve with Strada Toscana

I will be returning to teach at this inspiring location next year in October of 2026. For more information about that trip or to register, please visit this link.

Serendipitous Fabric Collage: Fantastical Fish of Tuscany—Pesci Fantastici di Toscana
October 19-24, 2026
Città della Pieve, Italy
FOR MORE INFORMATION