You will not believe this, but we found the lady here while we were looking for a spot to swim in Northern Italy.
If you take a closer look, you will see that she is made out of pebbles, found in the river bed. The artist who made this magnificent piece of work clearly was trained at the Spilimbergo School of Mosaics. The cosy spot where this gorgeous female is hanging from the wall, is about 10 kilometres away form the school.
If you would like to see her in her real life size, you will have to go to Pinzano, and look for a little camping and bathing site right next to the bridge over the Tagliamento river, near Spilimbergo. As it happens, this was the spot were Napoleon was stopped from conquering Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
This picture represents one of these many contradictions one finds in Italy. On the one hand, it is a conservative, catholic and very prude country. On the other hand, the artistic landscape – and Berlusconi’s television – are dotted with (half-)naked women. This mosaic goes as far as I have ever seen in the wild.
The suggestion conveyed by the picture is of freedom and joy, and of the possibility to go skinny-dipping right next to her in the river. This is a false suggestion though. If you tried to strip and dip at Pinzano, you would end up in jail.
After almost 45 years of hanging out in Castelnovo del Friuli, I visited this great bathing spot for the first time in my life only a week ago. And in the course of the last days, I kept wondering why my father never took me and my brother there ever before. We had asked him often enough to take us swimming somewhere after we had worked on the land for many hot hours.
We were never at Pinzano as kids. We always ended up at some crappy spot a few kilometres further up the road instead. Not at this beautifully shaded spot, visited by many people and famous all over the place. But now that I look at this picture again a little closer, I think I know why. My father didn’t want me to get any funny ideas in my adolescent head when I was younger.
Now that I have grown up and have my own kids, my father couldn’t resist suggesting to go there to have a swim. But what about my boys….? It might take a long time before I see this lady again….
There is another lady I see every day though, who is at least as interesting. Just for good measure: this is my wife diving from a rock near the bridge at Pinzano….
