Summer's Lease is a novel by Sir John Mortimer, author of the Rumpole novels, which is set predominantly in Italy. It was first published in 1988 and made into a British television mini-series starring Sir John Gielgud, first shown in 1989. The title "Summer's Lease" is a play on a line from William Shakespeare's Sonnet 18: And summer's lease hath all too short a date. The novel involves the leasing of a Tuscanvilla for the summer holidays. It is divided into six parts: "Preparations", "Arrival", "First Week", "Second Week", "Third Week", and "The Return".
The Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesca, one of the recurring motifs in the novel and the TV series.
Molly Pargeter is a forty-something wife, and mother of three girls, who leads a stable but dull life in 1980s West London. She feels overweight and there is no passion in her relationship with her husband Hugh, who is secretly seeing another woman. For most of her life she has found escape in detective novels and books on art, especially about the fifteenth-century Italian fresco painter Piero della Francesca.
In a newspaper advertisement, Molly sees that a villa in Tuscany is to let and, after travelling to Italy to view the villa, "La Felicita", in the fictional town of Mondano, she decides to rent it for her family's August holiday. The villa is conveniently located for visits to the artistic centres of Florence and Siena, and also to Urbino, a day's drive away across the "Mountains of the Moon", where what Kenneth Clark called the world's greatest small picture awaits Molly: Piero's "Flagellation".
Water problems emerge in the first week of the holiday: the swimming pool becomes empty and there is no running water in the villa. In the second week, when the body of the ex-pat letting agent is discovered, also in an empty swimming pool, Molly suspects foul play. She becomes more involved with the local town of Mondano and its inhabitants: an aristocrat, a wealthy socialite, and several ex-pats who all seem to be hiding something, and is intrigued about the identity of the villa's absent owner, whom she knows only as "S. Kettering".
The search for the reason behind the disappearing water and the corpse, and discovering who S. Kettering is, becomes an obsession which leads Molly across the "Mountains of the Moon" to encounter more than just the small painting.
Piero della Francesca Trail
The Piero della Francesca Trail is an excursion which traces the works created by Piero della Francesca in Arezzo, Monterchi, San Sepolcro (his birthplace) and Urbino. To his contemporaries, Piero was admired as a mathematician and geometer as well as a painter, and today his paintings are celebrated for their serene humanism and use of geometric forms.
Summer's Lease has made famous the Piero della Francesca Trail, which sees Molly set out from the Chianti District near Siena and travel to view the following paintings of Piero della Francesca:
The Legend of the True Cross, Basilica di San Francesco d'Assisi, Arezzo
The Pregnant Madonna, Museo della Madonna del Parto, Monterchi
The Resurrection, Museo Civico, San Sepolcro
The Flagellation, Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino
Molly and her elusive landlord Buck Kettering share a love of the art work of Piero della Francesca. The Piero della Francesca Trail ultimately leads Molly to Buck, who for reasons of his own does not want to be found.
In 1989 the novel was adapted for television in four parts by the BBC in association with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, WGBH-Boston and Television New Zealand. It was directed by Martyn Friend and produced by Colin Rogers. The screenplay was by the author, John Mortimer. It featured an Emmy Award-winning performance from John Gielgud, and its soundtrack, composed by Nigel Hess was awarded the Television and Radio Industries Club award for best television theme. It was filmed on location in London and Tuscany and first aired in the UK in 1989 on BBC2.
Arezzo is a city and comune in Italy and the capital of the province of the same name located in Tuscany. Arezzo is about 80 kilometres southeast of Florence at an elevation of 296 metres (971 ft) above sea level. As of 2022, the population was about 97,000.
Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter, mathematician and geometer of the Early Renaissance, nowadays chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the Basilica of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
Raffaellino del Colle (1490–1566) was an Italian Mannerist painter active mostly in Umbria. He was born in the frazione of Colle in Borgo Sansepolcro, province of Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy.
Sansepolcro, formerly Borgo Santo Sepolcro, is a town and comune founded in the 11th century, located in the Italian Province of Arezzo in the eastern part of the region of Tuscany.
The Duchy of Urbino was an independent duchy in early modern central Italy, corresponding to the northern half of the modern region of Marche. It was directly annexed by the Papal States in 1631.
Monterchi is a Comune (Municipality) in the Province of Arezzo in the Italian region of Tuscany, located about 80 kilometres (50 mi) southeast of Florence and about 20 kilometres (12 mi) east of Arezzo. It sits in the northern part of Valtiberina, the valley where the Tiber river runs going from Emilia-Romagna towards Rome. The valley runs through Romagna, Tuscany and Umbria, parallel to the Casentino Valley.
The Basilica of San Francesco is a late Medieval church in Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy, dedicated to St Francis of Assisi. It is especially renowned for housing in the chancel the fresco cycle Legends of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca.
The image of La Madonna del Parto is a religious depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary as pregnant which was popularised in Tuscany, Italy during the 14th—century.
The Brera Madonna is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, executed in 1472–1474. It is housed in the Pinacoteca di Brera of Milan, where it was deposited by Napoleon.
Siena is a city in Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the province of Siena. Siena is the 12th largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, with a population of 53,062 as of 2022.
Livia della Rovere was an Italian noblewoman of the House of della Rovere and the last Duchess of Urbino (1599–1631).
Portrait of a Lady in Yellow was painted by the Florentine artist Alesso Baldovinetti sometime in the second half of the 15th century, most likely c. 1465. For centuries the work was misattributed; it was purchased by the National Gallery London in 1866 as a portrait of Countess Palma of Urbino, attributed to Piero della Francesca. In 1911, the art historian Roger Fry established that it was by Baldovinetti. However, there is no evidence of the source of the commission, and doubt remains as to the identity of the sitter; the most plausible theory is that she is Francesca degli Stati of Urbino.
The Flagellation of Christ is a painting by Piero della Francesca in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Italy. Called by one writer an "enigmatic little painting," the composition is complex and unusual, and its iconography has been the subject of widely differing theories. Kenneth Clark called The Flagellation "the greatest small painting in the world".
The Portrait of Luca Pacioli is a painting attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Jacopo de' Barbari, dating to around 1500 and housed in the Capodimonte Museum, Naples, southern Italy. The painting portrays the Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli and may have been painted by his collaborator Leonardo da Vinci. The person on the right has not been identified conclusively, but could be the German painter Albrecht Dürer, whom Barbari met between 1495 and 1500.
The Cathedral of Sansepolcro is a Catholic church in Sansepolcro, Tuscany, central Italy.
Chiantishire is a nickname for an area of Tuscany, Italy, where many upper class British citizens have moved or usually spend their holidays. The word is a late 20th century neologism and derives from Chianti, a red wine produced in central Tuscany, in particular in the provinces of Siena and Florence. The location rose to prominence in the UK in the mid 1990s when then Prime Minister Tony Blair chose it as one of his preferred summer retreats. Celebrities who have owned properties in the area include Sting, Bryan Ferry, Antonio Banderas and Richard Gere. The novel Summer's Lease by John Mortimer and its British television adaptation starring Sir John Gielgud characterise satirically the manners and mores of British expatriates in Chiantishire.
The Diptych of Federico da Montefeltro and Battista Sforza are two oil paintings by Italian artist Piero della Francesca, dated to 1473–1475. This famed double portrait is often mistitled The Duke and Duchess of Urbino—as it appears on the website of the Uffizi Gallery, which owns it. Since Battista Sforza died in 1472 and Federico da Montefeltro was not made duke until 1474, however, Battista never attained the title of duchess.
Robert D. Black is an emeritus professor of Renaissance history at the University of Leeds.
The Nativity is an oil painting by Italian Renaissance artist Piero della Francesca, dated to 1470–75. The painting depicts a scene from the birth of Jesus, and is one of the latest surviving paintings made by the artist before his death in 1492. Held by the National Gallery in London, it measures 124.4 cm × 122.6 cm. It is a popular image on Christmas cards.
Summer's Lease is a British television drama series which aired in four parts on BBC2 in 1989. It is based on John Mortimer's novel of the same title, adapted by the author. John Gielgud won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his performance and the soundtrack, composed by Nigel Hess was awarded the Television and Radio Industries Club award for best television theme.
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