Above: “Fruit, Flowers, a Ceramic Dish and a Vase on a Stone Ledge Beneath a Grape Arbor, with Two Women Gathering the Bounty” (oil on canvas) by Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo (Naples, 1629 – 1693) and Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634 – 1705), currently on display at the Robert Simon gallery in New York.

Please join me on Thursday, October 13 in New York where I’ll be presenting readings from Italy’s oldest book on viticulture and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron at the Robert Simon gallery on the Upper East Side.

Some beyond the New York art scene will remember Robert: he was the researcher who proved that the painting “Salvator Mundi” was indeed by Leonardo da Vinci. That canvas later sold for a record $450 million, a work that some have called the “world’s most expensive painting.”

The event is being organized by my friend and dissertation advisor, Italian poet and scholar Luigi Ballerini, and his wife Paola Mieli, a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer.

The readings, mostly from my translation of Pietro de’ Crescenzi’s Ruralia commoda and related passages in Boccaccio, will be accompanied by a guided tasting of three grape varieties that appear in the 14th-century works.

I am super geeked about this, in part because I haven’t been back to the city (aside for a quick business lunch) since 2019 — for reasons all too familiar.

Here are the details. It’s a benefit so it’s not a cheap date. But I promise not to disappoint. How could I when I have Robert’s gallery as the setting? I hope to see you there. And thanks for checking it out.

And btw, I’m also preparing notes on the above painting, currently on display on East 80th St. Isn’t it grand?

A Wine for the Worst Kind of Thieves

Wine Tasting and Medieval Readings with celebrated Wine Historian and Sommelier Jeremy Parzen.

Thursday, Oct 13, 2022 at 6:30 PM

Robert Simon Fine Art
22 East 80th Street • Fourth Floor
New York NY 10075

Tickets: $150

Taste three wines as Jeremy shares three colorful readings from Italy’s oldest book on wine and Boccaccio’s Decameron. The event includes a guided tasting of three native Italian grape varieties that were popular during Boccaccio’s time and are still widely enjoyed today.

Additionally, enjoy a special preview of the exhibition: “Beyond Boundaries: Historical Art By and Of People of Color.”

All proceeds from the event will be donated to Animal Zone International, a Greek-based non-profit devoted to the sustainability of the environment through the protection and control of animals.

Click here to reserve.