Positano Vista, Amalfi Coast, Italy

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A painting of great depth and interest.

A few years ago I took my wife to Naples for her birthday and whilst there, we hired a car and toured all the local sights, including Positano on the beautiful Amalfi coast. As usual, I took numerous photographs, stopping whenever possible on the treacherous coast road. However, being pre-digital, some of my photographs were somewhat grainy, so I was delighted when an acquaintance of mine, Chris Coates, offered to send me some of the high-resolution digital images of Positano he had taken when visiting recently. This view is based on one of his photographs, although I have added a typical Italian balcony covered with bougainvilleas. In the foreground is the church of Santa Maria Assunta, which features a dome made of majolica tiles as well as a thirteenth-century Byzantine icon of a black Madonna. In medieval times, Positano was a port of the Amalfi Republic and prospered during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the town had fallen on hard times and was a relatively poor fishing village until it started attracting large numbers of tourists in the 1950s. Nowadays, it is a sophisticated, picturesque resort with numerous hotels and luxury villas worth millions of Euros cascading down the steep slopes towards the grand beach with its neat rows of deck chairs.