Matera Italy

Matera Basilicata Italy

An original painting of Matera Italy by Julie Colclough, from her Top-to-Toe Italy Collection. Julie loved her sketching trip to this ancient abandoned city in 2016. Her sketchbooks always inspire the larger finished paintings which are completed in her studio gallery on the historic Rows of Chester.

The original paintings from this trip are SOLD but we have many more from other areas in Italy.

Matera is a memorable off-the-beaten-track cave town in Basilicata in southern Italy. It has recently become famous for its many abandoned cave-houses, the sassi and its appearance in the latest James Bond movie ‘No Time to Die’. Daniel Craig (originally from Chester of course!) drives his Aston Martin through the spectacular streets. However when Julie visited, it was still almost empty, a few homes were just starting to be inhabited again and one or two caves had become airbnbs and bars.

Julie has been a regular visitor to Italy since the mid-1960s, when her father took the family camping for a month every summer. A life-long love of Italy, art and architecture was born. Her childhood scrapbooks and sketchbooks evolved into the large collection of illustrated diaries and sketchbooks which now inspire her finished paintings in our gallery.