Dr. Peter Weller
speaker
668 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Apr 2025
Dr. Peter Weller’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Yeah, you're good to go. I want to ask you a question. So you're married? Oh, yes. Okay, Andrew and Stephanie are married.
Happy anniversary. Thank you. Now I want to tell you something very interesting about history since we're talking about history.
Okay, there's a piece of art that is really, and I can't overspeak it. You can't. Oversay it. I mean, there's an art historian that came along in the last five, 10 years who said this piece of art is the one piece of art that you can't impugn. And everybody from Rembrandt to Leonardo to Michelangelo to Picasso to Rothko. So they sourced this piece of art, and it's by a guy named Giotto.
G-I-O-T-T-O.
Yeah, Giotto. And he does this chapel that's about 20 meters long.
Called the Cappella Scrovegni. Scrovegni, like G-N is pronounced like million in Italian.
Like G-L is the same way, yeah. Scrovegni and that Cappella Scrovegni or Scrovegni Chapel or Arena Chapel, and the reason why they call it Arena Chapel in English, because it's right by an old Roman arena in Padova. And Padua is a beautiful city, the second oldest civic university. Oh, I didn't know that. Most universities are part of abbeys, like Oxford and Sorbonne and so forth.
The oldest civic university, that means essentially licensed by a civilian, like Frederick Robert Rose, is Bologna. And it's in situ the oldest university in the world. The second one is Padua, because some of these teachers and students – Bologna's like 1170s, 80s. Padua's 1220s. Okay. Is that old enough for you? Yeah. Okay. I think so.
So Padua is a very culturally sophisticated place, and it's part of my book.
In this particular town, there's some astounding, game-changing art. that the art historians and the artists themselves know about and celebrate, except that the art movers and shakers of tourism don't talk about it so much because, you know, Paris has the Louvre and Florence has the Ninja Turtles, and that's all you want to know. And that's basically it.
But in this particular city of Padua, one of maybe my favorite places to go, and it's only, like I say, 10 minutes out of... by train out of Venice, is this Cappella Scovigni. And in it is a 20 meter long, unbelievably a preponderance of gift, In a narrative of the story of Mary and Jesus in a movie.
In fresco that goes around a room. Okay, it was started around 1302 and it's finished in 1305 on March the 25th. So yesterday was. Oh, my God.
The 720th anniversary of the most important piece of Western art known. And by the way, not my opinion.
Opinion of a whole lot of people. From Carlo Carra, the guy who invented cubism, to Picasso, to Rothko, to on and on and on it goes. Okay? Two great cinematographers now. It doesn't matter. I was sent there by a cinematographer. So on your anniversary. You also got the Capella Scroveni. So your homework is to go see Giotto. And people are listening to this if they hear this.
A lot of people know who Giotto is. And they go, of course, it's Giotto. Okay, yours truly? I thought I was a smarty pants. I did not know who Giotto was. Okay, I just found out who he was right now. Yeah, but you didn't pretend. You weren't like the pretensioso. No, no, definitely not. Okay, listen.
The person that schooled me in art was the most beautiful, intelligent, gorgeous, wonderful friend to this day, Ali McGraw, who was a big-time movie star.
Big-time movie star, model in the 60s and 70s, whatever. And Allie still looks like she's like 28. I hate her for her looks. Yeah. Yoga every day and Pilates. Yeah, she is still beautiful. Oh, God. Yeah. A room rocker. But speaks five languages and is smart. So I did a movie with her. And then after the movie, she asked me to go see Sweeney Todd a week after it was open.
So I went to see Sweeney Todd on St. Patrick's Day. St. Patrick's Day was just a couple of weeks ago. So we always talk on St. Patrick's Day. And her birthday is on April Fool's Day. How about that? She is a class act. So she took me to the, and I was speaking with, can I bring up another podcast for fun? Oh, yeah, of course. So yesterday I was on with Marc Maron on his thing.
Okay, he actually got to see this exhibition because in the 80s, there's a famous Picasso, huge painting called the Guernica. And the Guernica was sort of a sad celebration of the bombing of a village where Franco had called in Nazi help from Germany to, this village was in rebellion against Franco,
and the Nazis bombed it, and Picasso did this homage to its death called the Guernica, and he didn't want it in Spain, so they kept it at the Museum of Modern Art, and he said if Spain ever gets a, in short order, if Spain ever gets a social democracy, you know, please give it back to Spain. Okay, Franco dies, then there's a big hoon in the late 70s, and Juan Carlos the King, who
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