Chiesa di San Michele in Foro lucca italy church 2025 woodcut print by artist charles spitzack contemporary international visual artist and printmaker printmaking online workshops

A study of the medieval Romanesque church Chiesa di San Michele in Foro in Lucca, Italy — built on the site of the Roman forum and known for its tall arcaded marble facade topped by a sculpted figure of Saint Michael. Spitzack's choice of a Tuscan Romanesque subject extends the geographic range of his 2025 catalog beyond the Pacific Northwest, demonstrating mokuhanga's adaptability to architectural subjects with dense ornament. The facade's stacked colonnades, inlaid stone patterning, and the silhouette of the Saint Michael statue against the sky offer the cutter a layered set of separations: each register of the facade can become its own block, with bokashi gradations for the depth between columns. Architectural subjects have a precedent in Japanese printmaking through prints of temples and shrines, but Western religious architecture introduces different proportions and ornamental vocabulary. The metadata mentions Spitzack's online workshops, situating this print within a teaching practice where landmark subjects often serve to demonstrate how mokuhanga handles unfamiliar source material — a feature of the contemporary American mokuhanga movement's outreach to international students.