There are some stunningly beautiful people in Italy, women and men you pass in the streets. But the beauty of two women we encountered recently included something else in addition, a real joy that you could feel around them. It buzzed straight through the language barrier.

Sabina Ugulini, a local photographer, was alone with her mother in a small gallery in Fano. The large black and white prints I could see from the street pulled me in. The photographs were gorgeous close-ups of the bodies of a mother and her newborn baby, days before birth until breast feeding.

The exhibit was called “Inno alla Vita,” Hymn to Life, and it seemed as sacred as any hymn. Interrupting our viewing of the dark old colors of religious paintings in churches, I needed this other kind of spiritual joy – the graceful black and white images of a huge stretched belly (one with a child kissing it) and an infant sucking a breast.

Che bello was all I could say. It called to mind the fresh images of our new granddaughter in Austin, of her beautiful breast-feeding mom and ebullient dad, our son Daniel.

Sabina Ugulina somehow communicated to me the full meaning of this project without knowing enough English for the questions I would have asked. Who is the mother and how much time did you spend on this project? What other kind of work have you done? Is this your fulltime work?

I later learned a little bit from a local TV feature online about the exhibit. She develops and prints her own photographs and uses black and white to communicate a slower truth than what we get from Instagram. She likes to photograph children in natural settings and with animals.

I learned from her Facebook page that she had extended the end of her exhibition for a week – so we just caught it by one day. Luckily, we found it open before Pausa, the siesta that would’ve closed it until 5:30 p.m.

Online, I saw a lot of thank-you’s from the bottom of her heart, and lots of heart emojis on her Facebook page. In trying to introduce ourselves to each other, I felt the same powerful gratitude and joy from her toward my appreciation. She posed with us for her mother to photograph with an iPhone. She insisted on giving me the exhibit’s publicity card, which featured a close-up of the shriveled umbilical cord still attached to the infant’s navel. And she wrote on the back:

Con grande piacere da Fano, in beautiful Italian script over a heart shape. Piccoli passi, grandi sogni. Amicalmente. Sonia. Google translates this as: With great pleasure from Fano, small steps, big dreams. Sincerely, Sonya.

Barbara Buttarini we got to know in 2019. I was editing two media students who were working on a feature article on a Montessori-like nature school – pre-K children learning life on the farm and woods that belong to Barbara’s family. We visited her there, where she kept six goats, and she taught us how to milk one. We became friends, though her English is poor (she says, in English, though much better than my Italian!)

The next time we visited Barbara, in 2022, her father, a well-known art restorer and artist, had died. She served us dinner outside, and joked about how unromantic Italian men had become.

We stayed in touch.

Last year, with the love her life, Davide, she had a baby girl, Celeste.

Yesterday, she came to join six of us Americans for aperitivo in the classic courtyard of Collegio Raffaello, in Urbino.

She came with little Celeste in a stroller. The baby had two adorable expressions, a serious thoughtful look, and a sudden teeth-showing smile. She could say “Barrrbarrraa” with rolled “r”s. You could see Barbara’s features in the baby. Celeste examined us, nursed briefly, and watched a sparrow that came close. I at least knew the beautiful word for bird – uccello.

Barbara glowed. It was magic to feel how interested she was in catching up with us. And it was magic to hear about her life. She loves her work, restoring art and architectural features from former centuries – mostly in Fano and Pesaro. She still lives on her farm with an art-restoring warehouse, though the goats are gone.

Davide and Celeste are a joy to her. It was hard to imagine her having the time for anything else, including driving to Urbino, parking outside the wall, and guiding the stroller down the steep cobblestone Via Bramante to visit with us.

She was sorry to have to go after an hour. It was 5 p.m. and she was having guests over for supper, a full delicious Italian meal she described in detail for us.

Celeste clapped her little hands, and we all clapped in response. She did it again, and again, and we couldn’t stop applauded with delight. Brava!