CAMINO STAGE 25: Campiello to Berducedo Camino Primitivo Route of El Camino De Santiago. 19 miles, Day 27, 10 days to go
Sfumato is an Italian word for ‘smoke.” It is also a painting technique that softens the transition between two colors, and light and dark in such a way that they appear to melt into one another. Leonardo Da Vinci was a master of this technique. His use of sfumato in the Mona Lisa gently brings Mona forward from the background. I took my sister and nieces to the Louvre in August to show them this masterpiece, and the sfumato technique.
The Camino Hospitales trail is one of the hardest on the Primitivo Route due to misty fog and steep loose rocky terrain, but the smoky sfumato effect on the trees, as well as heather and heath melting into the ground was spellbinding.
This real life sfumato was simultaneously fascinating and eerie as we ascended through the fog and saw the old pilgrim hospital ruins, a Roman gold mine scarring the earth, and animals come out of the mist. I nearly bumped into another pilgrim friend, Frank from Germany, as I thought he was a boulder until I was nearly at his heels. Before that point, I thought I was walking toward a dark stationary object in the fog. My mind went back to Da Vinci’s use of sfumato on the Mona Lisa—the melting and melding of colors and darkness and light around her body and how the eye returns to the light of Mona’s face, as my eye returned frequently to the trail markers.
We cleared the cloudy mist when we started down our loose rocky descent. The dark mountains in the distance melted into the sky and seemed to move closer to us. We marveled again at the beauty of Northern Spain, and felt deeply grateful to view this masterpiece of sfumato before our eyes.
The Unhurried Traveler 
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