Farewell to Florence

I will never be the same. Teaching at Lorenzo de Medici and living in Florence has been a mind altering experience. I might (hopefully) lose the fifteen pounds put on, but I won't lose the friends, the memories, and the gift to wonder, again.

Some of the folks who made my stay terrific:

Fabrizio Guarducci

Fabrizio is the Founder, President, and, yes, owner of LdM. A generous, enthusiastic, and, er, maybe slightly eccentric visionary. He extended himself to me in surprising ways and never missed a chance, even while rushing to and fro, to stop, say "Buon giorno!", and ask, "Come stai?" I met Fabrizio for the first time when he handed me one of the cookies he was passing out in the LdM library.

Carla Guarducci

Carla is the lovely multi tasking can-do General Managing Director of LdM (and Fabrizio's younger sister). LdM is a success because Carla is at the helm. She shares Fabrizio's visionary side (if on a more practical level), and works to extend the reach of LdM and better the experiences of its students. Carla always made me feel funny, smart, and important (now THAT takes real skill and charm).

Jonathan Woolfson

Jonathan is the Academic Director. When I arrived, he took me out to lunch and over the next five months acted in many ways to help me feel at home. Jonathan is smart, affable, fun to be around, and speaks Italian with a British accent.

Markus Legner

Markus is Faculty and Course Coordinator. Underlying the long official emails and a no-nonsense approach to course syllabi, Markus has a wry sense of humor and a quick wit. He is this blog's biggest supporter (next to my lovely wife, Stacy) and corrected several of my observations (you might think he has too much time on his hands!).

Marsha Steinberg

Marsha is the Painting Department Supervisor. She is a "do it and do it now!" energizer who was at first intimidating to this "save it for after my nap" kinda guy. It didn't take long, however, to find that Marsha is a sweetheart under the taskmaster, and we enjoyed lovely evenings gabbing under the influence of pizza and wine.

Gene Baldini

Gene was my immediate colleague and closest buddy in Florence. An intelligent painter with a scathing sense of humor, Gene went out of his way to be friendly. We took a successful, if brief, road trip in his 18-year-old Ford convertible in search of the Renaissance painter, Pierro della Francesca. A day with the top down, hair blowing in the wind, sunglasses on, watching the Tuscan countryside go by is a day you can't forget. Gene Baldini won't be forgotten either.

Justin Thompson

Justin is an artist, art critic, and Art Professor. He invited me to go with him to a contemporary art show in a town about 30 minutes by car outside of Florence. He wasn't quite sure of the way and seemed not to believe in using a map, but we did get there on time. On the way back we stopped for a beer and chatted about art and music. It was my first social engagement in Florence and happily broke the ice of my early solitude.

Glenn Wyatt

Glenn is a Graphic Design Professor from Australia. He arrived at LdM about the same time as I. Glenn made a good companion for strolls about Florence. We had some dinners and a few drinks together, and talked copiously about the good and bad of relationships, the good and bad of teaching, and the mostly bad of trying to find a decent cocktail bar in Florence.

Alex Subrizi (sorry, no portrait of Alex)

Alex is a Photography Professor. He shared my taste for Chinese food (while growing up in NYC, his family had a regular Chinese restaurant habit, so I'm not entirely convinced that he isn't part Jewish) and we had good conversation over several meals that invariably started with hot and sour soup.

The Students at LdM

Whether in the painting studio, in the markets, or out on the streets, students were an essential part of my experience and brought an energy and excitement that only they can. Of course, Florence has been a destination for students for, oh, 500 years, and to have been part of that tradition as an art professor was an extreme privilege.

You might think returning home to my ordinary life in a middling American city like Albany, NY, would be a disappointment after living in Florence. Certainly, in many ways it is, what, with the absence of the Renaissance's greatest art and architecture! But after the first couple of weeks in Florence, the thrill of all the great art settled a bit and I began to notice everything else. Yes, there were the dramatic edifices and domes, but it was this doorknob, or this milk carton, or this street traffic, or this fly on my wall that became strange and wonderful as if I came from another planet (which I kinda did). Everything is a wonder when seeing it as if for the first time. The practice of really looking again is the most important gift that I've taken back from Florence. I hope that my life here in good ol' Albany will benefit from being able to wonder anew.

Art and Tourists

It's normal to wade through tourists now that high season is upon Florence. Luckily (for me) most of the tourists spend their time lined up at a few major sites for long hours. Though there are fewer at secondary sites, groups are unavoidable and have been part of the Florentine landscape since medieval times.

Groups of people in medieval painting were unrealistically squished against the front of the picture (probably the way it feels to be lined up at the Uffizi Museum) as in this detail from a Duccio painting (1308).

A more naturalistic arrangement of figures was a benefit of understanding perspective in renaissance painting as in this Masaccio detail (1426)

I started to appreciate tourists almost as if they were figure groupings in paintings. Compare this detail from a Ghirlandaio (1486) to a photo (2008).

Here a few more snapshots of tourists to enjoy.

Birth, Death, and Justice.

First the baby went on the "rota," a stone lazy-Susan, then the anonymous mother rang the bell and the baby was rotated into the Spedale degli Innocenti, Europe's first orphanage.

The window where the baby rota was located.

It's fitting that Spedale degli Innocenti was housed in the building that gave birth to renaissance architecture. This was Brunelleschi's first masterpiece (he was soon to design the great dome of Florence) and a stunning inauguration of an architecture based on Roman antiquity and a new Humanism.

Andrea Della Robia designed the round medallions between the arches, on each is a slightly different porcelain infant wrapped in swaddling clothes (the current symbol for the American Academy of Pediatrics). The Spedale has continued to care for children for over 400 years, and today, in addition to child care, is a site of UNICEF, the United Nations Children's fund.

As I was leaving, a woman with a happy little girl, maybe three or four years old, came out of the Spedale to be greeted by two also happy adults (you can't see the man who is holding the kid in the photo). A scene repeated countless times over four centuries on the steps of the Spedale degli Innocenti.

The Spedale, joined by two other similarly arcaded loggias, becomes the perimeter of Florence's most beautiful piazza, the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata. It's a lovely place to stroll or sit on a warm spring day (it's featured in the movie "A Room With A View"). Only a handful of tourists and tour groups wander about, and it is thankfully free of market stalls, ristorantes, and shops.

On the same day, I went to see the Andrea del Sarto frescoes at the Chiostro dello Scalzo. This is a lovely small cloister that was (is?) run by the "Confraternity of St John the Baptist" who were known for walking barefoot (Scalzo) when carrying the cross in processions.

A colleague told me that this confraternity prayed for those who were sentenced to death. I can't verifying this, but it could help explain the crossbones and skulls at the bottom of each column. It may also help explain why the frescoes are monotone.

Speaking of sentencing, on my way home I happened across a monkey looming over the main entrance, and grotesques lurking under the windows of Florence's Court of Appeals. Maybe Italy's criminal justice system has its own lazy-Susan rota.

LdM in Tuscania

Tuscania (the city, not the region called "Tuscany") Northwest of Rome is the site of Lorenzo De Medici's third campus (the other two are in Florence and Rome). During a visit this week, I found it a beautiful and picturesque medieval town quietly free of all but a smattering of tourists.

Its medieval history is not experienced by rushing to dozens of "major" sites, but by meandering through its quiet 15th. c. streets. It's also not about living in the medieval past. Tuscania is a town whose streets, churches, and houses have been preserved while, at the same time, it has continually adapted to the modern world.

LdM chose Tuscania precisely because it represents an Italy that is very different than that of Florence or Rome. It is a less intense and transient environment where serious students can work peacefully, be steeped in history, and feel a part of a contemporary Italian community. It also has gelato that can compete with Florence's.

Here are some photos.

This is Lorenzo De Medici in Tuscania. It's attached to the ancient city wall.





Carlo, Mei, and Luisa are LdM's administrative staff in Tuscania. They showed me a wonderful time.

The two entrance gates from inside the old city wall.

Napoleon slept here, too?

Massive and brutish, the Palazzo Pitti was original built as a home for the Florentine banker, Lucas Pitti in 1458, later purchased and enlarged by the Medicis, and from then on it was the seat of Florentine power until it was turned into a museum in 1919. Even Napoleon Bonaparte used it as his Italian palace; his royal bathroom and tub is displayed in all its glory.

Once inside, the museum wasn't as imposing as it looked from the outside. The rooms (former bed chambers, sitting rooms, billiard rooms and the like) are smallish for a museum and the paintings are hung salon style. Each room has very clear descriptions of the paintings, so moving through is actually fun and informative.

Above is the Venus Room with this stellar Titian Portrait of a Young Woman (below). It is the same model he also used for his famous Venus of Urbino (in the Uffizi Museum, Florence).

Titian's Venus of Urbino in the Uffizi.

The Boboli Gardens are out back. "Gardens" is a bit of an understatement, it's a huge park meant, I can only imagine, to be traversed by horse and buggy.

The view from the start of the Boboli Garden looking at the back door of the Pitti.

There are a few curiosities in the garden, such as this grotto by the artist Giambologna. Two of of Michelangelo's prisoners were jammed into the darn thing at one point, but someone wisely decided to remove them and leave copies.

My walk home from the Palazzo Pitti at half past noon was a very different than my walk there at eight in the morning. In these two photos of the Ponte Vecchio that I crossed on the way to and from the Palazzo Pitti, see if you can tell how it was different.

How many ways to...

Like the old adage about Eskimos having many words for snow, the Italians have many words for restaurants. Here are a few of them:

"Ristorante" (this one near my apartment not only has great food, it also has 60s era modern decor. Looks like some Italian places in the States, unusual for Florence).

"Trattoria" is a traditional sit-down restaurant, same as a "restaurante," usually family owned and operated. If there are chain restaurants in Florence (besides the occasional McDonalds), they are well disguised.

A "Bar" is not a drinking establishment, it is a snack-bar with stand at the counter espresso, sweet rolls for breakfast, and sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes a few small tables. There is one on almost every corner. When I first arrived I thought it was the land of pubs. Turns out there are very few pubs and they are for tourists or students.

Then there are combinations that can't quite make up their minds.

"Rosticceria" is for take-out and has been commandeered by the foreign take-out communities.

"Pizzerias" are not what you expect. They are sit down restaurants, trattorias really, that also offer pizzas. Oddly, a plain cheese pizza in Italy is called a Margherita.

Then there are official "Tabacchis" which are snack-bars that also sell cigarettes, bus tickets, postage stamps, and lottery tickets.

Ain't No Balonie.

The city of Bologna, when I was a youngster, was just some place whose namesake got plopped between two slices of Wonder Bread. Two days ago, I was speeding on a train preparing to plop down in Bologna.

The main train station in Bologna was the site of a neo-Nazi bombing in 1980 that killed many people.

I walked for a mile under long protective porticoes down a busy main street.

The handsome medieval center of Bologna, Piazza Maggiore, is commandeered by the world's fifth largest church, the Basilica of San Petronio.

But I wasn't looking for "more old art in old churches," here. Instead, I was headed for the museum of a 20th C. painter who I have admired for almost thirty years, Giorgio Morandi (more about Morandi below). After spending the morning in rapture with Morandi's work, I continued by train on to Padua to take in another great Giotto fresco cycle at the Arena Chapel.

Bizarre is the only way to describe entering the chapel to see the Giottos. The folks at the Arena Chapel had provided, by phone, a 3 o'clock appointment. Tickets were to be picked up one hour before the appointed time, then I had to appear at the entrance exactly five minutes early.

Twenty five people (including myself) were then led into a sealed environmentally controlled room (with hissing StarTrek like doors) for education and decontamination! In exactly fifteen minutes, the interior doors hissed open and we were led into the barrel vaulted chapel to view Giotto's paintings. The doors hissed closed behind us.

In another fifteen minutes, a chime sounded, the doors hissed back open, and we were promptly escorted out. That was it, fifteen minutes decontaminating, fifteen minutes in the chapel. Hardly time to scan the frescoes. Ah, but still, a once in a lifetime event for a painter.

On Morandi:

The signature bleached color in Morandi paintings could be derived directly from the weathered frescoes so prominent and beautiful throughout italy.

Andrea del Sarto fresco


Giorgio Morandi oil painting

The bottles and jars in his paintings have the solidness and stability of a Giotto...

and the contemplative dignity of a Fra Angelico.

At the same time, Morandi was a modernist who absorbed the twentieth century's fetish for flatness and enjoyed the tension between the illusion of space and the hard fact of the picture plane.

Morandi's vision was as steeped in tradition as the city of Bologna, and as modern as a bologna sandwich.

Night in Florence.

"Enchanting" may be too romantic and cliché a word to use for Florence by night, but it is its own world after dark. The busier roads take on a more cosmopolitan air, it's dramatically lit monuments become grander, and its quiet narrow streets become the ghosts of their medieval past. Here are some photos and you can decide whether "enchanting" fits.

The Duomo's campanile at dusk (click photos to enlarge).

Busy Via Cavour on a misty night.




Street vendor by electric light.




Venders closing shops near Santa Croche.




Palazzo Vecchio and full moon.




Walking home.

And a parade of food vendors after shutting on a rainy winter night in Florence.

Heroics

Michelangelo (1475 - 1564) was not the first artist to sculpt a nude David during the Renaissance. That honor belongs to Donatello (c. 1386 – 1466), whose bronze David was the first stand-alone nude male sculpted since antiquity. You may not be familiar with Donatello, but he was the quintessential early renaissance artist and laid the groundwork for the later Michelangelo (among many).

Click to see larger image.

Donatello's David, which I saw yesterday in Florence's Bargello Museum, is shocking when you consider it was made barely out of the middle ages when art was mostly a means for the Catholic Church to portray its great stories. It is an effeminate nude adolescent boy, standing with a cocked hip and one foot on the severed head of Goliath, a sword in one hand, his other holding a stone, and on his flowing locks is a girly hat with garlands and ribbons.

But it is was also Donatello's St. George, commissioned for the sword makers guild, that must have been an inspiration for the determined, but vulnerable expression of Michelangelo's heroic nude David.

Mamamiya!

After a high speed train, then a regional train, a bus lurched up mountain switchbacks to finally drop Stacy and I in the center of Roccagorga, an obscure but quintessential hilltop village southwest of Rome. Hoping to make contact with some of Stacy's relatives, we arrived with photos and a list of distant cousins, but no phone numbers or addresses. Only half expecting to find anyone, it looked like a quiet two days before we headed back to Florence. WRONG!

Not long after showing a shop owner a few photos, we were swept up in a frenzy. For the next 36 hours we were wined, dined, toted about, introduced to cousins galore, and even serenaded by Orasmo, the head of the clan (see video)!



Here is what we (with a dozen relatives joining) had for meal at cousin Gilda's house on our second day:

Wine (home made)
Prosciutto (home made)
Sausage (home made)
Salami (home made)
Pecorino cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Olives
Bread
Pasta with meat sauce
Grilled Artichokes
Omelette
Salad
Fava beans
Cookies
Scotch
Grappa
Coffee

Oh, yeah, that was lunch!

Galileo - A "guest post" by Stacy

We spent this afternoon walking the streets of Florence, in search of Galileo. And we met with SUCCESS.

GALILEO'S LEGACY
Galileo gave us telescopes, the moons of Jupiter, and the Principle of Inertia. For some reason, he also gave us the finger (though I do not believe this was his intention).

GALILEO, A HERO OF SCIENCE (note arrow)




GALILEO'S FINGER - WHY?




THE HOUSE WHERE GALILEO AND HIS FINGER LIVED

Venice

Venice is a unique and beautiful city. Stacy, Christian (Stacy's brother), Mike (Christian's friend), and I arrived in Venice close to noon. We purchased our return train tickets before leaving the station, and at the exit we stepped directly into a vaporetto, one of the many water-buses that ungainly motor up and down Grand Canal, Venice's main thorough-fare.




Our first stop is Piazza San Marco. After the gauntlet of trinket and souvenir stands, we let the steady current of tourists carry us to the piazza. Stacy happens to glance at our hastily picked up return train tickets to discover that we had the wrong ones! A troubled tour around the piazza and we decide to take the vaporetto back to the train station to get proper tickets.



Here we are at the train station wrestling with the ticket machine.



Ah, finally the correct ticket!



With new tickets safely safely in hand, our few hours in Venice shortened considerably, we board another vaporetto and head for our second destination, lunch.



After pizza and beer on a lovely quiet piazza, we go to the Scuola di S.Rocco where we find ourselves surrounded by enormous dark and turbulent Tintoretto paintings that cover every conceivable biblical episode from Adam and Eve through the Resurrection.




Next door in the Church of Santa Maria Bloridosa dei Frari the mood is relieved by a couple of Titian and Bellini altarpieces that are full of light.



A short stroll and a few snaps of the camera and we head for the vaporetto and begin our trip back to Florence.

Still not the high season, Venice was swamped with tourists. Ok, so I suffer from the tourist malaise of finding more like myself. But unlike Florence or Rome, where tourism becomes an integral part of much larger working cities, Venice seems like a shopping mall emptied of anything real beyond its tourist trade. Its beautiful architecture, intense art, and lovely canals seem like nothing but stage props for gawkers and shoppers. Or as one colleague put it, Venice is like a graveyard.

For The Birds.

The cold wind and spitting rain caught Stacy and I as we stepped off the 2 1/2 hour ride on a local train.



A walk through the city gate, and up the hill took us to the Basilica of Saint Frances of Assisi where the artist Giotto painted important frescoes.



Giotto is not as familiar an artist as, say, Michelangelo or Leonardo, but he is a towering figure not only in the history of art, but in the history of western culture. He turned the fixed conventions of medieval pictures into the art of observation, creating more natural representations of people in the world. These important Giotto's tell the story of the life of Saint Francis of Assisi. To see them click Giotto.

The purpose of so many frescoes in churches is to teach about important Christian ideals (not brought up a Catholic, please read my remarks in the spirit of respectfulness with which I write). These frescoes are an inspiring tribute to St. Francis who offers a universal lesson in humility and respect for man's relationship to nature. Click St. Francis of Assisi to learn more. Perhaps Saint Francis was an inspiration to Giotto, for a saint who had the humility to speak with birds might have inspired Giotto to respect the world as it is and represent it more faithfully.



Though Giotto's pictures may still seem too primitive, and the life of Saint Francis too ascetic for contemporary tastes, they both helped build a bridge from the medieval world to the modern. They gave us modern eyes.

My pilgrimage to see Giotto was also an a eye opening encounter with Saint Frances of Assisi. As we left the Basilica and walked back towards the main gate, the sun was breaking through the grey March clouds.

Our Future Past?

The streamlined train glided out of the Florence terminal and headed for Rome.



Arriving mid-morning, Stacy, Ben, and I made for our hotel on foot through wide bustling boulevards instead of cramped Florentine streets.




Our hotel was in the midst of street vendors selling everything from zucchinis to flip-flops. The window and shutters opened to the street market three floors below. The day was partly sunny and cool.



A short hop on the graffiti gilded subway train brought us to the foot of the Colosseum, a startling sight as we emerged from the subway tunnel.





The gate to the Palatine Hill and the Roman Forum was a short walk. Tickets in hand, we entered to encounter the crumbling brick edifices and broken marble columns of ancient Rome.



Like a deep deja vu, the ruins pricked a residual collective memory. More than just remembering from books, there was the foreboding sense that this is us, with the same familiar streets, houses, and shops. This skeleton of Rome is a reminder that our own civilization may only have a few short fragile years.

Here are some photos of our 36 hours in Rome. This first is a glance across one of the Roman arches towards a Baroque era church that sits just above the forum. The church facade uses the architectural elements found in these Roman structures.



The interior of the Colosseum.


Trevi Fountain.



The Pantheon.



Interior of the Pantheon (now a church).



Rome landscape with Vatican dome in background.



The Vatican.



After two days of marching about the city, we were beat. A last meal before heading back to Florence.