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.