Slicing through the Tuscan countryside, its vineyards and mountains and valleys and rivers,
our train had left Venice earlier this beautiful sunny morning bound for the Florence of
my Renaissance dream. Yvonne and I had left behind the canals, the sea birds, the
Byzantine splendor, the supreme serenity of this gem in the lagoon to
embark on an odyssey in the comfort of a modern train, much less eventful and more prosaic
than the one that took Ulysses from Troy back to his native Sparta. There wasn't much to
excite our minds during the trip. Like most passengers we whiled away the time by looking
vacantly out the window, the trees close to the train whizzing past in a blur of verdure, and
the constant clanking of its wheels on the tracks filling our ears with monotonous rumbling.
Three and a half hours after leaving Venice, our train pulled into the Florence railroad
station. Quickly mingling into the crowd, meager baggage in hand, and with the nimbleness of
light travelers, we inquired about a hotel at the station's information desk. The attendant
promptly made a phone call, and in a few minutes we were on our way to our hotel only two
blocks away, in the heart of Florence.
At last, here we are a heartbeat from the center of excitement: the Duomo
(Cathedral), and its surroudings where Renaissance art flourished, the city of
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the city that probably has more art treasures in its museums,
palaces and churches than anywhere else in Italy or the world. For throughout its turbulent
Renaissance history Florence was blessed with art patrons who had enough foresight and wealth
to support a community of master artists who created the most enviable inventory of
Renaissance masterpieces anywhere.
On the literary scene, the giants of fourteenth-century Italy gave Italian its undisputed
status as the national language even though Latin for centuries had been the language of
the literate world. Dante Alighieri could have written his epic Divine Comedy in
Latin, but chose the Florentine dialect. In this work, Dante evokes a dark mood and
disturbing visions of the underworld. In the new papal see at Avignon Petrarch
elevated romantic love to an art form so refined with artifice and conceit, and when smitten by
Laura's divine beauty, poured his unrequited love in rhyme and music which only the melodious
Italian tongue with its profusion of vowels over consonants can supply. Boccaccio started
out much like Petrach pining after Fiammetta (his little flame) in terza rima, and
continued in prose the same outpourings of love. But it was the Decameron, tales of
ten days written in unsurpassed Italian prose, which established Boccaccio as
Rabelaisian and profoundly human for his optimistic outlook and
joie de vivre.
In its 2000-year history, no period was more glorious or troubled than the Renaissance era,
and no name was better known to Renaissance Florence than that of the
Medicis, a banking dynasty who, while professing to stay out of politics, exerted a profound
influence on the course of Florentine history, economy, and culture far more pervasive than
that of any other ruling clan or party. From 1434, when Cosimo de Medici was recalled from
exile, and for the next sixty years, no government decrees were written,
or laws passed without the advice and consent of the Medicis, who controlled the banks,
and had economic interests ranging from the wool trade to the leather trade. Kings, nobles,
cardinals, even the Pope had become Medici debtors, and politicians owed their allegiance
to this virtual ruling family. But the Medicis were generous patrons of the arts,
and were among the greatest art collectors Florence had ever known. With an eye to
posterity, the patriarch Cosimo de Medici, and his grandson Lorenzo the Magnificent,
presided over a period of unprecedented prosperity in an age of
great civil strife during which Italian city-states were pitted against one another in a
relentless rivalry for power and influence. During the thirteenth century civil unrest had
reigned within the cities themselves, especially in Florence, which became the theater for
a paroxysm of violence. In 1215 the Guelphs (loyal to the Pope) fought the Ghibellines
(loyal to the German Emperor) in an inexorable power struggle that tore Florence asunder until
1266, when the Ghibellines were definitively defeated and forever left the political scene.
In the aftermath of this victory the Guelphs were themselves divided between the White
Guelphs, whose ranks included the people, and the Black Guelphs, whose power base was made
up of the rich merchants, bankers, and industrialists in the Arti or guilds (known
collectively as the popolo grasso). The Black Guelphs finally triumphed sending the
White Guelphs (the most famous among whom was Dante) into exile.
Among its many achievements Florence is best known for its contribution to
Renaissance art and culture. Everywhere within a mile radius of the Piazza della Signoria,
which was the hub of government, the marks of this cultural rebirth are evident, even in some
piazzas. From the Duomo to Giotto's Campanile and the Baptistery, from the Palazzo Vecchio
adorned by
its distinctive belltower to the adjoining Uffizi Gallery and the Ponte Vecchio that spans
the Arno River, from the Pitti Palace
to the Boboli Garden, from the
Accademia dell'Arti to
the Church of Santa Maria Novella and the Palazzo del Bargello (now housing
the Museo Nazionale), the
works of great masters give an eloquent testimony to the undisputed position of
Florence as a Renaissance center.
No building in Florence epitomizes this great era better than the Duomo, the Cathedral of
Santa Maria del Fiore , whose red dome has been an inspiration for Michelangelo
in his design of the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica. This dominant structure had
benefited from the calculations of Brunelleschi , and is the
largest dome outside Rome. Among the
dozens of major churches in Florence the Duomo is without a doubt the most
remarkable, the most photographed, the most symbolic landmark of the city. In a
relatively small square, the Duomo, the Baptistery, and the Campanile impose their
masterful presence not so much by their size and height as by the works of the
great architects and artists who contributed to their construction and decoration.
Arnolfo di
Cambio designed the Duomo, and work began in 1296 under the direction of a
succession of talented managers (capomaestri) such as Giotto, Andrea Pisano,
Francesco Talenti. The cathedral was not finished until 1461.
Its neo-Gothic façade was completed in its present form in 1887 by Emilio de
Fabris. Giotto
also designed the belltower bearing
his name although he built only the first two levels, and Andrea Pisano the upper two stages.
Opposite the façade of the Duomo stands the Baptistery,
a regular octogonal edifice topped by an eight-sided pyramid which conceals the interior
cupola. Built on an ancient site probably dating back to the sixth century, the Baptistery
assumed its present aspect between 1059 and 1150.
Its faces sport romanesque arches over pedimented windows, and are pierced by three bronze
doors. Lorenzo Ghiberti designed the north and east bronze doors, and
Andrea Pisano its south doors,
which illustrated the life of St. John the Baptist and Allegories of the Virtues.
Of these Ghiberti's east doors (called Gates of Paradise) earned fame for depicting
in ten splendid gilded bronze panels episodes from the Old Testament, such as the creation of
Adam and Eve, the drunkenness of Noah, Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.
The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore's cupola,
which gave its name to the cathedral itself, was designed and built by Brunelleschi using
a new technique of raising the dome in rings of bricks locked in a herringbone pattern,
in two layers (the inner and the outer domes) which are reinforced by vertical ribs, in
such a way as to dispense entirely of the traditional wooden scaffolding.
On this glorious Tuscan spring morning Yvonne and I set out to explore Renaissance and our
first destination:
the Duomo.
The cavernous interior of this church was overwhelming, even after
our visit to the Vatican's St. Peter's Basilica, and Rome's Pantheon. The opulence
of St. Peter's and the antiquity of the Pantheon now yield to this simple and
almost austere
nave. A remarkable example of Italian Gothic architecture, the Duomo is the fourth
largest church in the world, 153 meters long, 38 meters across the nave and aisles, and 90
meters at the transept with its dome spanning 45.5 meters and rising to 114.5 meters. It was
built on top of the older (4th-5th centuries) Cathedral of Santa
Reparata, whose floor, frescoes, and
slab marking Brunelleschi's tomb among other remains, can still be seen in the basement. Its
museum, the Museo dell' Opera del Duomo, located just behind the cathedral,
assembles the art works from the Duomo, the Baptistery, and the Campanile.
When we left the finely wrought neo-Gothic façade of the Duomo behind, our
curiosity led us irresistibly to the Campanile close by. It's Giotto's Campanile, I said to
Yvonne. So, there we are confronting the impregnable fortress of a belltower mocking our
earthly smallness with incredible effrontery and audacity. But it was spring, and our
indomitable spirits were high enough to push us into any absurd adventure. We decided that we
must scale the challenging heights of Giotto's campanile, whose white and pink marble face,
quarried from nearby Carrara and Maremma, glistens in the warm sun like a jewel.
Little did we know what we were getting into when we bought admission to the belltower! Our
expectations of an elevator to lift us to the top were dashed when the turnstile we crossed
led us to a narrow stairwell with stone steps barely wide enough for two or three people
walking abreast. So here we were, fool-hardy souls of fin de siècle Houston
assaulting
the fourteenth-century structure (all of its 414 treacherous steps) without a clue as to why
we wanted to do it in the first place. Actually this is
not exactly true. I knew why we wanted to get up there. If you see Giotto's
campanile, its majestic rise, its gleaming white marble face graced with strips of pink
inserts in its pilasters, its panels filled with exquisite reliefs (many of which by
Andrea Pisano), each of its stages
distinct in character, detail and style, its two-light and three-light windows, its niches,
pilasters, twisted columns, gables, corbeled top, all that seem to harmonize with the
Duomo's façade, this 84.7 meters high tower is simply
the most beautiful campanile anywhere in Italy. It captures your imagination and speaks
directly to your sense of wonder, your sense of esthetics, your sense of adventure,
deeply stirring your soul to its inevitable ascension.
The stairs started out relatively steep, and there were no handrails to assist in our
climb. With the stone steps echoing the dull thuds of our feet we quietly hoisted
ourselves up vigorously to the first landing for a welcome short
break. Having decided from that perspective that we were not high enough to gain a
spectacular view, further up we
went, negotiating the ever-narrowing and -steepening steps. Along the way we had to stop a few
times and flatten ourselves against the wall to allow the few other visitors to pass on their way down. The second landing offered a
panorama that was acceptably intriguing, and with her energy level dwindling Yvonne made up
her mind to stay put. By instinct I knew we were within reach of the top (Really!). It beckons
irresistibly. So leaving Yvonne to her contented rest I continued to climb the last, narrowest, steepest
and scariest steps of all. Soon the final landing reached, I emerged onto the observation
deck, and walked around. The sun bathed the tower with warmth and the unfolding
vista wove a tapestry of harmonious colors. Florence from the air is a sea of red
tile roofs here and there parted by piazzas and pierced by crenelated towers and
church domes. The hills lying in hazy outline just beyond the city limits, the
sluggish Arno River, the green patch of the Boboli Garden, the rolling
countryside stretching gracefully beyond, all seem to enter into a pact that
proclaims Florence as the place for art lovers. Visitors to the Duomo were
staring back at the Campanile from their lofty perch on the lantern structure
(designed by Brunelleschi) that tops off the dome. And
the few visitors on the Campanile returned their curiosity.
Here in the heart of Renaissance country, time seems to linger for you to travel back
to the Classical tradition you'll want to have for a true appreciation of the wealth of
artistic achievements that permeates the air. Here you don't look for romance or poetry in
the streets. There is however an abundance of romance and poetry in the works assembled in
the palaces, which are veritable depositories of art, in the museums, even in the churches.
Florence exudes an artistic élan that attracts art scholars from around the world.
This city has not the elegance of Paris, nor the poetry of Venice, nor the muted majesty of
the ruins of Rome. It has something different: the Renaissance seemed to have touched it
with a special magic that procreates artistic and literary talents on an unrivalled
scale.
While I was lost in my musings about the centuries that embellished this city, and about its
inexhaustible source of wonderment, the lumbering steps of someone
walking up laboriously but with a palpable sense of determination rudely awoke me. In a
few moments who did I see but the irrepressible Yvonne emerging from the same arduous trip
that I would not wish my worst enemy to take! She was carrying my jacket I had left behind.
Within walking distance of the Duomo, we were in the
Piazza della Signoria, where an
equestrian statue of Cosimo I de Medici (1594) by Giambologna reigns over the domain now as he
did in life five centuries ago. Nearby the Neptune Fountain (1575), where the giant white
statue (nicknamed "il Biancone") of the sea god dominates the piazza with his Tritons and
Nereids (by Giambologna), was built by
Bartolomeo Ammannati and his associates. On the opposite side of the piazza, the
Loggia dei Lanzi (built by Benci di Cione and Simone Talenti and completed toward the end of
the fourteenth century) exhibits statues of note such as a copy of the
The Rape of the
Sabines (1583) by Giambologna (Giovanni da Bologna),
Hercules and the Centaur (1599) also by Giambologna, Benvenuto Cellini's
famous bronze
Perseus (1554), six statues of matrons dated back to Roman times lining the back
wall, and more.
The nearby Palazzo
Vecchio, which housed the Florentine Priors, and when
Tuscany became part of the Kingdom of Italy and Florence served as the capital of Italy from
1865 to 1871, was the seat of the government, began construction in 1294, and was completed in
1315. This austere palace-fortress in the shape of an irregular trapezoid bordering the east
side of the Piazza della Signoria, which was made by razing among others the Uberti
properties, is covered with rusticated ashlar of pietra forte, and surmounted
by a crenelated tower 94 meters in height, its main entrance flanked by a copy of
Michelangelo's statue David, whose original is in the Accademia delli Arti,
and by Bandinelli's statue of Hercules and Cacus. Compare Michelangelo's
marble David in the Accademia with Donatello's David housed in
the Museo del Bargello, and see how Donatello's earlier David is almost devoid
of the virility which emanates from the later David of Michelangelo.
Besides its governmental function
Palazzo Vecchio houses numerous works of art. Most memorable is its spacious Salone dei
Cinquecento, a dazzling display of exaltation of Florence contributed by Giorgio Vasari and
his collaborators, by Baccio Bandinelli, Giovanni Stradano, even Michelangelo. Its
coffered ceiling is filled with scenes glorifying Florence and Cosimo I de Medici's
conquests created by Vasari and associates, and its walls were decorated with
frescoed panels commemorating episodes of the War with Pisa and with Siena
.
The Uffizi
Gallery, hallowed by its more than four hundred years of existence as the world's oldest art
gallery, shelters the richest collection of Renaissance art starting from the Duecento
(thirteenth century). Just next door to the Palazzo Vecchio, the prestigious Uffizi (Offices)
Gallery rewards our hour-long wait with endless displays of Renaissance works that excite the
envy of art curators. Here in its unassuming, even spare, rooms, are gathered the treasures
in chronological order, starting predominantly with altarpieces in diptychs, triptychs, and
polyptychs from representatives of various Italian schools.
As we moved from room to room the themes began to shift from a proponderant religious
treatment of the altarpieces of the thirteenth to the fifteenth century to the Classical
themes evident in the Antonio Pollaiolo Room, where paintings featuring Hercules
made their appearance. In Antonio Pollaiolo's Hercules and
Antaeus the demi-god is seen raising the giant Antaeus in the air to kill
him because Antaeus, being son of the Earth, will always regain his strength as
long as he touches his mother Earth.
In the Botticelli Room, Primavera
(Spring) (1477/78) and Birth of Venus (1485) both painted
by Botticelli for the Medici villa
at Castello, were inspired by neo-Platonist ideals, which epitomize the rebirth of the
Classical tradition in art and literature as Europe was emerging from the Age of Faith,
when religion dominated life at every level. The three graces in Primavera and the
figure of Venus in the Birth of Venus remain the world's most recognizable artistic
images. Rarely did I see the crowds staying longer anywhere else than in front of these
masterpieces. Tour guides always seemed to have more information and comments here than
about any other oeuvres in the museum.
How this representation of the nude could exist in a Christian setting without causing
an uproar about neo-paganism could be explained by the movement that reaffirms the return
to antiquity, a movement which discerns in the Christian faith, classical mythology and
Platonic ideals a unity not perceived in the Middle Ages. The thousand years period of the
Middle Ages had experienced the continuing tradition of the classical Graeco-Roman world
in the arts and literature. But for the most part, the tradition existed more in form than in
content. The intellectual and religious dominance of the Christian faith had for practical
purposes crowded out the pagan world until the Renaissance, which proclaimed the
compatibility between the Bible, Plato, and classical mythology. The Platonic
philosopher Marsilio Ficini believed life in the universe to be linked to God in a spiritual
way so that the divine love of the Virgin Mary is not unlike the human love of Venus. Thus
the nude Venus, inspired by Greek models, was not a sensuous female figure but a human
rendering of the divine love embodied by the Virgin Mary. However, most Early Renaissance
artists, and even later ones, were not imbued with such philosophical thoughts. Botticelli,
who was active during the four-year rule of the extremist monk Savonarola, was said to have
destroyed some of his own "pagan" works out of religious conviction or fear of zealotry.
In the Caravaggio Room Caravaggio
represented on a shield the mythological Medusa, whose
fearful head with serpents as hair would petrify anyone who looked at it. Compare
this to Medusa's severed head in the Cinquecento Corridor painted by a seventeenth
century Flemish artist.
The
Tondo Doni by Michelangelo is one of the works that depict a Christian
theme (the Holy Family) on a background of nudes, which is clearly of pagan
inspiration. This is prevalent in the period as the classical ideals are considered
compatible with Christian themes.
More classical mythology awaits discovery. In the Tintoretto and Barocci Room
the myth of Leda, the wife of the Spatan King Tyndareus, who was the mother of
Helen, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux, finds a vivid expression in Tintoretto's
Leda and the Swan, in accordance with the story that her children were by
Jupiter, who disguised himself in the shape of a swan. The same theme is treated by
Portormo in a painting exhibited in the Tribune, a room designed by Bernardo
Buontalenti for the Medicis' most prized art collection.
Just as important are the sculptures in the Uffizi. Copies of Greek sculptures
of the Hellenistic period as well as Renaissance works such as Baccio Bandinelli's
Laocoön testify to a vibrant collection of Classical forms of utmost
beauty and power. I was particularly moved by the Laocoön group that depicts
the Apollo priest among the Trojans and his two sons in a death struggle with the
serpents sent by Apollo to punish him for warning the Trojans not to take the
wooden horse left behind by the retreating Greeks. The Greek ideal of the male body
is personified in vivid detail here in Laocoön, whose virility is being
snuffed out by the wrath of a god against whom man proves powerless. It is the
human condition buffeted by the whims of superior forces.
Crossing the Arno over the Ponte Vecchio, we soon reached the
Palazzo Pitti, another
palace where the Medicis had lived. Now the Palazzo Pitti contains seven museums:
the Palatine Gallery, the Royal Apartments, the Silver Museum, the Porcelain
Museum, the Costume Gallery, the Carriage Museum, and the Gallery of Modern Art.
Behind the palace extends a beautiful oasis, the Boboli Garden, which serves almost
as a natural extension to the Palace. Here is a formal garden rising beyond the
palace's courtyard, graced with fountains, grottoes, statues, and paths designed by
the same masters whose works enrich the museums in Florence and elsewhere. Names
such as Bernardo Buontalenti, Baccio Bandinelli, Ammannati, Giambologna and more
are represented on this hillside garden.
The most visited of the Pitti museums is the Palatine Gallery. Like many of the Florentine
palaces, the Pitti Palace has an austere façade which efficiently hides the opulence,
and splendor reigning inside. A marked contrast to the modesty of the Uffizi exhibition
rooms, the Palatine Gallery
seems the acme of Baroque exuberance. Huge paintings of the 16th and 17th
centuries were exhibited in gilded frames which are almost works of art! The Gallery
was given entirely to the sumptuousness befitting a reigning dynasty. Even the door frames
were finely carved as if they were part of the art world. We were struck
speechless by the ceiling fresco cycles and magnificent stuccoes by Pietro da
Cortona. In the Venus Room the statue Venus Italica by Antonio Canova
reigns over a realm of landscapes, portraits, and mythological themes in huge
canvases by Tintoretto, Titian, Rubens, Guercino, Salvator Rosa. In a succession of
grand exhibition rooms, we were treated to a cornucopia of masterpieces each
bearing in its own distinctive way the realism and naturalism so characteristic of
the works of these centuries. The richness of the collection demanded close
attention to each piece in order to gain a genuine appreciation which it
deserves. Take your time, pay attention to detail, and savor the delights.
Like Venice and Rome, Florence is a source of intellectual stimulation for art lovers and
history students. This is where professionals and amateurs alike can come, tablet in hand,
to jot down their notes, and to see live the art works discussed in scholarly polyglot
treatises published around the world. From Cristofano Allori to Alberti, from Bandinelli to
Buontalenti, from Caravaggio to Correggio, from Donatello to Dosso Dossi, from Giotto to
Giambologna, from Filippo Lippi to Leonardo, from Mantegna to Michelangelo, from
Pisano to Pollaiolo, from Raphael to Rubens, from Salviati to Sansovino, from Titian
to Tintoretto, from Veronese to Verocchio, Florence has
attracted and produced masters in painting, sculpture, and architecture who once
occupied the center stage of these most creative of human endeavors. Because of this
rich heritage Florence will continue to shine among the great centers of art, and to give
generations the inspiration to move forward by looking back at an exciting era of
achievement.
Tomorrow we would board the train back to the city in the sea, leaving Florence
of gentle Tuscany forever enshrined as the Renaissance art capital. Florence is
not romantic or poetic. It does not turn your head at every corner, nor set your
heart throbbing with flights of poetic fancy. It is not Petrarch's Laura or
Boccaccio's Fiammetta as Paris surely would be; it has not the poetry of Venice,
nor the grandeur that Rome once had been, but it grabs you with irresistible
force for nowhere else can the Renaissance be felt more keenly than in this town on
the Arno.
Off the coast of Normandy
in northwestern France rises from the ocean fury a granite island which can be reached by land
at low tide. In the year 708 Abbot Aubert of the close-by town of Avranches
dreamed one night that he was commanded by the Archangel St. Michael to build a
place on the rock dedicated to his worship. After experiencing a number of
miracles to convince the Abbot that the order was genuine, he built a sanctuary
on the island, which in time came to be known as Mont St. Michel. After the
Normans had forcefully settled in what was later named Normandy, the Duke of
Normandy Rollon, now Christianized and recognized by the Frankish king, and his
descendants set about rebuilding sanctuaries, among them the one on Mont
St. Michel, at the height of the Romanesque age. Over time more additions were
erected for the benefit of an expanding community of monks and pilgrims to become
a remarkable building complex rising over five hundred feet.
