October 18 Florence

Today is our last day in Italy. I was in Italy in 1973 for about 10 days with the Lubamersky family. Seven of us traveled in a VW van, camping or staying in budget rooming houses. We did not eat out except to lunch on local bread, cheese and salami. In spite of a freshman course in “Medieval European History,” I knew nothing. I wasn’t interested in churches or religious art. My happy memory of Florence is taking the 11 year old twins out in a rowboat on the Arno.

These two weeks in Italy have helped me viscerally understand broad themes in European history, themes I didn’t “get” as a teenager. Christianity. Wealth. Power. The Renaissance. Science, etc. But I remain humbled by how little I know about this complicated country. (And how pathetic my attempts to speak Italian.)

Today we took a guided tour of the Uffizi Gallery, an office complex built by the Medici family in 1560, and now housing their massive art collections. The guide, a beautiful, passionate young Italian woman, gave us a wonderful Greatest Hits tour. She pointed out art innovations, especially the use of perspective, in paintings by “the big three” Rafael, Michelangelo and daVinci. She explained how DaVinci thought that painting was just sculpture on a flat surface.

We also learned why so many nudes! The Roman and Greek nude statues represented mythology and paganism. So a nude in a painting or statue, such as an angel or a Greek goddess of spring, was no big deal because she was not human.

We saw Botticelli’s Birth of Venus and learned that she was about to be clothed by Persephone as she stepped out of her clamshell to earth and became human.

Later in the Bargello Museum, we saw Donatello’s David, (circa 1440-1460) said to be the first nude statue done in a thousand years.

I loved looking closely at a smaller, unfinished David by Michelangelo, and again thinking about Michelangelo actually chipping at this very stone with his chisel.

Upon leaving Italy I do know a little bit more than I did at 23 about art, churches and Italy’s long complicated history. For example, ironically, the various Italian city states were not united into a republic until 1861, the year our own country started the Civil War.

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I enjoyed some more mundane things today: a trip to the laundromat, a little shopping and purchasing a lovely Italian leather watch band. The innkeeper here had referred me to his friend the jeweler the day we arrived. Alas, the jeweler had no watch bands that fit so he told me to come back Friday. When I returned today, he had ordered six or seven different bands. I chose the orangey red one. He removed the silver buckle and replaced it with a gold one that matched my Timex. It is “original coco calf” and cost €16. Wearing it makes me feel very chic.

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As in a cheesy movie where the American girl has to leave Italy and go home after her fabulous holiday, I feel little bittersweet sadness. Play the accordion music! See the little tear in her eye! She hopes she will be back!