Firenze

A colleague recently remarked that he’d spent two days at the Uffizi museum in Florence and hadn’t seen it all. Compare that to Art Buchwald’s man who saw the Louvre in under six minutes. Not an easy feat given the crowds but it can be done if you pick the right day (a Monday in March) and time (first thing in the morning before the artists are awake). Buy your ticket online, get a map to run up the stairs, see the Mona Lisa, dart down a corridor and see the Winged Victory and Venus de Milo. Choosing the right entrance is key, ignore signs (scenic route) and do not run. I’ll bet that the visit can be made in under three minutes.

We visited Florence and the Uffizi during our four days of quasi-homelessness after moving from Heathcliff’s house in Valbonne until the apartment in Antibes was available. We became Friends of the Uffizi in anticipation of the visit. It shortens the wait time time to enter to a mere five minutes and promises unlimited visits during the calendar year with a chain of subscribing local museums if you can drag yourself to see still more art.

The Ufizzi is a great place for art historians but I am no more an art historian than George Costanza was a marine biologist or architect. We joined tired tourists shuffling about from one painting to the next, from the thirteenth century down to the fourteenth as so on. Lots of gilded halos early on, giving way to the sixteenth century angels (Birds? Do they lay eggs?) and sunlight pouring through gaps in clouds.

We had the audioguide but it said little beyond, “Now you are in Room 13” after we punched in the number 13. We walked through the museum and at some point thought we were done, but no, it’s a lot like IKEA where like a rat in a maze you walk past lampshades and cutlery long after you’ve picked the table you came to buy.  The children finished long before Jeroen and I did (let’s blame my arthritis) and found the gelati stand.

Next was the Accademia where David looks beyond victory with modest eyes and exposed genitals. I thought about the not-David that had been chipped and smoothed away and the incredibly accurate surface anatomy, with cephalic and basilar veins, the dorsal venous arch incorporated in the sculpture. Michelangelo endured dissection much better than I did, and without the benefit of formaldehyde. I saw a grown man yawn before David, I blamed jet-lag. Naked sculptures of men and women graced the piazza outside, including a copy of David which tempted the average tourist to skip the real thing. The copy, alas, was done by an artist with less talent or with fewer than 10,000 hours of practice. We’ll never know.

The highlight of our trip to Florence was our visit to Signora Valentina’s home. She hosted my brother as a student many years ago when he was a student. On the first evening of his visit, she told him, in Italian, that her son was a zoologist, and unsure if he’d understood what she’d said, proceeded to imitate several animals to make her meaning clear. For our visit, she enlisted her niece, Costanza, an art historian who speaks English fluently and translated a book on thirteenth century Italian art into English and is often at the Uffizi. Signora Valentina said that I look just like my brother which I’m sure she intended as a compliment. She cooked a lovely vegetarian meal for us, three different kinds of pasta and a salad, all so good. I could go back for more.

At Hotel Carolus, we met two Tamil employees from Sri Lanka. One of them spoke of the precarious conditions of Tamils still living as refugee in tents of plastic with little security save the eyes of Geneva and expats Sri Lankans in the UK and USA. “The Tamils were betrayed by the Tigers,” he said. “They could have made a deal but no, hungry for power, they wanted it all. Just like the Palestinians under Arafat. Now we have nothing; we could have had something.”  His bilingual children speak Tamil and Italian, and play football. He plied us with coffee, and offered me Ceylon tea, packed, of course, he added wryly, in England. He also told me that he bicycled to work and lived across from Dante Alighieri's house.

The other gentleman, older, and softly spoken, plans to retire in the next year or two to the hills of Kandy. His wife and grown children run their little coffee plantation which also grows pepper and cardamon. He goes home every three months and has traveled all over Tamil Nadu, visiting temples. His favorite temple was Meenakshi in Madurai, and then, as an aside mentioned that he was Muslim. Yet, he said, Tamil culture, which is truly his own culture, includes temple architecture and sculpture and music. He has as much faith in art as he does in his religion and he can respect the frailties of other humans and their Gods.

Andre, the porter, was another gentlemen with Tamil ancestry from Mauritius. He speaks little Tamil but his grandfather came from the town of Chidambaram. I told him, in my best French, the legend of Nandanar, the untouchable, who in a dream was summoned to the temple in Chidambaram but was stopped at the door because of his caste. He was found dead in the sanctum the next morning, brought home by Nataraja. Since then, the doors of the temple have been open, and anyone can enter.

I cannot finish this piece on Florence without mentioning Giardino di Barbano at Piazza Indipendenza, a family-run Tuscan restaurant. They served a most delicious vegetable soup and good pizza and packed Tiramisu to go. We ate there every night while in Florence, as much for the simple food which satisfied soul and body as for Silvia’s gentle presence.