TriumphAnt

As I sat outside Florence’s Uffizi Gallery while our travelling companions secured the pre-reserved tickets by which we would be admitted, I glanced upwards at the statues and exhibit posters lining the street outside the main entrance. Reading names like Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, Leonardo, I am profoundly embarrassed to admit that what first came to mind was, “Hey! All of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles!” There were also a couple of forgettables like Cellini and Giambologna but the awesome display of artistic firepower outside certainly forecast the profound experience awaiting inside the Gallery’s walls.

I am especially lucky to be married to someone who studied art history in university. I didn’t, and had I not met Leslie I likely never would have seen so many of the original artworks I have seen in my life under her direction. Case in point: while we were in Rome, she was looking at the map of the streets around our hotel and suddenly said, “Omigosh! We’re really close to Santa Maria della Vittoria!”

Next morning, we were standing in a small basilica only because it is home to a sculpture that has been on Leslie’s want-to-see list ever since she’d studied it: Bernini’s “The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa”. Coincidentally, our hotel desk clerk had already told us it was one of the three most important churches in Rome and seemed pleased that we were interested in seeing it.

You probably don’t need to be told that Italian religious art is pretty much where any study of Christian artworks the world over begins, but it is only while standing in the centre of a church like Santa Maria della Vittoria that you really come to appreciate the density of Italian religious art. There was not one square centimetre of floor, wall or ceiling space that wasn’t beautifully decorated with representations of the Divine, whether with paintings, sculpture, tile mosaics, tomb inlays and even objects like the badges of office worn by the countless bishops who presided over services held in the basilica over the centuries. You could devote quite literally a lifetime to studying the works in this one comparatively small space.

And the Bernini piece is indeed incredible. It is a statue of Saint Teresa in the company of an angel. She is looking heavenward while, from above, a stream of sculpted golden rays paints the entire piece with the heavenly presence that is infusing her with the emotion named in the work’s title.

I have a minor bug about places like this. Despite easily understood universal graphic signs urging silence and the forbidding of photography, there were small bands of jabbering visitors happily snapping away. We were not, however, which is why this Bernini illustration comes not from either of our cameras, but rather from a website.

There’s no smugness or holier-than-Thou intended with that statement. Frankly, in my case I was just so taken with the interior of this Church – helped along I suspect by a huge awareness of how much Dad’s Catholicism meant to him up to the moment he died – that I would have found it crass to turn the visit into a photo-op. But sometimes I just find it annoying to encounter people who seem to think the warnings are meant for everyone else – like the one idiot on an aircraft pre-departure who somehow fails to hear the eight-times-repeated instruction from the cockpit to turn off ALL electronic devices until the aircraft seatbelt sign is turned off once airborne. You just know the flight attendant who has to approach him (and yes, it’s always a “him”) is really wishing for a pointed stick.

(By sharp contrast, I felt no such compulsion in St Peter’s Basilica when I snapped a couple photos of its majestic interior, including Michelangelo’s Pieta – perhaps because it has seen the presence of TV cameras so often, it simply seemed more natural to be more of a tourist and less of a pilgrim within its walls. But I did notice that that basilica also displays no such warnings, so it seems the officials have yielded to the desires of the travelling shutterbugs.)

But Santa Maria Della Vittoria, as I mentioned, is less widely known, and we were among the first visitors this day. In the absence of crowds, it simply overpowers you into silent respect from the moment you enter its walls until the moment you re-engage with the busy streets immediately outside its doors.

I guess I digressed. Back to the Uffizi.

The Gallery’s best-known work of art is Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” but, among serious art lovers, apparently the more attractive of the artist’s major works in this same Gallery is another painting entitled “Primavera” (both easily found via online searches).

There are two highlights that especially stand out for me. The Gallery houses a central small exhibit hall called la Tribuna that has an interesting sub-text all its own. The oldest part of the Uffizi, the octagonal room is a gallery within a gallery whose interior decoration was purposely crafted to represent the four basic elements of Earth, Air, Fire and Water. Depending on either the politics or morals of the day, the room was used for the exhibit of pieces not normally viewed by the public in private showings arranged by the Medicis and, later, by the Government of Florence to visiting dignitaries and “supertourists”.

The Medicis deserve (and have) a wholly separate history – several in fact – devoted exclusively to them. An incredibly wealthy family that became a dynasty dating from the late 14th Century, their family tree includes such instantly recognizable names as Catherine de Medici and Lorenzo the Magnificent.

(One story with which our guide regaled us – with only a hint of smugness – was how, when Catherine was dispatched for a time to the French Court in Paris, she was so appalled by what she encountered under the label, “food”, that she had a battery of her own chefs transferred from Florence. She ordered them to instruct the French chefs and kitchen staff how to properly prepare meals fit for royalty. “So French ‘haute cuisine’ today?” our guide summarized, “It’s all due to Italy.”)

In 1564, the Grand Duke Cosimo di Medici thought it would be a nice idea to give his son, Francesco, a unique wedding gift. In five months flat, he had an enclosed corridor constructed from what was his palace to the Florentine Government House across the Arno River, incorporating the halls of the Uffizi and crossing the Arno over a mediaeval market bridge called the Ponte Vecchio. At one point, the Corridor opens over the interior of the Santa Felicita Church, essentially offering the Medicis a “skybox” that allowed them to be present at regular services without actually mingling with the common folk.

The Vasari Corridor today (named for its designer, Giorgio Vasari) is an extension of the Uffizi and its long halls (it runs over a kilometre in length) are now home to hundreds of portraits and self portraits by a who’s who of artists through the centuries. At one point our guide gently admonished one of our group to watch his elbow after having just bumped the corner of a frame. Turned out he’d bumped a Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Corridor art is that accessible.

The Corridor tour is available as a private adjunct to a Gallery visit and the well-informed guide is a font of stories about the artists, their subjects and the all-pervasive power of the Medicis through hundreds of years of Italian history.

(Another digression. I never knew him beyond, “I’m Chuck from Princeton”, but halfway down the entrance staircase into the Corridor, he seized the wheelchair from Leslie as I hobbled carefully down with one hand firmly on my cane, the other on the railing. By the time I reached the bottom – about 60 steps away, he had opened out the chair and took it on himself to wheel me along the entire Corridor and made sure I stood up to catch the highlights – the mid-river view from the Ponte Vecchio overlooking the Arno, and the “skybox” view of Santa Felicita’s altar. I just want to repeat my vigorous thanks, Chuck, for the record.)

If you do the Uffizi, plan (you have to reserve and pay in advance – easily accomplished online) to do the Corridor too. It’s worth it. One especially tragic footnote. At the beginning of the tour, we paused by a painting so badly fire-blasted, it was unrecognizable. Here’s Wikipedia’s explanation (essentially as told to us by our guide): “The area closest to the Uffizi entrance was heavily damaged by a terrorist attack commissioned by the Italian mafia in 1993. During the night of May 26, 1993 a car full of explosive was set off next to the Torre dei Pulci, located between via Lambertesca and via de' Georgofili, and five people died. Many others were injured and several houses were heavily damaged, including this section of the Uffizi Gallery and the Vasari Corridor. In the Corridor, several artworks were destroyed by the explosion. These paintings, some hopelessly damaged, have been pieced back together and placed back on their original spot to serve as a reminder of the horrible attack.”

The piece at which we paused was a massive Michelangelo from which the explosion had literally blasted the paint from the canvas.

When we got home, I asked Leslie what had been her favourite recollection of our Uffizi visit. Without a second’s hesitation, she said, “The Madonna of the Long Neck”.

See what I mean about the joys of having an art history buff in the family?

Photo: The Ponte Vecchio. The uppermost row of small square windows marks part of the Vasari Corridor. In a moment of hilarity, about the same time as I was taking this picture, a small group of Japanese tourists was standing beside me as their photographer – facing the opposite direction from me – snapped them with a modern highway bridge across the Arno behind them. Given a choice between the ancient Ponte Vecchio and a modern highway bridge over the historic river, I can only assume they were operating under a friend-at-home’s instruction to “Get a picture of yourselves with the bridge”. They probably should have gotten a few more details.

And finally, there’s not a lot about Adolf Hitler that contains a shred of positivity, but in WWII as the German armies retreated across the Arno in the face of the advancing US armies, Hitler ordered every last Florentine bridge over the river blown up... except the Ponte Vecchio. However, he did have buildings at both ends blown to bits to effectively deny the bridge’s use to the American forces.

But Ponte Vecchio stands today because of his direct order.

Ciao for niao.