I Tatti and Florence

Our host, Alexa, works at I Tatti, Harvard's Center for the Study of the Renaissance. After three trips to Florence, we finally got the opportunity to visit her there. Ira sketched in the garden while Alexa took me on a tour. The controversial frescoes in the reading room by Rene Piot were fairly dreadful. (Berenson hated them when he saw them in progress; the two had a falling out and the uncompleted frescoes were covered for decades. They were only uncovered in the '70s, I think. Still, they are intriguing, with lots of naked bodies cavorting and working the fields in some sort of erotic social realism. One fellow on the right was doing the downward dog, and I had to wonder if this was an explicit yoga reference or something more coincidental.) But, of course, there are many wonderful paintings there as well, and the house, library and new additions all harmoniously placed there on the hillside in Fiesole.

We had met the director and his wife in San Francisco, and they were gracious in welcoming us to i Tatti, a completely charming couple. If you're a Renaissance scholar, I hope you get the opportunity to study and perhaps stay there. And, if you would just like to support the wonderful work they do there… Before going off to work, Alexa showed me around the gardens, which were beautiful and immaculately maintained. The cypress hedges must have been edged with a laser. They were perfectly squared. The roses were just ending, though many other flowers were in full riot, including the aromatic jasmine that had Ira practically swooning as he sketched.

Lunch, again, was at Sostanza. Yesterday, almost all Italian businesspeople. Today, mostly American tourists with only one lone local representative. I had the pasta al sugo to start, crunchy penne with a rich meat sauce, then finished up with lombata di vitello, veal chop, that was succulent, perfectly cooked, and just perfect after an overcast morning. Some vino rosso della cassa and that wonderful meringue dessert, and it was a good day! Two lunches in two days at my favorite restaurant in the world; I'm doin' something right!

The sun came out as we strolled across the city, but there wasn't a line at the Uffizi, so we had to go in and spend a couple of hours with some of the most magnificent paintings in the universe. Alongside the obvious masterpieces, I was taken by a Luca Signorelli painting. His Crucifixion with St. Mary Magdalene was superb, modern and moving. Mary's face, in particular, was so strong and sensitive and beautiful. The foreground figures are so powerful, it took me a while to notice the blank white moonscape in the background. It gave the painting such a modern feeling, as if Signorelli was capturing some future muse. If you are planning a trip to Italy, you could do worse than see his magnificent frescoes at the Cathedral in Orvieto. Michelangelo stopped by to see them before continuing on to paint the Sistine Chapel. There are also two small works by Boticelli, odd takes on the biblical tale of Judith beheading Holofernes. It's a common painting subject, but most often the actual beheading is the grisly scene. Botticelli takes two different looks at it: the discovery of the headless body by his men, and the triumphal carrying of the head by Judith and her maid back to their camp. I'm not sure that any other painting has covered that territory! We hadn't expected to go to the galleries at all due to the crowds, so this was an unexpected pleasure.

Now, we're relaxing before our last dinner in Florence, then off to Rome tomorrow.