No, This is Amore

Distance Traveled:   42,410 kms (BNE-MEL-SYD-BKK-PKT-BKK-CNX-BKK-PP-SR-BB-PP-HCMC-NC-TH-HA-H-L-MR-AG-SV-TF-AC-LL-ML-CZ-TF-CZ-SV-L-BP-ZG-SP-LJ-VN-PG-SZ-MN-ZR-GV-ML-FC)

Time Difference: -8 hours (from Brisbane)

Soundtrack: Almost entirely barbershop, although I have also been tearing my heart out to Joplin on occasion and putting it back together with the help of Joni.

Currently Inspired by: Michelangelo, Botticelli, Da Vinci

Stacks: Just a few little trips here and there that always happen to people like me who don't pick up their feet on uneven streets
Words written: 83,502 (after deleting an entire chapter I didn't like)

And a buon giorno to you, from the swarthy south of the sexy succubus that is Italy, where the men are hairy and the women are... hairy.  Err...

I'm not really in the south, but let's say I am for alliterative purposes ;)

Both Italy and its Italians are mad, bold, passionate, generous, expressive and voluptuous.  Neither does anything by halves.  With thickly polluted air, eccentric traffic, buildings covered in graffiti, peeling paint, drooping shutters, streets dusted with litter and packed with touts, beggars and gypsies, Italy and her cities are not pretty – until they are – at which point they are not so much pretty as jaw droppingly, pants wettingly, mouth wateringly stunning.  It’s like the payoff you get for putting up with all the other stuff.

Grumbles of old men drenched in Eau-De-Vaporub sit together along park benches in their long pants, shiny shoes and woollen vests regardless of the weather, chatting merrily and occasionally breaking into animated but good humoured arguments with one another.  Large family groups, comfortably squashed onto restaurant footpath tables for half their numbers, squabble and vie with each other for attention, hands flapping around and volume going up as the whole all-talking-no-listening group of them attempts to outshout their neighbour.  A casual glance might give one the impression that a family feud is on the verge of erupting, but personally I believe they are saying nothing more controversial than “pass the Parmesan, Jeff”.  The men here flirt with every breath they expel and the women with every step they take.

Oh, hi honey!  We were just... err... talking

Before attempting to negotiate the city traffic as a pedestrian, eat a chewy margerita pizza fresh and hot from a fiery oven, then top it off with an icy cold scoop of pineapple gelato.  That way you’ll at least die happy.  They serve food and drink with a wink here, like you and the waiter are in cahoots on some fabulous secret.  I’ll tell you a secret right now...  Italy is where the gods live, and Florence is where they keep their summer residences.  From the ornate Palazzo Vecchio with its distinctly homoerotic statues to the densely decorated bulk of the mighty Il Duomo, each of Firenze’s eighty million piazzas yields a new and spectacular architectural treasure to explore in depth.  They all make me want to kiss in their corners.

Sleepy sunburned tourists who have clearly had a glass of rosso vino or two at lunch stumble around the uneven and strangely bewildering streets of Firenze, useless Italian maps clutched in sweaty palms.  I think most people would agree that in terms of quality and quantity, Italy contains the lion’s share of Europe’s most famous art.  Try finding it though, or figuring out which line to get into to buy your ticket.  The Italians would spend half a lifetime trying to make something beautiful, but wouldn’t spend half an hour making something practical.  You have to love them for it.

Does this sling make me look fat?

In the Galleria L’Academie I fell into a kind of trance looking at the finely defined musculature of the famous and colossal statue of David, the raised veins on his hands, the way his expression changes as you walk around him.  All I could think was “this couldn’t have been made by human hands”.  Of course they weren’t really human hands, were they?  They were Michelangelo’s.  This is the same rather eclectic gallery that also contains classical sculpture, paintings by famous Italian artists throughout history and works by Picasso, Francis Bacon and Andy Warhol, not to mention an oddly out of place Museum of Musical Instruments which houses a beautiful Stradivarius violin, lonely and wasted in its glass prison.  Will a human ear ever hear its music again?  Surely the world possesses a few virtuosos worthy of such an instrument – indeed its price (virtually priceless) reflects the music it is capable of making.  Soundless, it is worthless.

How could anyone want to burn the goddess of Love?

The Birth of Venus is arguably the most famous of Sandro Botticelli’s paintings, and not without reason.  The divine innocence on clear display in the flawless face and beautifully pale form of Venus as she stands upon her pink shell serves as a stark reminder to those who know the story of Botticelli:  That later in life, turning from virtual agnosticism to something of a spiritual crisis brought on by the stern and misguided monk Savaranola, this humble, talented and tormented man was urged to destroy his earlier, “heathen” works on the Bonfire of the Vanities and retain only his darkly Christian themed pieces.  Thank the gods for all of us, The Birth of Venus and many others of his works that I have spent many happy hours on the trip viewing, survived in the palazzos of others.  But I could weep when I think about what got eaten up in the flames.  The expression of Venus seems to whisper "Am I not spiritual, also?"

The city of Firenze provides even the most casual observer the unrivalled opportunity to compare the best classical pagan sculpture with more “modern” Christian effigies.  Despite the inevitable yellowing that appears on the surface of marble over millennia, even with the most loving care and restoration, the classical works are far superior in my opinion.  You don’t even need to look at the exquisitely rendered faces to understand the emotions involved because the classical sculptors contorted their pieces into the most lifelike and evocative poses which immediately provided the mood or the theme of the sculpture.

Part of Il Duomo

The majority of Christian pieces, made for church decoration, have been of course made with great skill and care to ensure that through the garments, hair and context the subject is easily identifiable, however the postures and expressions are almost uniformly stiff and pious, and sadly lacking any sort of character (with a few notable exceptions).  Without doing any research on the matter, I have come up with a few possible theories for this. 1. It may have been considered blasphemous at some stage to render images of Jesus, Mary and the saints in poses or expressions that seemed too “human” in their aspect.  2.  Artisans of that period wanted their pieces to be popular in order to sell more and therefore couldn’t run the risk of being controversial in their contexts. 3.  The sheer quantity of pieces required for the huge numbers of churches and cathedrals meant that the amount of care couldn’t be taken when creating the pieces as was employed in the classical period.  Who knows?

Inside the Dome

Clambering up the dark and narrow stone staircase into the largest dome of any cathedral in the world, my quadriceps began to complain “how many frigging things to do want to climb on this trip?” Poor things.  When I go back through these blogs I am going to have to count approximately the number of steps I have clambered up, because it’s really ridiculous.  I must have buns of steel at this point!  When you finally get up to the base of the dome to look “up close” at the 3.6 square kilometres of artwork that decorates the interior of it, you could really spend all day observing the details in the painting.  The Last Judgement is a common theme, but I have never seen it so massively rendered, and it was truly awe inspiring.  Once the cranky staff makes you move on reluctantly to make room for the millions coming behind, you are faced with another few minutes of clambering before popping out onto the cupola at the top.  I think this entire experience belongs in the top ten of one of the most worthwhile and valuable I have had so far on this trip, and I haven’t even been into the actual cathedral part yet, because I haven’t yet been properly attired.  (Must wear pants or skirts below the knee and tops with sleeves).

Last week I promised the saga about getting here, but let's just say it was a comedy of errors created by my own complacency and the classic Italian lack of organisation that saw me waiting for six and a half hours at a Lyon train station that was an expensive trip from the one I initially went to, finally a train which arrived an hour late into Milan where I was breaking my trip up for one night, a taxi in the rain to a hotel which (although I'd pre-booked) did not have a room available for me, then another taxi in the rain to their sister hotel (a crappier one), finally collapsing to sleep at midnight and then getting up to do it all over again to come to Florence!

Part of a line

I am not going to go on any more about Firenze, because I will still be here next week and thus am taking my time, ambling around and seeing things at a snail’s pace.  Thank goodness I have time to spend here, because high season has arrived and I have not waited for less than an hour to get into anywhere yet. The price one pays for good weather!  Day trips out to other places in Tuscany will be coming up soon, no doubt.

You can click here to see my photos of Florence.  Unfortunately photos are not allowed in much of it.  The ones here of David and Venus are from the net.

Til Next We Speak

*LOVE*

N