Venezia

I went to the Venice film festival! Kicking myself for not plucking up the courage to ask strangers to take my picture as we were speeding along in a vaporetto or hopping over the red carpet with my press lanyard, but you can't have everything.

One of the most enjoyable mornings I spent in Venice was actually wandering around an exhibition on the history of the film festival in the abandoned Hotel des Bains. You can read my article on it for AnOther here.

L'Estate.

Fiesole

When the heat of Florence gets too much it's nice to be able to escape to the surrounding hills.  Walking up to Piazza San Marco if you wait and catch the number 7 bus for a mere 1 euro 20 (2.40 return) you'll be whisked up into the surrounding green of Fiesole in a matter of minutes (I've put what will hopefully be a useful photo of the timetable below). The small village is famous for its incredible Roman ruins and beautiful views over the city.

It's also famous for being at the heart of E.M. Forster's A Room with a View (one of the most famous books to be set in Florence) as it's near Fiesole where the protagonist Lucy Honeychurch is kissed by George Emerson in a poppy and barley field overlooking Florence. It's also mentioned in one of the first pieces of wisdom she's offered when she arrives in Florence by Mr. Beebe:

“Don’t neglect the country round,” his advice concluded. “The first fine afternoon drive up to Fiesole, and round by Settignano, or something of that sort.” 

I'm ashamed to think that I'm encouraging you to become the very people that Mr. Eager despises (who seems like the voice of Forster himself here):

Sometimes as I take tea in their beautiful grounds I hear, over the wall, the electric tram squealing up the new road with its loads of hot, dusty, unintelligent tourists who are going to ‘do’ Fiesole in an hour in order that they may say they have been there, and I think—think—I think how little they think what lies so near them.

However I have confidence you'll want to visit Fiesole again, and linger for far longer than an hour, and with the bus there's really no excuse to not head up to the hills once every now and then. I'm determined to explore further afield. Forster describes the countryside and ruins around Fiesole beautifully:

A hollow like a great amphitheatre, full of terraced steps and misty olives, now lay between them and the heights of Fiesole, and the road, still following its curve, was about to sweep on to a promontory which stood out in the plain.

These photos were taken from the small memorial garden on the way up the hill to the magical San Francesco Monastery. If this view is the 'hackneyed view' that is discarded by Mr. Eager then I'm certainly eager to see what the other hills around Florence hold in store! 

I am about to venture a suggestion. Would you and Miss Honeychurch be disposed to join me in a drive some day this week—a drive in the hills? We might go up by Fiesole and back by Settignano. There is a point on that road where we could get down and have an hour’s ramble on the hillside. The view thence of Florence is most beautiful—far better than the hackneyed view of Fiesole. 

For those attempting to take the bus here's the timetable:

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In the Studio

Sadly Libri Bianchi by Lorenzo Perrone has now come to an end in the Harold Acton Library. However something I forgot to mention previously, during my first few days in Florence I was lucky enough to stumble upon Lorenzo's studio. It turns out I live just around the corner from where he creates his incredible white books in Oltrarno (south of the Arno). Walking into the Institute for my Italian lessons one day I glanced over the street to see his works peeking out from behind his studio door and thought they looked familiar. Gaining confidence I popped by head around the corner one day to say 'Buongiorno' and he was kind enough to let me take a few photos of him at work. It was incredible to watch and document the process of just how much work goes into creating his beautiful art objects and the variety of creations he's made. Don't miss them when they go on show in London later this year. 

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Libri Bianchi di Lorenzo Perrone

Have you been to the Harold Acton Library recently? If you have you may have noticed the eerie but beautiful work of Lorenzo Perrone hanging from the shelves. Libri Bianchi or Shakespeare in White is a free exhibition that transforms books into glorious art objects, stripping them of words with white paint, while recreating them and allowing them to speak in a whole new way. Taking inspiration from Shakespeare each book is inspired by a certain play or line that Perrone then interpreted onto the pages of the books themselves. However the large totem of books you can see in the final picture is the exception. It's made up of 100 books, each book commemorating a year in celebration of the Institute's centenary, an incredible feat! 

As the exhibition is in its final week be sure to catch it before it heads over to London. For more information see the British Institute website here. 

Renaissance Tapestries and Textiles Diplomacy

In London earlier this year Professor Jeremy Boudreau, the director of the British Institute's History of Art department, gave the inaugural Harold Acton lecture at the Italian Embassy, on "Renaissance Tapestries and Textiles Diplomacy" examining the Medici family's collection of Italian Spalliere tapestries, which are currently on loan from the Palazzo Pitti Museum and on show in the Breakfast Room of the Italian Embassy. 

Lucky for us Professor Bourdeau was kind enough to give The British Institute a ‘backwards view’ of the talk from a Florentine perspective. He unravelled the important collection of rarely displayed tapestries for us, explaining their political and economic significance in the time of the Medicis, proving once and for all that there’s more to the tapestry tradition than just a pretty covering.

In 1545 Cosimo Medici set up the first examples of tapestry workshops using Flemish weavers as a ‘start up’ of sorts to teach their trade to Florentine artists. Cosimo was cunning, rather than simply importing the skill of foreign hands he invested the time and the energy to ensure the creation of a ‘local’ art form by providing the basis for trade to be adopted and artisans to learn and practice their skills within the city. 

Not only this but Cosimo ensured motivation for his artisans, establishing two rival workshops at the same time. One was led by Jan Roost and the other by Nicolas Karcher, the first patronised by the Duke of Ferrara and the second by the Duke of Mantova. The healthy competition of the two workshops within the city is undoubtedly one of the reasons they tirelessly produced some of the most spectacular tapestries we have to date. 

The State dining room with the Medicean Spalliere Tapestries. Image by Federico Zonno.

Bourdeau’s keen academic eye is inspiring. He takes us through overarching themes, explaining the traditional techniques of tapestries and the scenes of grotesques, the cherubs, garlands and festoons of flowers, species of birds, fish and other animals, the fantastical creatures intertwined with luscious foliage as well as the Spalliere (Tuscan 15th and early 16th century painted wall panels and hangings) of the time. He also draws our attention to minute details on the tapestries that reveal their changing identity in the Florentine realm, inscriptions such as ‘FATTO – IN - FIORENZA’, an early 'Made in Florence' or ‘Made in Italy’ if you will. Another example that crops up is SPQF a play on SPQR, the initialism used by the Roman Senate and People, small but potent symbols of the growing pride felt in Florence for their adopted Flemish art.

Yet context with these artworks is key and Bourdeau made sure to guide us into the two rooms in the Palazzo Vecchio that the site-specific tapestries were originally designed for, Sala dei Dugento and the Sala dell’Udienza. The wall coverings truly clothe the rooms, leaving not a spot untouched by gold and vivid colours from floor to ceiling. Only last year saw the newly restored Sala dei Dugento and its vivid depictions of Joseph ‘the prince of dreams’ open to the public for a special exhibition. We can only hope after its success that more such public reunions of the tapestries with their settings will follow. 

The Sistine Chapel and Tapestries

When looking at the elaborate weavings it's easy to realise how Florence was being reinvented by the Medici. Under Cosimo it was rapidly becoming a centre for tapestry production but the artwork was also introducing a new vocabulary for Renaissance paintings from the ‘cartoons’ the Flemish weavers used as drafts to transform into tapestries. In fact many ‘cartoons’ themselves stand alone now as artworks recognised in their own right (several in London’s V&A museum). 

Tapestries were a means of displaying a story as well as boasting about one’s wealth. In Rome Boudreau highlighted perhaps the most famous example of the Sistine Chapel. Here tapestries were originally paired with the paintings (as if they weren’t decorative enough!) and designed to hang under the ornate scenes on the walls depicting Raphael’s Acts of the Apostles (1515-1520) woven in silk and wool with silver-gilt threads. It seems absurd that another layer of opulence could be added to such a treasure chest of a Chapel, yet excess seems to have been all part of the game.

Jan Rost and Nicolas Karcher, Spalliere with grotesques based on cartoons by Bachiacca (1545), Silk, gold, silver and wool tapestry, Italian Embassy London

Boudreau amusingly recalled the comments of the Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, who was shocked after visiting the Pontiff exiled in Orvieto declaring that “Before reaching his [Pope Clement VII] chamber we passed three chambers all naked and unhanged.” When even the Pope lacked the grandeur of ‘clothed’ walls, one knew something was up. 

Intriguingly although based on Italian cartoons and designs many tapestries of the time were still produced in Brussels and outside of Italy. It was mainly through the persistence of Cosimo that Italian weavers were eventually able to take over from their original Flemish masters. 

One of the most interesting moments of the evening came towards the end of the talk where Boudreau attempted to put the young Cosimo’s rule in context with the other leaders of the time. He jokingly observed how he must have had a rather bad ‘inferiority complex’, flashing up images of Henry VIII, Charles V, Paul III and Frances I, it’s easy to see why. Meeting and surpassing the expectations of political visitors was paramount, dazzling, distracting and even intimidating guests with the beauty of ornate tapestries was all part and parcel of playing the part. 

Although we weren’t able to head down to the State dining room to observe the tapestries first hand as the original audience at the Italian embassy were after the talk, the lecture was still a truly immersive experience. Julia Race, the Institute’s director, described the experience as akin to walking with Bourdeau through the Palazzo Vecchio, and it’s true – he led us by the hand.

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Giardino Bardini

Want the Boboli gardens without the queues? You may be in luck. Ignored, forgotten, or simply unknown to many, when you buy a ticket for the Boboli gardens you also gain access to another green oasis in the city a mere five minutes walk away. The beautiful, and far more elusive sanctuary of Villa Bardini and its ornate gardens holds a famous flight of baroque steps, fringed with irises, delicate mosaiced archways, and flowerbeds. I'd recommend a visit in a heartbeat. 

The famous stairs ascend to a beautiful viewing platform and tea room, where you can buy a refreshing drink and sweet pastries, enjoying both with expansive views of Florence. Meandering through the garden you can find areas dedicated to medicinal plants, a 'fountain of the dragon', replica English woods and a medieval 'farming area' complete with hillside terraces planted with olive trees. The gardens aren't exactly a hidden gem, but they're certainly a welcome alternative to the classic tourist trail. There are also some excellent lemon trees round the back of the Villa with gorgeous views out over the city. If you're in the area, it's definitely worth the climb up the hill, and tackling all those steps. 

Back to School

A week has already flown by, so I thought it was about time I show you where I spend most of my mornings here in Florence, the language school! As well as the famous Harold Acton Library the British Institute own another space for their famous language centre which is based on the north side of the Arno in the beautiful Piazza Strozzi, just a quick stroll across Ponte Santa Trinita and through Via de Tornabuoni and Via Porta Rossa (both streets studded with every exciting designer shop you can imagine). Handily it's got the wonderful Odeon bistro coffee shop based just below it and the famous Cinema Odeon Firenze right around the corner, so right in the thick of things while still just outside of the main tourist trails. The long corridors are lined with gorgeous art works, an assortment of comfortable chairs and a couple of very welcome vending machines. 

Every morning just before 10am I climb the many flights of stairs up to the last floor (there is a lift but I figure it's good practice to counter the vast quantities of delicious pasta I'm consuming). Here, usually in room 11, I study with my fellow Beginners till 12:45 (with a coffee break – ovviamente!). There are quite a lot of us at the institute this spring term, so we're divided into groups, for us there's Group 1 and Group 2, with everyone from a Hungarian banker, gap year and university students, post-university students, writers, musicians and nursing assistants. A wonderful mix of people from all walks of life who are all just as excited to be in Florence learning Italian. Perfetto! 

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The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell

                       

Continuing with the botanical theme (see my post on visiting the orto botanico) this week's cultural talk at the British Institute was about ‘The Marvels of Clarence Bicknell’. Although well known and respected in Liguria, the Riviera and the Martine Alps, this intrepid botanist, writer, and artist remains relatively unknown in the UK. Impressive given that there are several species named after him, everything from Pimpinella bicknellii, a beautiful small white flower, to a particular type of Australian ant. 

Next year is Bicknell’s centenary so I’m sure this won’t be the last we’ll be hearing about his work and beautiful watercolours over the next few months. 2018 is also the release date for his first official biography by Valerie Browne Lester, which should hopefully give more context to the prolific recorder and the 7,000 plus artefacts, of pressed flowers, letters, and paintings that he left behind. Graham Avery, previously a fellow of the European Institute and now at St. Antony’s College Oxford, and Bicknell’s own relative Marcus reflected in their talks that Bicknell never courted the English elite while he was working, he didn’t go to any of the important meetings and practiced outside of England, so his impressive legacy has largely been ignored. 

We began the evening with a short documentary produced by french film maker Rémy Masséglia, which certainly transported us all into Bicknell’s Riviera world. With swooping landscape shots of the luscious fields and mountainous areas that Bicknell explored it certainly set the scene beautifully for Graham Avery’s brilliant exploration into the self-taught botanist's work. Born in 1842 in Herne Hill near London, the 13th child in a large family, Bicknell ended up studying at Cambridge University and entering the Anglican church. After doubts with his faith he wrote ‘I fear I have become rather narrow’, and soon after taking on the chaplaincy at All Saints Church in Bordighera threw off his dog collar at the age of thirty-five and threw himself into the flowering plants and ferns of the surrounding environment and neighbouring mountains. His first published book Flowering Plants and Ferns of the Riviera, came soon after in 1885. 

In 1897 he discovered prehistoric engravings while out walking in the mountainous Fontanalba and took to heading out each day to make delicate rubbings and copies of the engravings in order to raise awareness of their existence, sometimes lying flat out on the rocks for several hours to capture the images as precisely as he could. He loved the area so much that he ended up building a house there which he named Villa Fontanalba. Sadly the estate is now owned privately, but from the sounds of it, the hand crafted interiors with their mural walls and hand-painted scenic depictions rival that of the Bloomsbury group. 

One very interesting point that was made when flicking through Bicknell’s elaborately decorated guest-book for his Villa Fontanalba (which alone speaks volumes for the care and artistry that Bicknell took with the details of his home) was that he had written the entire document in Esperanto. Apparently this was common for Bicknell who was deeply involved in the movement for the universal language pioneered by a Polish doctor that envisioned a means of international communication. He was even vice president of the Esperanto society in Italy. 

Described by Avery as ‘incredibly modest’ his humble work ethic of concentrating on recording his findings (as opposed to interpreting), hindered his fame abroad. At one point Avery laughed and compared the fascination that Bicknell had with flora and fauna akin to collecting stamps, with each botanist always eager to see a specific they had yet to see before, specimens were traded around like stamps, each flower had its own particular fascination and worth to the beholder. Bicknell spread dried plants all over the world in correspondence with a variety of influential botanists, a dedicated writer his commitment to communicating with his friends, family and contemporaries can be attested by the vast paper trail he left behind, such as his 700 plus archive of postcards and letters to Émile Burnat. His carefully hand illustrated notes are incredibly inspiring in a world where pen and ink correspondence feels fairly neglected (also an excellent reminder that it's always a good idea to send more postcards). 

It was wonderful to learn so much from such a passionate assortment of people about a man whom otherwise I would probably have never come across. I particularly loved the fact that Bicknell preferred wild flowers over cultivated ones, one book he owned was called 'the triumph of the dandelion', and I think the title says a lot about the optimistic spirit of this adventurous botanist.  

Graham Avery ended by telling us all the best places to visit Bicknell’s work. For those interested they are as follows: Biblioteca Bicknell (Bordighera), Musee des Merveilles (Tende), and Val Fontanalba. They've all certainly made it on to my ever growing list of places to visit! 

For more information about Clarence Bicknell click here.

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Picasso and the meaning of Guernica

Robin Blake after his talk / Picasso painting

When Pablo Picasso visited Italy in 1917 he went to the Sistine Chapel. Once there he admired the Raphaels: 'Good, very good,' he observed, 'but it can be done, don’t you think?' Turning to Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, he paused: 'Now this is more difficult.' Out of the astonishing 15,000 paintings Picasso produced during his lifetime, Guernica is the most powerful and well known. It is also, like Michelangelo’s Last Judgement, a work whose sheer size is part of its potency. Robin Blake started the spring season of cultural talks at the British Institute of Florence with a brilliant lecture on the painting, movingly on the same day (26 April) as that terrible massacre of the Basque town of Guernica all those years ago.

Blake began by transporting us back to the 1937 International Exhibition in Paris for which the piece was commissioned, a world of grand gestures where the Spanish Pavilion – with a beautiful statue by Alberto Sanchez,‘The Spanish People Have a Path that Leads to a Star’ – sat right next to the Nazi one. This was a time when Spanish republican art was still vibrant, and the chance to exhibit at the Biennale was an honour.

Since Picasso is quite unlike his Spanish contemporaries, Blake compares him to the Paris Surrealists with whom he worked, whose aim was to invite the viewer to be puzzled. Blake defines Picasso’s skill as one that manages to capture ‘the meeting place between the private and the mythic’. He was a master of balance, depicting, as Blake poetically puts it, ‘The harlequin and the whore / the matador and the minotaur'.

Robin Blake speaking in the Harold Acton Library 

What Picasso was able to depict in Guernica is not defiant heroism – but a fall from this: a tragedy. The job of tragedy for Picasso was to provoke fear and pity and to hold them in equilibrium. Looking back through his work, it’s clear that for Guernica he drew strongly on the bullfights of his homeland. The suffering picador’s horse is an image that tortured Picasso from a young age. ‘He saw the horse as an innocent,’ Blake notes: after all a bullfight ‘is not the horse’s fight’. What Picasso saw in the horse was pity, and with this pity he evoked fear, bringing a greater conception of tragedy to the tradition of the Spanish people. Although Picasso experimented greatly in the 1920s and 1930s, it’s possible to see an abiding theme in the horse as prey to the rampant bull. The innocent tragic figure, however distorted, pervades his work.

Blake showed us how it was this repetition of tragedy and horror, the subconscious themes of his earlier work, that Picasso drew on for Guernica. The painting is 'grounded in reality and emotion', and also 'particularly rooted in its time and place'. Through the drafts of the painting it is possible to understand the movements of Picasso’s vision and its evolution. Following the news of the bombing of April 1937 Picasso abandoned his original idea of depicting the artist’s studio for the commission, choosing instead to tackle the devastation of war head on.

Over several days he created a series of sketches; then he stretched a huge canvas and got down to work. Although he didn’t like studio assistants, his lover Dora Marr produced a series of photographs recording the stages through which the canvas developed: the tangle of bodies that appears at the feet of the horse and the bull, the sudden additions, as flames appear, then the sun. What becomes evident is that he was still working out what he was trying to do as he went along. The process of completion was a process of understanding. 

What Marr’s images also show are Picasso’s whims: at one point, very late in the process, he experiments with collage, but then rapidly discards the idea. Dora even helped adorn the central horse. Change is constant. The sun suddenly becomes a light bulb; a lamp takes the same shape as those lamps held by the concrete statues that Picasso originally intended to bracket the canvas in the pavilion. Studies of the mother and child characters develop in isolation. At one point the mother climbs a ladder clutching her child – one of Picasso’s only coloured sketches for Guernica to survive. The revolutionary fists that appear in so many of the first outlines as a central motif fade into the chaos. Violent defiance and hope through pain is eventually abandoned as pity and fear take over. Picasso comes to realise he doesn’t need revolutionary fists in order to create something truly revolutionary!

When it was finally completed the piece was ‘mind-bogglingly large’, roughly 8 by 4 metres. The canvas was rolled, wrapped, and taken to Paris. Initially it wasn’t well received: with no sickle and no promise of victory it hardly depicted the socialist-realist vision of defiance that many were hoping for. However, in a few years what had once been a local disaster was becoming a wider phenomenon: as world war broke out many cities were bombed and Guernica was on tour. Eventually it settled in MOMA in New York, where it stayed for more than thirty years, and finally gained the reputation it deserved as a great statement of pacifism and of powerful anti-war sentiment.

Half of the joy of talks like this is the proximity of speaker to audience. What would normally be a didactic process becomes one of collaboration. When Blake opened up to the floor, asking the audience what Guernica meant to them, there were some impressive answers. One person noted the importance of an isosceles triangle that structurally held the painting together, and how it gained from this. Another recalled visiting the painting the day after 9/11 and how its potency gained new and stirring connotations. Dubbed one of the most important paintings of war in the twentieth century, what is most striking about Guernica is how its meaning is far from fixed. If anything this talk confirmed that part of Guernica’s incredible sway over its viewer is its ability to constantly garner new meanings. One can’t help but feel that like Picasso’s changing sketches, the significance and meaning of Guernica is still evolving in our own troubled times. 

For more information about the cultural programme at The British Institute of Florence visit the programme here. 

Interestingly in Naples there is currently an exhibition called Picasso-Parade featuring Picasso’s work from his Italian journey in 1917. After this talk I’m certainly thinking of hopping on the train to pay his work a visit!

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