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| Dante sees Beatrice for the first time |
How do I love thee, Florence? Let me count the ways.
Many years ago, my husband Robert and I went to live in Florence for one year. As often happens, things did not go as we had planned, and we left discouraged after only a few months. Our money was running out. I could not find a source of income to sustain our stay, and Robert's plan to work with another artist fell through. When I look back, however, it is not the failed plan I remember. it is the 'Being" of Florence I love, and the infinite impressions that remain with me.
As young people, just married a little over a year, we had our lives ahead of us and sold or stored whatever we had in our little apartment and left for Italy. We found a small, but lovely place with a little fireplace on via di San Giuseppe, across from a side entrance to the Basilica of Santa Croce, with its green and white checkered limestone facade. From our window, we had a view of the statue of Dante Alighieri. How tragic it must have been for him to be exiled, but now he stands watch in the busy sunlit piazza, reclaimed by his beloved city.
When we first entered the church, I was in awe of the exquisite architecture and embellishments—the columns, statuary, stenciling, gold leaf, paintings, sculptures, and the ornate marble tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli, the three masters of art, astronomy and politics. Exploration of the art and history associated with this one Florentine basilica alone could occuply a lifetime.
Florence is a feast for the senses: aromas of espresso; roasting delicasies in wood-fired ovens; displays of dreamy, creamy pastries; la lingua italiana heard from passersby and in open markets; the reverberating church bells all over the city at the canonical hours. There is a special kind of light in Florence too—a golden shower falling on red tile roofs, filtering down to on ancient stone and marble, and above the city the azure hills of cypress, olive orchards and vineyards.
There in a niche at Orsanmichele, a scuplture by Verrocchio; here a garden or fountain; the grandeur of Santa Maria del Fiore and Baptistry with doors of bronze await in the magnificent piazza del Durmo, A stroll over the Ponte Trinita, one can imagine Dante's eyes first falling upon his immortalized Beatrice. And, oh! just down that street Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived, wrote and loved.
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| Santa Maria de Fiore |
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i porti bronzi by Gilberti |
These experiences, if only of a brief part of my life, are treasures I can bring to mind, opening a world alive with color, light, sound, warmth, movement and meaning—and beauty that in no way can be counted only remembered, and I love them in all ways and always!
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