FLORENCE:
A PORTRAIT
By Michael Levey


from the FOREWORD

"There is perhaps no city in the world which offers keener attraction--and keener challenge--to a writer than does Florence.

"The attraction and the challenge lie in the extraordinary combination represented by the city, its history, its culture and its art. In one sense it seems familiar: Florence as the `cradle' of the Renaissance, the republican home of humanism, fostering some of the greatest achievements of Western painting, sculpture and architecture. Yet if that suggests a climate of civilised enlightenment, it is misleading in historical terms, for the city was the site of often violent events, frequent frenetic revisions of constitution and abrupt alterations in the very character of government. By the time a settled and autocratic regime had been established, the Renaissance, at least as conventionally understood, was largely over. A new Florence developed, one that has not gained much repute in accounts of either art or civilisation. Nevertheless, that later city has a surprising number of artistic achievements to its credit, especially in architecture. And when there came a total change of ruling dynasty further changes came to the city. Then, with the nineteenth century and the establishment of Florence as the capital of Italy for a period, there came a new and dramatic and rapid programme of change, which was to alter the city irreparably.

"The result has left Florence a highly complex entity. To try to seize something of that entity and trace its evolution over the centuries, from medieval times into the full nineteenth century, is the purpose of this `portrait'. It is deliberately not purely an historical account, nor is it offered as an outline of Florentine art through the ages, and still less is it a guide-book. But it partakes of all three categories of approach, mingling them as history and art are mingled in the city..."