FLORENCE:
A PORTRAIT
By Michael Levey


from the PROLOGUE

"Seriously Seeking Florence"

"For centuries Rome and Venice have been attracting crowds of visitors, varied in every possible way and with every possible purpose. Native or foreign, there were--as there continue to be--the casual tourist, the artist, connoisseur, historian, antiquarian, the devout pilgrim and the devoted pleasure-lover, all travelling to one or both cities conscious of treading a path taken by generations of their predecessors.

"None of that applies to Florence, but you would scarcely guess as much, seeing the city today. At most seasons it is virtually under siege from polyglot, eager, patient or occasionally half-recalcitrant crowds, queuing like cattle--and penned-in like cattle--to enter the Uffizi, surging around though not always across the Ponte Vecchio, gazing respectfully at the `Doors of Paradise' of the Baptistery, turning over the tourist tat in one or other market and smiling sophisticatedly at the ubiquitous image of Michelangelo's David, openly treated as a gay icon.

"While a few isolated foreign students may take advantage of a sunny afternoon to sprawl along the pavement of the Piazza della Signoria, scribbling a postcard home close to the spot where Savonarola was burnt, a band of native visitors will probably still be tramping the streets, dutifully wheeling and halting at the signal of its guide's upraised stick, often with flower attached, to imbibe with fraying attention a last dose of instruction about yet one more famous Florentine sight.

"Florence has been transformed from a city into a shrine, the end of a journey made by pilgrims from all over the world, impelled by belief in, or acceptance of, a cultural faith as intense and ardent as any religious one. Like true pilgrims, they have not come to Florence for `fun' or for a magnificent urban spectacle--or, if any have, they will, in both cases, be disappointed. Nor are they expecting to see the ruins of an antique civilisation or to receive a papal benediction. Almost too well do they know that they have come to encounter a unique, narrow but tremendous experience, the explosion of art and culture which we call the Renaissance and which detonated first or most patently in Florence. It was, or it has conventionally been treated as, a hugely important stage in the development of Western civilisation, and though its literary manifestations may not be immediately accessible, its artistic ones are. In one sense, there is no need to write books explaining what the Florentine Renaissance was, in so far as the visual arts are concerned. Florence is filled with buildings, sculpture and paintings which `explain' the phenomenon better than any words. At least, they remain broadly untouched and often in situ, even if only in replica, as so many shrines contained within the larger shrine of the city itself.

"Where else but in Florence can one have that experience in such a powerful, concentrated and indeed overwhelming way?..."