Il Giardino dell’Iris – Iris Garden

We stepped inside the Il Giardino dell’Iris (the Iris Garden of Florence) today and were pleasantly surprised. The garden is located between Piazzale Michelangelo and the campgrounds, off the east balcony of the piazzale. It’s only open this year from the 2nd to the 20th of May. If you are into flowers and especially irises it’s worth a stop. All the irises are planted in patches interspersed among olive trees with paths for strolling. Each iris patch represents a different year. So for example, you can see the flowers for 2010 growing and blooming but they won’t be judged until 2010. Irises arrive from all over the world several years in advance of the year that they will be judged in. One of the guides there told us that the Americans are especially good at breeding interesting irises. Just looking at the results, it seems true.

The Black Plague

We were talking about the Black Death, or Black Plague of the 14th century in my Dawn of the Renaissance course. It really hit Florence hard in 1347-1348. Something like two thirds of the population of 120,000 of Florence died. No one knew what was going on or had any answers. So, one common response was that 'we are being punished by God for something.' Along those lines, and to file under ironic, were the self-flagellants whose goal by some accounts was to help absorb God’s wrath. You could even pay a flagellant to flog himself if you weren’t inclined to flog yourself. The flagellant movement became especially popular during the Black Death and ironically, roving bands of flagellants may have actually helped spread the plague. It’s a case of trying to defend yourself against something and only making it worse.

The commissioning of art at least in Florence and other areas of Tuscany pretty much came to a halt. Who had time for art when everyone was dying? Those with means moved out of the cities and retreated to country estates and survived reasonably well. In fact after the plague passed, they came back to places like Florence and bought up quite a bit of land in these decimated cites on which they would build the grand palazzos of the Renaissance. But this didn't happen overnight, it took several decades to recover from the plague.

The cause of the plague? There seems to be disagreement over whether it was a form of bubonic plaque (spread by fleas on rodents) or non-bubonic form (flea bite and respiratory spread). At any rate, it only took about one week to die. A scary time indeed.

Il Gattopardo – The Leopard

I just finished this book, started a month ago after returning from Palermo. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. Il Gattopardo (translated as "The Leopard” in the English version) was written by the Sicilian Tomasi di Lampedusa about his grandfather, Prince of Lampedusa. The novel was published in 1958. In a nutshell, the book is about the decline of the Italian aristocracy after the Risorgimento – Italy’s unification.

Il Risorgimento was an Italian political and social movement for political unity lasting from 1815 to 1861 which resulted in more or less the modern Italy (minus Rome and Venice, they came a little later). Almost every town honors some heroes of the Risorgimento in their street and piazze names: Garibaldi for Giuseppe Garibaldi, Cavour for Conte di Cavour, Vittorio for Vittorio Emanuele II, Mazzini for Giuseppe Mazzini, XX Settembre, the date of the fall of Rome.

Chapter I starts in 1860 and Chapter VIII ends in 1910. (This is the Vintage 2007 edition.) It’s a lot of time covered yet the story unfolds around a couple of key points in the Prince’s life. You get a good sense of the empty aristocratic life and the Prince’s resistance yet resignation that it was all about to change.

The book was made into a film in 1963 by the famous Italian director Luchino Visconti and featured Burt Lancaster as the Prince, Don Fabrizio. You can view a couple of clips on YouTube. This clip features the famous waltz scene between Don Fabrizio and Angelica (the ambitious girl to marry Tancredi, the Prince’s nephew). This 5 minute clip is the controversial speech by the Prince saying that Sicilians never change, don’t want change (“non vuole cambiare”).

The Florence Rose Garden

The Florence Rose Garden (or Giardino delle Rose) is very near the Piazzale Michelangelo (quite frankly the last place you’d catch Travelmarx in). Here is the location of the Rose Garden. One side of the garden borders the long stair climb called Via di San Salvatore al Monte.

Well, the garden just re-opened for its yearly run from May 1st to July 31st. It is closed the rest of the year. While it’s open it’s open from 8am to 8pm last time we looked on the sign. It’s a nice place to bring a snack or a book and just watch the city. There are lots of roses to look at and smell. The roses are scattered around the garden with the roses fitting the geography of the land and not vice versa as is the case in a typical row-by-row rose garden. It’s on the west slope so probably better in the morning if you are a shady type like ½ of Travelmarx. Part of the garden (lowest part) is a Japanese garden that was added to the rose garden relatively recently. It's a pretty subtle nod to a Japanese garden but offers some different plant and tree varieties not often seen in Florence. There are at least four different ways to enter the garden, so if you explore you’ll find one of them.

Primary Sources vs. Secondary Sources

One thing that has been nagging at me during this brief (2+ month) study of Renaissance art and culture in Florence is that I don’t consult many primary sources. I tend to, rather, use a lot of secondary sources. Okay, given that I’m not intending to be a scholar in this field maybe it isn’t that important, but the question remains of how to balance the use of primary sources with secondary sources. (For more on sources, read here.) I was even chided by a librarian at the British Institute when I checked in a philosophy book (The Stoics, Epicureans, and Sceptics by E. Zeller *) and glibly declared, I only read the introduction, not the actual writings (the primary sources). 

A primary source is a work produced during the period you are studying. For example, reading Dante’s Divine Comedy itself would qualify as using a primary source. A secondary source is an interpretation or analysis of a primary source. For example, reading the Wikipedia page about the Divine Comedy would qualify as a using a secondary source. The challenge is that with the “way” information is available to us today reading secondary sources is very easy, addictive (think Amazon book reviews), and a huge time saver. But when does it not help? 

I was of the mind that primary sources are hard to find, especially on the Internet, but this really isn’t true. There are a number of sites like the Gutenberg or Internet Archive that have texts available. The rest you can find easily at a library. (Gutenberg even has texts read aloud. I have On the Origin of Species as an mp3 on my phone – for long train or airplane rides – fantastic!) 

So, I tried the Divine Comedy (written between 1308 and 1321) and got through several pages before I yawned, and wondered if anyone created a nice image showing Dante’s concept. Then I searched and found Paul Laffoley’s vision of hell, purgatory, and heaven. I spent more time reading about this artist than I did reading the Divine Comedy. So the problem is me. 

My next attempt was with a small book called Oration on the Dignity of Man by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, written in 1487. This speech is considered a key text of Renaissance humanism. This time, I was successful. I finished the 70 or so pages and I think reading it was better than reading about it – though there wasn’t a Wikipedia page on it, honestly, I checked. 

A Room With a Smell

 

Okay, there have been way too many Room with a View references popping us these last few days. Here they are: 

Reference 1: Our apartment on Via del Canneto may not have a room with a view, but boy does it have beautiful smell. There is a garden (here, approximately) full of roses and jasmine and the smell cascades down the wall to our windows. It seems to go all day long. We are literally below the garden. It truly has been a pleasure to smell for the past two weeks. (Okay, tangentially related, but the references get getter.) 

Reference 2: The other day I was touring the Bardi and Peruzzi chapels in Santa Croce and the teacher says, you guessed it, “these chapels were in Room with a View.” 

Reference 3: At the bike shop, a person working there was telling us about the Fattoria de Maiano and said, you guessed it, “part of Room with a View was filmed there.” (Not sure about this.) 

Reference 4: Today on our bike ride, we were riding through the Tuscan countryside on a small dirt path through waist high grass full of red poppies and just for a second I was Lucy Honeychurch, but then thinking about how slow and cautious I was going I thought Charlotte Bartlett (the rain-on-your-parade chaperone) was more appropriate – darn. 

Wow, was this movie really from 1985? Yes.