Venus

Hey all,

Long post today – will try to keep it down in future as there is only so much you can read in between emails, meetings, phone-calls (I should know), but it was a busy day. Got up nice and early and made it to the Uffizi at about 8:30 – which meant I only had to wait in the queue for a full hour and a half to get in – it is stationary most of the time, then moves suddenly, in blocks, as they let another group in – which I thought was supposed to be every 15 minutes but was actually every half hour or so. Probably should have booked, but it was not too bad – when I left it was at least twice as long.

Is a strange experience to stand in front of something like Botticelli's “The Birth of Venus,” which I have seen so many times before – have had it as my desktop wallpaper for long periods of time. Amongst crowds that thick, it is kind of like bumping into a movie star on the street, then finding them too busy signing autographs to talk to. Titian's “Venus of Urbino” was especially difficult to get a look at – I am not sure why – I always thought she was a tramp. The problem here was that a group of swarthy women burst into the room (one of them shrieking, “Oh, there it is!”) and then bustled on over, elbows out, and set up camp right in front. When I got sick of waiting for them to move I simply stood in front of them, which prompted one to poke me in the shoulder – she lacked the courage to do that again and so had to resort to clearing her throat in louder and louder hacks until it obviously started to hurt and she gave up.

It is a really lovely gallery both for the collection and the gallery itself – would have to come back several times at least, but would probably not do so unless I was here in winter when there were less people like me to fight my way through. Unfortunately they also use glass in front of a lot of the paintings, which I guess they have to, but it can be difficult to get in a spot where you can see the painting, not the reflections – the Rembrandts they don't bother to put glass in front of, he being merely some Dutch afterthought to the Italians. I also made the mistake of getting an audio-guide, which I listened to for about 30 seconds before putting it in my pocket – German opera singer had warned me about them, outraged, as when he pressed the audio-guide button for the room full of Durer it said, “This room is for the German painters. Continue on to the next for the Italian painters.”

Highlights for me were not the things I expected. One was Holbein's portrait of Southwell – I don't know why it had such an effect on me – I didn't think it would – I have seen it before in books and online and it has never done much for me. It may be that I had read “Wolf Hall” only a couple of months ago; also, it was there a little off to the side – no one else was looking at it, so you could get right up to it without any swarthy cretins clearing their throats – it is fantastically detailed – one of those paintings where you get a real sense of personality – his eyes up close are so well done that you feel you are looking into the eyes of a live human being: he might turn and say something snide about Anne Boleyn at any moment.

Another, that I had never heard of before, was Artemisia's “Judith Slaying Holofernes,” from the Apocrypha. There are two versions of this – the one at the Uffizi at the moment is the later and more brutal of the two – the earlier lacks quite as much blood and the sword poking out underneath his head looks unfinished. This version is really quite shocking – blood spurts from the Assyrian's neck and Judith leans back to avoid getting too much on her clothes, cutting his throat with the kind of brutal pragmatism you might expect of someone decapitating a chook. The combination of the terror on his face, the blood, and the expression on hers (she is doing something unpleasant while preparing dinner) really got to me.

Finally, there was a painting by Martinelli, called “La Morte al Bachetto” - Death Comes to the Dinner Table (or here (the right version, but not as good a photo)). It shows a group of young people sitting down for dinner, shocked when Death, in the guise of a skeleton brandishing an hourglass, arrives without an invite. The young man he is interested in points to his chest, “Me? Surely not, not yet!” he seems to say – his friends lean back in horror, “Well it's not our turn, don't look at us, for God's sake,” they are thinking – the one at the other end of the table has this expression on his face that obviously says, “Sorry mate, dying sucks, but really not my problem, keep me out of it.” It does not have the kind of iconographic simplicity of “The Birth of Venus,” so it does not stand out as much on, for example, a computer screen, but up close it was very powerful – all their responses were spot on – you could see what was going on inside their heads. A couple of American women were standing there with me, pointing at it and exclaiming. “It's fantastic, isn't it?” I said. “Yes, Yes! Really tells a story,” replied the older of the two.

After that I wandered around the streets for a while – came across a Florentine street person I have seen before – he takes his dog everywhere – the first time I saw him he was pushing it about in an old pram, and obviously loves the thing to death – it is better fed than he is, and he props it up on a little makeshift throne wherever he goes. I gave him a pocketful of coin as he is the only beggar I have seen here who does not look like he clocks in at the start of the day. I asked him if it were ok to take a photo, which it was, then asked him what he was reading. We did not understand a word each other said – he kept saying something about Firenze, and death, and pointed to the book and then his head repeatedly – which had a huge circular scar (you can see it if you look close) on the top from some obviously horrific operation – a car accident, beating, a stroke of some kind, a motorbike? I really don't know, but it always makes me stop, because if I had not replaced the helmet I used to ride with a couple of weeks before my accident then this bloke's state of mind would be my best case outcome. I wondered if he could read at all, or if he just had the book there as a prop to look normal – I have seen people do this before. Once, on a tram in Melbourne a clearly deranged young woman got on at a stop. She tried to say hello to some people, but of course everyone ignored her. Noticing that people were reading magazines, she pulled about a dozen public transport pamphlets from a little holder on the wall, then sat down and started reading them with an expression of lively interest. They were all upside down. At first she turned the pages way too fast, then seemed to realise, and began to only turn a page whenever the woman next to her turned the page on The New Weekly. She had an expression of pride on her face: she was doing so well fitting in. Have never wanted to hug a complete stranger so strongly, but of course I did not.

Then went to the Medici Chapel, which is a chapel dedicated to the glory of the Medicis, power, money, and God, in that order, but which is really beautiful. I don't understand crowds. People line up for hours to get into the Duomo, which is frankly an unpleasant place to be within, though stunning outside – but in Michelango's Chapel (where you are currently greeted by a Rubens) with it's Pantheon inspired dome and all those fantastic sculptures (and they really are all they are cracked up to be), I was, at one point, one of four people, including the guard. And this is peak season, as a pointed bit of street art (in English....) notes. Behind the alter there are a bunch of scribbles on the wall, behind glass – I asked the guard – they found them when the whitewash on the walls fell off – Michelangelo's plans, the cryptic remark “Come and see,” and a bunch of marks where workmen had scratched off how many days they had worked. Fantastic. I took a shot from outside, although the dome you can see there is not the dome it is famous for, but a larger one you walk through to get to it.

After all of that I caught up with opera singer – he wants to take a photo of me attempting to read Winnie the Pooh underneath the statue of Dante here. I had to agree that this would be funny. We also discussed the problems Scots must have communicating emotion with each other. His theory is that they do it with smell – with pheromones and so forth. He might be on to something.

Cheers, B.