DISNEYLAND ON THE ARNO

If in 1345, Taddeo Gaddi had not built the iconic Ponte Vecchio in Florence, five centuries later Walt Disney would have! It was built in stone to withstand the recurring floods of the Arno River which had washed out the previous wooden bridges.  The Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) is both an architectural achievement and a commercial and tourist attraction.  In 1966, it stood firm during the “mother of all floods”[1] which damaged a large part of Florence.  It was erected as a self-paying bridge: the rents paid by the shops built on both sides covered its construction cost.  However, the commercial beginning of the bridge was far from glamorous as the first shopkeepers were butchers and tanners.  Fed up with the stench and the muck in the river, in 1593 Grand Duke Ferdinando I Medici of Tuscany kicked them out and replaced them with jewelers, cleaner and in the eye of the banker-cum cardinal, more profitable activities.

Made a cardinal as the ripe age of 14, the Grand duke was never ordained and wisely ruled Tuscany and doted on Florence.  He expanded the Medici banking activities in Europe, developed trade, attracted the Spanish Jews, built up the navy and sought to acquire overseas colonies.  Coincidentally, he set his goals on northern Brazil in order to ship Amazon wood to Tuscany.  His Cristobal Columbus was an English man, Captain Robert Thornton, who in 1609 landed in a region which is now French Guyana.  When Thornton returned to Florence, Fernando had already died and his successor had no colonial interest.

Ponte Vecchio is the most celebrated bridge in Italy, and in 1938, it greatly impressed a tourist named Adolf Hitler.  This admiration may have saved it from destruction.  At the end of WW II, Ponte Vecchio was one of the few standing bridges in all of Italy.  Legend has it that Hitler requested his retreating generals to spare it from systematic bombing.  While random destruction took place in Florence, only the access to the bridge was bombed.

This blogger spent a few days in Florence over the Christmas-New Year period; her group visit was overly cultural and led by a renowned Italian Renaissance expert.  Florence is a tourist magnet: 10 million of them visited the UNESCO Heritage city in 2016.  Even during the winter holidays, Florence looks like a theme park, a Renaissance theme park that is.  As in Venice, the city population has decreased as the local residents are leaving the historic center for the suburbs or for more economically dynamic cities.  Tourism is increasingly becoming the mainstay of the capital of Tuscany.  During the Renaissance, Florence’s golden era, the Medici family had powered their capital to banking and industrial leadership thanks to textile and leather manufacturing.  But it is the Medici’s cultural legacy that now attracts the tourist crowds. 

 

To the chagrin of the local authorities, tourists increasingly behave or misbehave as they do in Disneyland!  They form disorderly lines for every church and museum, loiter on the historic piazzas and picnic on the churches’ steps.  For the locals, the tourist hordes have reached an unbearable level.  The mayor’s pet peeve is the sloppy sandwich-eaters slouching on the steps of Santa Croce church.  Not only does he threaten to hose them with water, but he is banning fast food joints from the historical center.  Irked, McDonald’s is suing the city for € 17.8 m.  For once, this blogger sympathizes with the fast food addicts, as reasonably priced Italian food is hard to find.  Most of the trattorias in the historic center serve over-priced and over-cooked bland fettuccine or tagliatelli and soggy pizzas.  One gets suspicious when all restaurant menus are written in English! To improve Florence’s image, the mayor should instead threaten to hose the trattoria’s bosses who serve lousy food.  

Florence’s poster boy, is without doubt, Michelangelo’s sculpture David.  Many Renaissance masterpieces can be seen in Florence’s museums, churches and palaces, but David is special in capturing people’s imagination.   Its home is the Dell’ Accademia museum, which I nicknamed the bee-line museum.  Tourists queue to enter and as soon as they are in the premises, make a bee-line towards the statue.  The statue cannot be missed as it is towering over the other exhibits, which attract scant attention.  David’s spell is hard to explain: The statue’s size[2]? David’s fearless reputation?  His great physical shape[3]? His gaze and self-assurance?  All together for this blogger, who wonders about Michelangelo’s state of mind when he carved this chunk of white Carrara marble.

There is a particularly gorgeous sculpture by Michelangelo in the Bargello museum.  He was only 21 when he sculpted the androgynously sensual and tipsy Bacchus.  Very Hellenistic in conception, Bacchus teases the visitor.  Michelangelo started his sculptor career modestly, and like many of his peers he was a forger of antiquities!  He seemingly sold Bacchus as an antique[4] to a cardinal in Rome.  Michelangelo gloated about his coup and the swindled cardinal returned the statue and asked for his money back.   Fortunately, another patron purchased the statue, saving Michelangelo from indignity.  

Fake antiques were big business during the Renaissance, a rebirth period when Western Europe rediscovered the ideals from classical antiquity.  Artists spent as much time carving their sculptures as aging them. They tried hard to replicate their Greek idiosyncrasies like the small penises.  As a footnote to this blog, let me explain why.  In Ancient Greece, potency was intellectual not sexual.  Playwright Aristophanes summed up the ideal traits of his male peers as “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttock, and a little prick.”  The penis was never a badge of Greek virility.  To make a point, satyrs and fools displayed well endowed or even erected genitals.

Masterpieces by Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Titian, Raphael, and Donatello are all displayed in Florence’s churches, palaces and museums.  For the untrained eye, it is hard to understand why they made the A-list while other artists remain stuck in a B-list.  During her stay, this blogger discovered the graceful frescoes of Pontormo, the elegant portraits of Bronzino, and the action-packed sculptures of Giambologna, all B-listed.

During three centuries, Florence was the playground of the House of Medici; it wealth and foresight transformed the city from a backwater into an art, architecture and humanities powerhouse.  The Medici were high-volume art collectors, scientific patrons and compulsive builders, and they doted on their city with liberality.  Florence took a leadership role during the Renaissance only rivaled by Rome.  The Renaissance heritage of the Medici is the unifying and central theme of Florence whose attractions are all within walking distance.  With tourists outnumbering citizens, the historic center is increasingly looking like a soulless Renaissance-built theme park.  Sadly, it is the fate of many historic city centers when mass tourism becomes the economic mainstay.  Would the Medici have approved this tourism boom?  Probably, they were bankers after all.

 P.S. Angel by Jacopo Pontormo, and Judith by Artemisia Gentileschi.

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[1] Florence was badly flooded in 1557.  But damages from these two floods are hard to compare.

[2] Three times life size.

[3] Except for his… well you know.  I would say modest in size and exquisite in shape.

[4] To make his sculpture look more “antique”, Michelangelo deliberately chopped off Bacchus’s tiny penis.