Morning coffee, Florence

I am not a coffee person.  I like coffee well enough, but I can go for long stretches of time without it...easily.  In fact most of the time when I have a cup of coffee I feel pretty let down.  Too weak, kind of watery, maybe too bitter, why am I drinking this stuff and really, where's my complex cup of earl grey?  This is what happens when you first learn to drink coffee in Italy.  So technically I should say I am not a coffee person unless I happen to be in Italy.

I travelled to Italy for the first time as a 19-year old art student who did not drink/like coffee.  (I also never pulled any all-nighters as a college-student-who-didn't-drink-coffee, but that is another story for another blog--the "goody-two-shoes" blog my husband might say....) The summer after my Freshman year in college I lived with an Italian farming family outside the city of Todi.  Sunflower fields surrounded the farmhouse, chickens frequented the courtyard, Nonna cooked our dinner mostly, and with breakfast we drank coffee.  I can still see the sunny, second floor dining room with its wooden table, and I can still see my white bowl of strong, milky, AMAZINGLY delicious coffee.  Is this coffee?  Really?

And now I am back in Italy almost exactly 20 years later.  I've been here 2 full days with my nine year old, red-headed son who has been to Italy TWICE now, who knows how to navigate customs through the Brussels airport!  So far each day has begun with my own bowl of strong, milky, AMAZINGLY delicious coffee, and each time I drink my cup I do not take its particular Italian fullness for granted.  I listen to the sounds of the doves outside the kitchen window, the bells from Santa Croce, the periodic murmur of my neighbors who are waking up on a Saturday morning, the rumble of cars from the street--all mingling perfectly with the pure delight of my morning coffee in Florence.

I finally lost it...

As much as I love Italy -- and Florence in particular -- it can be ... difficult.  Culturally, there are differences that are hard to understand unless you've actually experienced them. For Americans, and even more so for Germans -- heaven help the Germans -- a singular disconnect is the concept of a line.  In the States you form one and wait your turn.  Sure, it may move slowly due to the incompetence of the server/bureaucrat or the customers ahead of you. And you may well curse a bit under your breath or cop an overtly impatient attitude, but, by god, you wait your turn or you spin on your heels and make a theatrical exit.  

In Italy, there are no lines, only scrums -- rugged, anarchic scrums. And as a foreigner new to the country, you don't even realize you're in one -- at least at first. You queue up; you wait a bit; you wait a bit longer; then it dawns on you: you're farther away from being served then when you got in "line" in the first place.  On the bright side, you have a better view of things because you've somehow been passed by four or five little, old Italian nonnas, who, if stacked one on top of the other, would fall well short of reaching the ceiling. It's only after about three of these experiences that you realize: you've got to fight for it.

But fighting isn’t enough.  When you’re new and submissive, Italians will pass you with a hint of a smile.  A hint that says, “I’m going to pass this idiot and make him like it.”  When you decide to fight back, a hockey game breaks out.  Suddenly, you’re backchecking an octogenarian who would fit comfortably under your armpit. You begin to feel bad, but then you also begin to feel an elbow boring into your rib cage. So, not only do you have to fight, you have to forget everything you've learned about good manners.  Finally after multiple visits here -- I’m embarrassed to say -- I lost it.  I submit the following, captured by a security camera, without further comment. I'm on the left.

Art as it was Meant to be Seen

The last time we were in Florence I had grand plans to write a series of posts about works in situ (in their original locations) and the power of those experiences, particularly for the viewer, and especially the modern viewer, as many of us are used to experiencing art in the sterile, environmentally and culturally removed spaces of museums. Ultimately, I made only one post on this topic in 2012 and that about the experience of seeing all the Caravaggios of Rome in one magical, unforgettable day that June (see post June 2012, "The Power of Painting #1"). Truthfully, I think it was such a moving and intellectually stimulating experience that it zapped my ability and passion to write about anything in situ in Florence afterwards.

SO, it seemed only fitting to start my 2014 posts with a work that is always on my mind when I return to this city, and is usually the first piece I visit, as I did today, namely the Deposition of Jacopo Pontormo. The large altarpiece dates to about 1528 and is located in the unassuming church of Sta. Felicitá, inside the Capponi Chapel (note the family coat of arms topping the gate below, marking the space). The piece hangs in the spot where it was made to hang and has hung (with the exception of the interlude of WWII when it was hidden in the Italian countryside) for nearly 500 years.

For me this is a personal piece, not because of what it depicts but because of my experience of it.
While it may sound cliche it's no less true that this painting changed the course of my career as a young art historian. Without seeing this I might have studied Tintoretto or (gasp!) Titian for my dissertation and subsequent decade of research. My lasting love affair with this piece all started on a blazing hot, sunny Florentine summer day in June of 1995 when I made a phone call from a nearby pay phone to check in with my graduate advisor/mentor in the US. He noted I was right around the corner from Pontormo's Deposition and that I should take a look. I had never heard of the artist or the work, but determined to see anything and everything of artistic note in Florence I hung up and walked the 2 blocks where I was greeted by this rather plain church facade set well back from a (then) major thoroughfare.

I entered into the small dark, wooden foyer and naturally turned to my right, pushed open the door, and entered the church proper. My eyes were adjusting to the change in light and as they did I felt suddenly and simultaneously giddy, amazed, honored, mesmerized; like a witness to the electric "presence" created by a work. I've often thought back on that day and what made the experience so powerful and lastingly resonant, and a large part was the setting. The church was and is quiet, unassuming and yet, like so many buildings in Italy, holds treasure waiting to be found. The space was cool compared to the June heat outside and I immediately felt refreshed in the space. The sun was raking through the upper windows and beams of light shown down, hitting the marble floor and wooden pews in bright bursts. The cacophony of dozens of Vespas and cars whizzing by just outside were silenced as the doors shut. It was me. It was Pontormo. Both of us inside the space where this work was intended to be seen.

Then I put a few lira in the light machine and the painting vibrated on a whole other frequency. Color combinations I had not seen before sprang to life amidst a swirling composition simultaneously moving forward, backward and upward in space. Light was at once blue (see bottom figure) and white. Figures both floated and sank under heavy bodily weight. The whole diamond composition apparently teetered on the tip toes of a single person in a barren landscape, with a puff of cloud overhead, while Pontormo himself looked on from the painting's far right.

From that day forward this work has been my favorite painting. It's had many rivals, but no usurpers.

Over the intervening years since 1995, Pontormo's painting has only grown more meaningful as I've learned more about the artist (one of my dissertation topics), lived with the work in reproduction, analyzed the image for students and saw the painting with visiting friends, artists, students and family members, who have each in their own way showed me another new way to see Pontormo. I never tire of this painting and like all "great" works the piece continues to grow in resonance with each visit, each viewing, each experience, and in this case that experience is intimately bound to its place. Sure, it would hold up in a museum just fine, but it draws part of its power from the fact that it's one piece of a larger ensemble AND it's in its original location.

Ultimately, as I said about viewing Caravaggio two years ago--this is why we travel--to see and experience works of art on their own terms, in their own space. Florence here we come...

To the right of the Deposition is a fresco of the Annunciation by Pontormo containing perhaps the most beautiful single figure in all of Western art (in my humble opinion). Note how the architectural elements above both Gabriel and Mary's heads are painted to look like the arch higher up, which is real.

As you can see in the very first image, the dome of the chapel is supported on pendentives, which each contain 4 paintings of the Apostles, also by Pontormo with help from his student Bronzino. Below is Luke with his ox.

A Grand Re-Entry

As many of you know this blog has laid dormant for nearly two years. Now that we all return to Florence during the month of June for the biennial, 4-week UNCG study abroad program, The Art of Italy, this blog will once again come alive with musings, pictures, notes, glimpses and recollections of a country we all love. We hope you will write as well, after all, half the fun of writing is looking forward to comments and responses from all of you.

Chartres-tacular

Sunday, July 15 we traveled to Chartres, a little town southwest of Paris. On Monday we took a train to Reims, a larger city, but also located within the Ile-de-France. This small region of France is where the architectural style we know as the "Gothic" was born at the abbey church of St. Denis, north of Paris (today a suburb). After a series of Early Gothic buildings, such as Notre Dame, the style developed into the High Gothic at Chartres before it was further elaborated in the 13th C. at the Ste. Chapelle (see earlier "Pre-Louvre Excursion" post), Reims Cathedral and elsewhere.

Unlike when we were in France in 2000, I now teach this period of architecture and despite my rather anti-medieval (or at least medieval = lesser) graduate school "Renaissance indoctrination," I find that I love this period of building. It's daring, beautiful, original, style-conscious, at times architecturally rule-breaking, and intimately linked to this small region of France. So, this trip we saw more Gothic architecture with a focused, knowledgeable eye and it was truly wonderful. Our moments spent in these special spaces are among my favorites of the entire trip.

Below I share some of these special places through photos.

ST. DENIS

The facade (front) of St. Denis was started in the later 1130s by the Abbey's abbot, Suger, one of the great patrons of the 12th C. Here he and his architects introduced the first Gothic facade. What makes it Gothic? (Ahem, putting on my professorial hat...)

1. Portals surrounded by sculpture integrated into the architecture (however, largely reconstruction today due to significant damage during the French Revolution)

2. Two towers. Today it's missing its left tower due to a lighting strike in the 19th C., but it was originally completed with two following a long tradition in church building.

3. The division of the facade into three vertical and three horizontal strips.

4. The rose window

It is the combination of these together that is new--all of these elements were seen on previous buildings, but not combined like this. As you will see below, this new combination is the root of all large Gothic facades.

Here at Saint Denis in 1140, Abbot Suger added the area you see above, which is known as a chevet (the apse, choir and ambulatory together) or the east end of a Gothic structure. This area introduced the use of large stained glass windows to illuminate the altar and halo it, as it were, with a ring of light. Nobody had seen anything like it! When this part of the church was dedicated in 1144, all the key archbishops and bishops of France attended and then they went back to their own parishes and built their own Gothic structures insuring the rapid, wildfire-like spread of the style.

Sitting here in this spot I enjoyed thinking of the wide-eyed bishops and archbishops in awe of the way the walls, usually so thick in the churches they knew, had all but disappeared only to be replaced by glass and colored light. Then, each collectively saying, "I want one!"

View down the choir of St. Denis, where the upper structure of the building dates to the 13th C.

This building still houses the remains of France's patron saint, St. Denis, who was martyred on Montemartre and reputedly walked, head in hand to this spot for his final rest. Several sculpture of the decapitated saint may be found here.

CHARTRES

Our first glimpse of Chartres, as it dominates the city skyline.

Dave in front of the facade, which is actually Early Gothic. The rest of the building burned during a disastrous fire in 1194, the same year the city began rebuilding on the site in the High Gothic style. The cathedral houses the miracle-working veil of the Virgin, which also survived the 1194 fire. This was interpreted in two ways by late 12th C. citizens of Chartres: the veil's miraculous nature was confirmed, and given its survival, it must mean the Virgin was in fact, communicating that she wanted a new church! Money flowed in from local guilds, aristocrats, the monarchs of France and smaller parish churches under Chartres control.

The building was finished by 1225, including its sculpture. This feat in itself is a kind of Gothic miracle in a period where building often drug out for a hundred years at one site.

One set of elegant statues (jamb figures) from around the facade doors. These are Old Testament kings and queens and represent the best preserved Early Gothic architectural sculpture anywhere! I love the way they appear to levitate while looking kindly out on church-goers. Note the elongated proportions. Believe it or not, all of this would have been brightly painted originally.

Huge Early Gothic windows in the facade of the cathedral, which also survived the 1194 fire. I show you a detail below, which is closer in color to the way the windows look in person. Cameras just can't capture the jewel-like light quality of the stained glass, but this detail comes close. This is taken from the center window, which depicts Christ's infancy and early life.

Below are three images of the choir. The next two photos also capture a bit of the space right in front is the transept (the cross arm of the building) and the nave (main body of space into which one enters), which are pitch black. This is due in large part to the fact that these areas are dark today. Indeed, a major restoration campaign is currently underway on the interior of Chartres that will literally make us see this building in a new light. Chartres was originally painted a light peachy ivory with white grout lines. In the 19th C. dramatic "restorers" removed what was left of the paint and two generations (at least) of medieval scholars have learned about and taught (this is how I learned it) that Gothic cathedrals were cool, uniform structures that revel in their stonework. This is true, but not the larger picture. These cathedrals were riots of color, not reserved modernist spaces.

Today restorers are returning Chartres to its earlier--and somewhat shocking--appearance, as the photos below document. I am both excited to see it finished and nervous at the outcome--the last image shows faux marble detailing that isn't at all what I would expect to see in a Gothic structure...I found this both fascinating and slightly unnerving. Is this how people felt when the Sistine was cleaned? The Chartres I knew is about to disappear.

And yet, looking at the creamy, ivory walls with their white accents it becomes obvious how the paint worked WITH the glass to magnify the light's reflections, and the windows appear to float in space. Of course this is how it looked! (But I eagerly await the academic explanation of the faux marbling in the lowest story, which you see at the bottom of images 1 and 3 below...)

REIMS (pronounced like France, but drop the F and give the R a little throaty roll. However, it's pronounced--as I learned from a train employee in Paris, ("in France we say...")--as the French say France, that is the A sounding like "aw.")

The beautiful rolling farmland and countryside zipping by the train en route to Reims, which is in the northern part of the Ile-de-France. Note the low dramatic sky. The clouds moved as fast as we did.

This was both of our first visits to Reims. I was extremely excited to see this building, which I regularly teach and have admired in slides as (in my humble opinion) the most beautiful facade of any Gothic cathedral in France. This trip confirmed that! The Reims structure took 100 years to build, from 1211-1311, and was started in the High Gothic style, but finished in the later Gothic style current at its completion, the Rayonnant. One key feature of this later style is the triangular area over the door, which was solid stone with sculpture at Chartres and is now stained glass.

This group of sculpture below is among the most famous of the Gothic era and comes from the right side of the center door, which you see above. From left to right are the Annunciation (Gabriel and the Virgin) and the Visitation (Virgin and St. Anne). They were carved by two separate sculpture workshops, hence the difference in the Virgin's appearance. Again, all of these would have been brightly painted and indeed, some faint paint was still visible behind the figures, who are over life size.

As the second tallest complete Gothic cathedral in France, Reims' 125 foot tall vaulting makes one feel tiny! Note the people down the nave in the shot below for a sense of the scale here.

This structure is much darker than Chartres on the inside, even with a great deal of clear glass in its nave (some added intentionally while other windows are post-WWI replacements when the building was heavily bombed).

The steep proportions of the cathedral are easily appreciated in the side aisles. Below is one side aisle, followed by a detail of the glass, from the other side aisle. This is the glass over the side aisle's front door. Beautiful!

American John D. Rockafeller paid to rebuild Reims in the wake of WWI. Some of the devastation is still visible on the cathedral's front, especially on the left door where sculpture are particularly battered. It's obvious when seeing the structure that it has had a "harder life" than Chartres, and yet it remains a glorious building.

I don't think we ever were able to decide which of these two cathedrals were our favorites--Chartres or Reims. I felt lucky to be able to see them both and so close in time to one another.

The two cities holding these churches are also delightful. Chartres in particular is a jewel and we enjoyed one of the best meals of our post-Italy trip in a small restaurant there that overlooked the cathedral.

Home again

Dave and I returned late on the evening of Wednesday, July 18 after nearly 24 hours of travel. We made it safe and sound though and are settling back into our quiet, summer Greensboro routine.

In the next week or so we plan to post some final images and thoughts on our trip, especially our last few days in France and our time in Germany, when we did not have internet.

On a personal note, I'll admit I was a bit reluctant to commit to a blog for this trip, but the feedback we've gotten from those of you reading, and the fun we've had writing and posting has really made this entire experience part of the special memories that are summer 2012 for us. So...thank you for reading, commenting, engaging and emailing us...and stay tuned!

Pixar Perfect

Backing up to Bonn, Germany...

On the evening of July 5, Dave and I were very lucky to be holding an invitation to the private opening of the new Pixar art exhibition, officially unveiled at the Bundeskunsthalle, in Bonn, on July 6. The show, entitled Pixar: 25 Years of Animation is a wonderfully thought-provoking, beautiful and carefully curated show that visually and simply documents the process of making a Pixar film. The displayed works range in media from digital painting to pastel, from pencil to gouache, and include both 2D and 3D pieces from Pixar's shorts and features through Brave.

The galleries, which were nicely organized to tell the "narrative" of the Pixar process, were also specifically painted in particular colors to set the work off to great effect. The energy was high in the gallery spaces that night and in the days that followed, as I visited to take notes and re-view the galleries.

Below, me at the opening with Christine F., my Pixar buddy and go-to-woman for all things Pixar. She has made all my trips to Emeryville both fun and super-productive. (Christine--you rock!)

Many of the subway stops en route to the museum had billboards publicizing the show. The very first image in this post is another such billboard. I liked the one above so much I bought a poster-sized version of it. (This image of Nemo is taken from one of Ralph Eggleston's small pastel studies for the film, which appears in the exhibition)

After the opening Dave and I joined the Pixar and museum staff for a lovely private dinner and each brought home a little piece of Pixar--Dave has a Sully figurine and Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) will soon defend my desk as he did my spot at dinner. The entire evening was special, and Dave and I felt privileged to be a part of it.