Italy 2010

I know that I promised you articles from the recent past and they will make an appearance but had to let you know about our après-Easter-pre-volcanic-ash incident to Florence. I know it seems like TRW only ever sits around watching ‘Holby City’ or listening to the Archers and of course there is some truth in that. But occasionally we manage to leave the premises and this was a trip planned around our fifteen year wedding anniversary and a programme presented by Kevin McCloud who stayed in Florence for a year for research purposes, to which I can only say next time can I save my portion of the license fee and go there myself?

So to Florence which was rather like staying on a film set, so extravagant and extraordinary the sights. Florence is built upon the banks of the Arno and the city is connected by a series of bridges. We stayed in a modest but comfortable hotel just off the Ponte Vecchio, a bridge lined by a series of fabulous jewellery shops. Yes, they are the prices you’re looking at - not the number of the security codes. Strangely I found myself quickly hustled across by The Rector each time we had to cross it. Or maybe I imagined that?

The city is a visual feast in as much as everywhere you look there will be drama carved in stone or built in brickwork. Take the Palazzo Vecchio which looks like a slab of castle with its castellations and coat of arms but it’s actually the town hall. The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiori is home to the colossal domed ceiling which is still a marvel of architecture. From the outside it looks like it has been made from royal icing: a wedding cake of a building streaked with pink white and green marble.

Of course you can’t visit Florence without taking a trip to the art galleries and we visited the Uffizi which must house one of the biggest collections of canvases of the holy family in the world ever. Many of these were painted hundreds of years ago and as a result they are highly stylised. But far from producing contemplation I found them to be strangely devoid of emotion, passive and almost impossible to connect to. Was this how the medieval artists comprehended their Christ; remote and cold and alien? As a result these works of art more often than not had Mary front and centre portrayed as the queen of heaven and Jesus as an accessory looking like a bit of an afterthought.

The next afternoon we had tickets to go the Academia and were slightly reluctant to go for more of the same. But what a reward. As you step through the first room, there at the end of the gallery bathed in light from the domed roof is Michelangelo’s the David. By this time I’d seen a few copies of this iconic statue in the city but this was the original and it is extraordinary. It stands over 20ft high and you wonder, how on earth did Michelangelo carve flesh and blood from a block of marble? It seems open to interpretation whether the statue is contemplating Goliath before or after the fatal sling shot but either way, the gaze at the unseen Goliath is unflinching. One hand holds the unused stones and amazingly the hand has veins carved upon it such is the detail You get to do a 360 degrees round the base of the statue. As I do I realise that behind one leg just below the knee is what looks to be a small sawn off branch growing out of the ground. I’m puzzled. This colossus of a statue hardly needs propping up like a wobbly coffee table so this was purposely worked in. Then it came to mind; it was a tree stump. It was the stump from Isaiah 11:1 ‘A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his roots a Branch will bear fruit….’ The kingdom of Judah was bought to an end by Babylonian exile but the Messiah will grow as a shoot from that stump of David’s dynasty.

I can’t tell you how excited I was by my discovery; way more excited than when I realised what the lyrics to ‘China in your Hand’ were about *(and that was pretty exciting). Michelangelo must have known his scripture and as a result had created his David the great hero pointing with visual clues to Jesus the greatest hero. Jesus who stands at the very centre of creation, not remote but living in us by his spirit! With my faith in Renaissance art restored, we went for a very expensive espresso.

*Feel free to ask me if you haven’t worked it out, you won’t be disappointed with the answer!