I typed the name into an Internet search engine, but the only result that made any sense was on a site belonging to the Archdiocese of Westminster, the Roman Catholic see of London. The "Lorenzo Lees" listed there had conducted a catechism cla.s.s at some point. It didn"t seem likely this was who I"d been seeking, someone off in England, teaching Sunday school. But I sent an e-mail, apologizing for the intrusion, but asking that in the remote event that this person was connected to David Lees to please get in touch.
I was still, all that while, also looking for Umberto Baldini. I knew, of course, a lot about his career as well as the odd shred of gossip but I wanted to get a feel for him; a sense of his motivations, this great man who"d saved-or destroyed-the Cimabue was still, all that while, also looking for Umberto Baldini. I knew, of course, a lot about his career as well as the odd shred of gossip but I wanted to get a feel for him; a sense of his motivations, this great man who"d saved-or destroyed-the Cimabue Crocifisso. Crocifisso. There was nowhere left to go but to Ornella Casazza. There was nowhere left to go but to Ornella Casazza.
I"d avoided her until now; or, as I preferred to think, left her in peace. She might still be in mourning, and I"d been told repeatedly she was a difficult, opaque person. She"d talk shop a little, but she wouldn"t let you in.
Still, I had to try. I had Cristina Acidini and Bruno Santi to refer me, and just after New Year"s I had an appointment. Her office was in the Palazzo Pitti, across a cortile from Santi"s. I was nervous. Apparently she spoke English but would prefer not to. That was her right. We were meeting on her turf, not mine.
An a.s.sistant led me down yards of corridors to her office. It was frescoed and overlooked another smaller, more isolated cortile. Casazza rose from her chair, walked over to me, shook my hand with both of her hands, and smiled a winsome, blazing smile. By my calculation she should be sixty-three or sixty-four years old. She was beautiful; in fact, she was s.e.xy. I would have done whatever she asked.
She"d been talking with an American-born colleague, perfectly bilingual, and it was agreed he"d stay and sort out any linguistic confusion over technical matters. I had a list of questions that would slowly narrow down to the matter of the Crocifisso Crocifisso, and the critics of its restauro. restauro. I began, and Casazza continued to smile. She would spread her arms and turn her palms upward, as though the answers were floating down from overhead like feathers and all she had to do was catch them. She"d offer an answer, and for good measure refer it to her colleague for confirmation. I sat, hunched over my notebook, nodding with canine avidity. I began, and Casazza continued to smile. She would spread her arms and turn her palms upward, as though the answers were floating down from overhead like feathers and all she had to do was catch them. She"d offer an answer, and for good measure refer it to her colleague for confirmation. I sat, hunched over my notebook, nodding with canine avidity.
She was still raining down warmth on me, but nothing intimate about Baldini had come across the two-foot gap between us, still less about her and Baldini. I played the Mora card: a historian of restoration at the La Pietra Symposium had told me that people often referred to Baldini and Casazza in tandem with Paolo and Laura Mora-Cesare Brandi"s prize students and his successors at the Ist.i.tuto Centrale per il Restauro in Rome-as rival husband-and-wife teams of restauro. restauro. What did she think of their work? I asked. Casazza was kind and condescending: it was fine as far as it went, but ultimately it was subjective. It was distorted by the Moras" reliance on their taste, by the limitations of Brandi"s theory. By contrast, she and Baldini had let Cimabue be their teacher, had followed his lead. They built a neutral bridge across the gaps from the artwork back to the viewer. It was like conducting a musical score: every conductor had an interpretation, but when the orchestra played Beethoven it was still Beethoven. But in Rome at the Ist.i.tuto, with the Moras, it wasn"t Beethoven anymore. What did she think of their work? I asked. Casazza was kind and condescending: it was fine as far as it went, but ultimately it was subjective. It was distorted by the Moras" reliance on their taste, by the limitations of Brandi"s theory. By contrast, she and Baldini had let Cimabue be their teacher, had followed his lead. They built a neutral bridge across the gaps from the artwork back to the viewer. It was like conducting a musical score: every conductor had an interpretation, but when the orchestra played Beethoven it was still Beethoven. But in Rome at the Ist.i.tuto, with the Moras, it wasn"t Beethoven anymore.
And what of the critics of the Cimabue restauro restauro? Chromatic abstraction was as valid now as it was then, Casazza told me. Since then, tests and studies they"d done with computers had confirmed the choices they"d made in applying Baldini"s theories. Today she would do the Cimabue, the Primavera Primavera, and the Brancacci-their three most important projects-exactly the same way they"d done them originally. There were no regrets, no second thoughts, no doubts.
We looked at some photographs I"d brought: in one, an unknown hand holding a brush was laying down tratteggio tratteggio on the head of the on the head of the Crocifisso. Crocifisso. She"d never seen it before. I asked her to look closely and she bent down over the photograph. "Yes," she said, "that"s my hand." It was a discovery that seemed to please her. Then, as now, she was beautiful. Her hand might have been cast of silver, or of bronze. She"d never seen it before. I asked her to look closely and she bent down over the photograph. "Yes," she said, "that"s my hand." It was a discovery that seemed to please her. Then, as now, she was beautiful. Her hand might have been cast of silver, or of bronze.
She was a kind woman too-at least to me-and maybe Baldini had, in fact, been a kind man. As for their affair, their age difference, the way he was supposed to have eased her pa.s.sage through exams and job compet.i.tions-well, this was Italy; and now I couldn"t say that I didn"t understand exactly why such things might have happened. He did what anyone might do when seized by overwhelming bellezza. bellezza.
A few days later, I got an e-mail from London: "I am David Lees" son," it said. I could write back or we could talk on the phone. few days later, I got an e-mail from London: "I am David Lees" son," it said. I could write back or we could talk on the phone.
When I telephoned Lorenzo Lees, he told me that as it turned out he was coming to Florence in a few days to arrange for the sale of his father"s old apartment. Lorenzo was a Catholic missionary in an innercity part of London and had accustomed himself to a modest way of life, but his twin brother in Rome had insisted that they realize the considerable profit the apartment would yield on the Florentine real estate market.
Later that next week I sat with Lorenzo in the apartment, unchanged from his father"s last occupation of it. It had the austere but expansive feel of an artist"s home or studio from some moment in the fifties, the white walls, geometric splashes of primary colors, and nubby, rough textures woven in earth tones. It could have been our house when I was a boy had we dared to be more bohemian, had we, I suppose, loved art more.
Lorenzo was, it turned out, precisely my age: my St. Paul with my mother had paralleled his Rome with his mother. He was frank with me about his life-or, for a long time, the lack of it-with his father; the things he"d missed, the things he imagined David had missed with Gordon Craig. But he was proud of them too, Craig and his internationally famous mother, Ellen Terry, David"s own fearless and tender aesthete mother, Dorothy, and David most of all. Lorenzo was a devout Catholic: he"d dedicated his life to the Church and to making a family of a kind neither he nor his father had ever known. The first time he mentioned he had ten children, I thought I misheard him. Yes, ten. I should come to London. I could meet them. That was where he had his father"s things: the negatives, the papers, the notebooks. I said I would try, maybe in March. He really seemed to want me to come, as though it would do me good, as though I needed saving.
7.
The phrase "the religion of art" seems to have originated with Walter Pater, the Oxford don and aesthete who famously said that all art ought to aspire to the condition of music, and that life should aspire to the condition of art: "to burn always with this hard, gem-like flame." It was an imperative compelling enough to draw Dorothy Lees and thousands more to Florence. Perhaps it had moved me here too.
Nietzsche had taken the idea a little further: "Art raises its head where religions decline." It"s a truth that can"t be proven, but the decline of religion in the nineteenth century did indeed parallel the rise of connoisseurship, aestheticism, and art tourism rather neatly. For myself, I would have said I was beyond that. Certainly when I was growing up, what I craved in art and music and idealism was a life of the spirit, a meaning that felt to me lost or never acquired in the first place. But as an adult, I"d found a middle way. I decided I did believe in G.o.d-or at least in something spiritual, some great numinous intention-and I did believe in beauty: one, in fact, was a sign, a revelation, of the other.
But on a morning in Florence in February I woke up and I didn"t believe in G.o.d anymore; or, rather, I had the belief but not the feeling of believing, which I suppose was to say that I had lost faith. I still had the idea of the divine, but couldn"t quite touch it, not to say see see it. It had become an abstraction at a very great remove. The loss didn"t seem to make any great difference to me except when I thought of it. It was as though I"d been entertaining a great hope for a very long while-say, a windfall, an award, the perfect job-which had been in the end disappointed, but whose reality hadn"t quite sunk in. it. It had become an abstraction at a very great remove. The loss didn"t seem to make any great difference to me except when I thought of it. It was as though I"d been entertaining a great hope for a very long while-say, a windfall, an award, the perfect job-which had been in the end disappointed, but whose reality hadn"t quite sunk in.
That I should have felt this was odd, because on the principle just enumerated, I should by rights have been up to my neck in G.o.d because I was up to my neck in beauty. Maybe I needed to try a little harder. I should put art to the test and see if it actually did what I thought it was supposed to do. I went back to see the Cimabue Crocifisso. Crocifisso. Cimabue"s purposes were strictly spiritual and in that regard even practical. That"s not to say the labor did not give him pleasure or despair, or that he wasn"t proud of it and pleased to think about what it would do for his reputation. But he"d made an object, a tool to effect Christian worship, prayer, fear, and consolation. As the Arno was a machine made to move water, the Cimabue"s purposes were strictly spiritual and in that regard even practical. That"s not to say the labor did not give him pleasure or despair, or that he wasn"t proud of it and pleased to think about what it would do for his reputation. But he"d made an object, a tool to effect Christian worship, prayer, fear, and consolation. As the Arno was a machine made to move water, the Crocifisso Crocifisso was a machine to move sinners to salvation. I had a feeling I would not be so easily converted. But maybe I would have a transcendent moment, or at least a powerful sense of "tactile values." The beauty would turn me back onto the path whose track I"d lost. was a machine to move sinners to salvation. I had a feeling I would not be so easily converted. But maybe I would have a transcendent moment, or at least a powerful sense of "tactile values." The beauty would turn me back onto the path whose track I"d lost.
I went to Santa Croce first thing in the morning so I could have the Crocifisso Crocifisso to myself, and I was indeed the only person in the refectory. But on the way, I stopped for a moment to look at the cross by Lippo di Benivieni, whose wood support Marco Ciatti had been able to preserve using his microtome saw technique. It was more striking, more compelling, than I"d remembered. Its Christ was an obviously young, even handsome man and perhaps because of that, he projected an innocence that could only produce a concomitant sense, in me at least, of the outrage and cruelty that had been perpetrated on his body. Mary and John, on either end of the horizontal spar, look shattered, their faces wrenched by grief. In the Benivieni there"s what Ruskin called the sweetness of Giotto in the rendering of Jesus; in the tender-limbed body, the way the toes of the right foot are curled around the left, as though to protect them, this one little thing, from harm. It moves you to pity, and perhaps to the thought that G.o.d might pity you. to myself, and I was indeed the only person in the refectory. But on the way, I stopped for a moment to look at the cross by Lippo di Benivieni, whose wood support Marco Ciatti had been able to preserve using his microtome saw technique. It was more striking, more compelling, than I"d remembered. Its Christ was an obviously young, even handsome man and perhaps because of that, he projected an innocence that could only produce a concomitant sense, in me at least, of the outrage and cruelty that had been perpetrated on his body. Mary and John, on either end of the horizontal spar, look shattered, their faces wrenched by grief. In the Benivieni there"s what Ruskin called the sweetness of Giotto in the rendering of Jesus; in the tender-limbed body, the way the toes of the right foot are curled around the left, as though to protect them, this one little thing, from harm. It moves you to pity, and perhaps to the thought that G.o.d might pity you.
After seeing the Benivieni, the Cimabue looked different to me. I couldn"t now say how many times I"d visited it in the last two years, never mind how many times I"d seen it in photographs. But now it seemed darker, stiller, more silent and cold than I recalled. Viewing it wasn"t an entirely pleasant experience. It wasn"t consoling or uplifting. What it manifested more than any other quality was the absolute deadness of Jesus. It seemed to enclose and hold fast the minute just after his last breath, his final heartbeat. Mary and John are not so much grieving as stunned; they"re still taking things in; the tears haven"t come yet. And the resurrection doesn"t even register as a possibility. It"s as though he"s swallowed death whole.
I was thinking that Cimabue"s Crocifisso Crocifisso wasn"t beautiful by any normal standard of beauty. Nor was it shocking or transgressive in the manner much contemporary art claims to be. Of course there were things in it that I might have called beautiful: the majestic arc of the body like a sickle moon, broad-hipped and rounded in the belly, feminine, almost fecund in its collapse. And there was his one surviving eye-G.o.d"s eye, you could say-that was also curved in the manner of the body, shut tight, not asleep, but exhausted beyond measure. There was not an ounce of life in the entire painting. This is the vastness of the Crucifixion, the painting said; the extent of the annihilation necessary for Christ to kill death. Now there"s nothing, no place to go. The next move belongs to G.o.d. wasn"t beautiful by any normal standard of beauty. Nor was it shocking or transgressive in the manner much contemporary art claims to be. Of course there were things in it that I might have called beautiful: the majestic arc of the body like a sickle moon, broad-hipped and rounded in the belly, feminine, almost fecund in its collapse. And there was his one surviving eye-G.o.d"s eye, you could say-that was also curved in the manner of the body, shut tight, not asleep, but exhausted beyond measure. There was not an ounce of life in the entire painting. This is the vastness of the Crucifixion, the painting said; the extent of the annihilation necessary for Christ to kill death. Now there"s nothing, no place to go. The next move belongs to G.o.d.
For me the overwhelming feeling was one of devastation, of loss and absence far beyond sadness or grief. The Crocifisso Crocifisso now simply stated, This is death; this is suffering pressed to and beyond its limit. No wonder the Arno, in its raging self-abnegation, came looking for this particular object and drowned it with such care. They were brothers under the skin. now simply stated, This is death; this is suffering pressed to and beyond its limit. No wonder the Arno, in its raging self-abnegation, came looking for this particular object and drowned it with such care. They were brothers under the skin.
Of course the meaning Francis and Cimabue intended only begins here: the rest of the story, life without end, followed from this absolute dying by Christ. You might as well embrace him, they would have said. That"s the next step, if you"re up for it. As if you had any alternative.
I didn"t know if I could go that far. I felt that the Crocifisso Crocifisso had, instead of offering me transcendent beauty-one standard definition of art-asked me to transcend beauty itself, to press beyond it; not necessarily to religion, but toward something very insistent in its demands; something emphatically real rather than hollow. As matters stood, I saw only darkness in the Cimabue. Perhaps Baldini"s had, instead of offering me transcendent beauty-one standard definition of art-asked me to transcend beauty itself, to press beyond it; not necessarily to religion, but toward something very insistent in its demands; something emphatically real rather than hollow. As matters stood, I saw only darkness in the Cimabue. Perhaps Baldini"s restauro restauro had made it darker still. I could see the chromatic abstraction at work. The two dominant colors in the painting-gold/yellow and blue-combined in the eye to make green in the gaps. Or that was what my eye did. The entire had made it darker still. I could see the chromatic abstraction at work. The two dominant colors in the painting-gold/yellow and blue-combined in the eye to make green in the gaps. Or that was what my eye did. The entire Crocifisso Crocifisso seemed to have a greenish cast, a hint of the sickly that perhaps suited its intention, that perhaps was there all the time. seemed to have a greenish cast, a hint of the sickly that perhaps suited its intention, that perhaps was there all the time.
The Cimabue was high up the wall, fastened from above by cables with which the whole cross could be raised to the ceiling should the Arno come again. Now, at worst, the flood could only nip at its heels. Consequently, you can"t inspect most of the surface. At the very foot of the cross, however, I could get a fairly good look at an infilled gap. The color-or rather what my eye was making of the patch-seemed a kind of algal brown, the hue more or less of mud. It took me a few moments to make out the hatching-it was that subtle-and I wondered if the work had been Casazza"s or Bracco"s. It was, as Baldini"s theory provided for, angled up to the left, northwestward, toward the sagging crescent of Christ"s leg.
So had they wrecked the Crocifisso Crocifisso? I couldn"t say. And had the Crocifisso Crocifisso, by way of its art or its example, exercised any kind of restauro restauro on my faith? If it had-and I doubted that as I doubted everything-it meant to save me in a wholly confusing, unexpected way. It wanted me to go with it beyond art, which had already been as far as I thought I could go. But on either account, Baldini"s or mine, yes, the Cimabue was ruined. It had been ruined, I now understood, from the beginning. on my faith? If it had-and I doubted that as I doubted everything-it meant to save me in a wholly confusing, unexpected way. It wanted me to go with it beyond art, which had already been as far as I thought I could go. But on either account, Baldini"s or mine, yes, the Cimabue was ruined. It had been ruined, I now understood, from the beginning.
I came out of the refectory into the light of the second cloister, the lawn deep green, shot through with pink and yellow roses. I heard a crackle of birdsong and for a moment-perhaps I was still under the influence of the Cimabue-I thought I saw books afloat on water, the maelstrom of paper that Casama.s.sima had seen forty years ago, that the Franciscan brothers had had to navigate to enter the refectory. It was over in an instant, this vision: the flood had receded, ancient as Noah. Outside, in the piazza, tourists were milling, waiting to see the art. Women, immigrants who"d come here all the way from southeast Asia, were selling silk-screened scarves.
Giorgio Vasari had been a realist. He knew the kind of things people could and would say about one"s work, starting with his loathsome antagonist, Benvenuto Cellini. Or there was this, from an art historian four hundred years later referring to one of his paintings as "a Last Supper Last Supper in a lifeless manneristic style. St. John is outrageously sprawled and the Judas is a poor borrowing from Sodoma . . . dull and undigested." And he knew what mere time and nature could do, not to say a flood: in a lifeless manneristic style. St. John is outrageously sprawled and the Judas is a poor borrowing from Sodoma . . . dull and undigested." And he knew what mere time and nature could do, not to say a flood: l"acqua rinteneri di maniera il gesso . . . fece gonfiare il legname di sorte che tanto quanto se ne bagno da pie si e scortecciato l"acqua rinteneri di maniera il gesso . . . fece gonfiare il legname di sorte che tanto quanto se ne bagno da pie si e scortecciato, "the water is absorbed by the gesso and makes the panel swell so that it"s soaked from the bottom and the surface peels off like bark." He and his art had been through it all.
But now a great deal of attention was being lavished on him. The press of the twenty-first century had made him a painter of masterpieces, or perhaps it was really the flood, the Arno. When I went back to the Fortezza in the spring, three of the five panels of The Last Supper The Last Supper were missing from their cradle. The tests Marco Ciatti had wanted were finally under way. were missing from their cradle. The tests Marco Ciatti had wanted were finally under way.
In the lab he showed me panels 1 and 2, now mounted on upright supports so their surfaces could be laser-scanned millimeter by millimeter. Panel 2 was in the worst condition of any section of the painting: besides being fissured and rucked, it was two centimeters smaller than the paint that was supposed to be covering it. It was Judas"s panel. Somewhere under the velinatura velinatura, he was lurking, holding his body in that fey twisted pose Vasari had gotten from Sodoma. Before Ciatti could even think about separating the image and its mismatched support, they"d have to make a molded replica of the entire panel for the saw to track. And then there was the question of the saw itself, which would have to be custom-built at ma.s.sive expense. It would be a formidable, even infernal machine: there was some question about whether Ciatti could obtain the necessary safety certifications that would allow his team to operate it.
But they were going forward regardless. On the central panel, number 3, they"d conducted tests to see if the velinatura velinatura could be removed and the paint underneath consolidated securely. They"d had to apply a solvent gel, let it sit for two weeks, and then gently work the paper free using only water and a fine brush. Once the could be removed and the paint underneath consolidated securely. They"d had to apply a solvent gel, let it sit for two weeks, and then gently work the paper free using only water and a fine brush. Once the velinatura velinatura was out of the way, loose and flaking paint had to be secured in place, using a syringe to inject threads of animal glue beneath the surface. All these procedures had worked as they"d hoped. They had a plan and three of the Fortezza"s best restorers plus two student a.s.sistants to carry it out. They also had, it seemed, some of the money that had been promised from Rome. was out of the way, loose and flaking paint had to be secured in place, using a syringe to inject threads of animal glue beneath the surface. All these procedures had worked as they"d hoped. They had a plan and three of the Fortezza"s best restorers plus two student a.s.sistants to carry it out. They also had, it seemed, some of the money that had been promised from Rome.
Ciatti took me over to see the results: I knew from the old black-and-white photographs that panel 3 was the center section containing the figure of Christ. John would be collapsed against Jesus on the right and, on the opposite side, Peter. After forty years of being ignored and shunted between cellars and storerooms, veiled in rice paper, I was going to see part of the uncovered Last Supper. Last Supper.
It was Peter I could see, Peter who"d surfaced from under the dirt and the mud, not perhaps good as new but very close to it. He was stunned as though lightning-struck, nearly falling over backward at hearing Jesus" declaration that one of them would betray him. He was shocked, it seemed to me, but also simply affronted. He couldn"t imagine that one of them was capable of this.
But of course one of them was, and for not much money. And so was another: Peter himself, who would deny knowing Jesus three times in the next twenty-four hours. Judas was, you could argue, simply bad, playing his a.s.signed role in the drama of redemption. But Peter"s betrayal was of another magnitude exactly because it was so ordinary, committed almost innocently by that most ordinary of the apostles. It was beyond his imagining that he might do such a thing, and then he did it twice more, willed and willfully, all the while mystified at himself.
Peter had done what anyone could have done and maybe would have done under the circ.u.mstances. As an evil it was inconsequential, but consciously shamefaced in execution, a mediocre, tawdry little thing. It was the kind of sin Vasari especially could understand: "I am as I can, not as I ought to be . . ."
I looked for a long while at Peter and the field of gray velinatura velinatura around him. The rest of the rice paper and Kleenex would soon be stripped away, although in around him. The rest of the rice paper and Kleenex would soon be stripped away, although in restauro restauro "soon" could mean five years. For now there was Peter, flabbergasted by an event we couldn"t yet entirely see; or perhaps he"s taken aback by where he finds himself, dirty but intact after forty years of sleep. As I moved away from the panel, I saw that some dirt had stuck to my sleeve. I was sure I"d never come in physical contact with the painting. Ciatti was under no obligation to let me see these things, and it went without saying he trusted that I would be careful around them. But there was the spot, the mark of my unwitting touching of what I was not supposed to touch. I was soiled by the same dried Arno mud as Judas and the rest of them who lived inside Vasari"s painting. "soon" could mean five years. For now there was Peter, flabbergasted by an event we couldn"t yet entirely see; or perhaps he"s taken aback by where he finds himself, dirty but intact after forty years of sleep. As I moved away from the panel, I saw that some dirt had stuck to my sleeve. I was sure I"d never come in physical contact with the painting. Ciatti was under no obligation to let me see these things, and it went without saying he trusted that I would be careful around them. But there was the spot, the mark of my unwitting touching of what I was not supposed to touch. I was soiled by the same dried Arno mud as Judas and the rest of them who lived inside Vasari"s painting.
Ciatti saw me to the door. He had to take a telephone call and while I was waiting I noticed a bust near the entrance. It was carved by Pellegrino Banella, who had restored Donatello"s Maddalena. Maddalena. The subject was Ugo Procacci. Returning, Ciatti saw me looking at the statue, and we talked about Procacci and of Ciatti"s admiration for him. If he could be just a little bit like Procacci, he said, he"d consider his life a great success. He didn"t want to sound pretentious, but he was trying to run this The subject was Ugo Procacci. Returning, Ciatti saw me looking at the statue, and we talked about Procacci and of Ciatti"s admiration for him. If he could be just a little bit like Procacci, he said, he"d consider his life a great success. He didn"t want to sound pretentious, but he was trying to run this laboratorio laboratorio as Procacci would. Of course he was only human. We were all merely human, perhaps even the geniuses. One did what one could, and perhaps brushing up against all this beauty-devoting oneself to it-helped one to do a little better. as Procacci would. Of course he was only human. We were all merely human, perhaps even the geniuses. One did what one could, and perhaps brushing up against all this beauty-devoting oneself to it-helped one to do a little better.
As we went toward the door, I mentioned the death of Umberto Baldini eight months before. Would there be a bust of him someday? Of course Banella was dead, but someone could doubtless attempt it. "Perhaps, perhaps," Ciatti said. In Florence, at the Fortezza, eight months scarcely counted as time at all.
8.
In March I went to London to see Lorenzo Lees. I telephoned him from the sidewalk outside my hotel. Where was I? he asked. Maybe he could pick me up. I looked behind me, hoping to see a street sign. But there was only a blue plaque. They"re everywhere in London, marking the former homes of historic figures. This one recorded that at this address in Barkston Gardens, Earls Court, lived Ellen Terry, actress, from 1889 to 1902. Ellen Terry was Lorenzo"s great-grandmother, the mother of Gordon Craig, the absentee father of Lorenzo"s absentee father, David. She"d moved on just as Dorothy Lees was embarking for Florence, for art"s sake and, later, love"s.
We decided it would be easier if I simply met Lorenzo at the church in south London where his wife was working. I took the underground to Brixton and arrived at the church, Our Lady of the Rosary, in advance of Lorenzo. At the back, in the sanctuary, there was a woman standing on a scaffold with a brush in her hand. She was painting a mural that ran fifteen feet up the wall and wrapped around either side of the altar. It was in the Greek style, the style from which Cimabue had decisively freed Italian art. The artist here in Brixton was painting an Anastasis Anastasis, one of the princ.i.p.al images in the Eastern tradition, in which Christ was shown retrieving the dead from h.e.l.l, the event that follows what Cimabue had portrayed in the Crocifisso. Crocifisso.
This painter was no Cimabue or even a Vasari. But there was a boldness to her lines, shapes, and colors that was compelling. You wanted to look, to go a little further with the image than you might first think. That was nothing negligible. In Florence, in the epochs I"d been studying, seeing an artist on a scaffold painting in a church would have been a nearly daily event. Today, he or she would likely be a restorer. But this little parish in a downtrodden part of London was an unlikely place for any kind of art at all. The painter, Lorenzo told me when he finally arrived, was his wife, Maurizia.
They"d lived in England for twenty years now, painting, catechizing, and doing good works, but they had remained thoroughly Italian. They wanted to speak Italian and when we got to their home in Peckham for lunch we would eat Italian, right down to debating the merits of long pasta versus short. The kitchen was presided over by an archetypal signora of immeasurable years who had also been caring for Maurizia and Lorenzo"s youngest child. When we sat down, there was an antipasto antipasto, a primo primo, a secondo secondo, wine, and a dolce dolce, all modest but correct. We were a long way from south London.
But in fact that London was just outside the door. In the last month there"d been a chain of murders two blocks away. A fifteen-year-old boy had been shot in his bed, and three others stabbed or shot within a few days by rival gang members. A neighbor told the BBC that Peckham was "England"s Bronx." I asked Lorenzo if they"d considered leaving. He said they had "no plans."
Lorenzo showed me what he wryly called the "archives," a dead s.p.a.ce at the top of a stairway crammed with files and boxes. Most of his father"s negatives were here as well as an extensive h.o.a.rd of Gordon Craig memorabilia. Among the latter were wooden figures, beautifully carved and worn by handling, that Craig used to block his actors and build mock-ups of his stage designs. Maybe I would like to take one? But I declined, blind to what Lorenzo was offering. I was here to talk to him about his father and to look at his photographs. I"d hoped there might be unpublished shots of the flood and the subsequent restorations.
Lorenzo stood on the top step and handed boxes and sleeved transparencies back to me. We found a set of slides taken in 1972 that I"d never seen before, but other than that there were no other flood and restauro restauro photographs. Then I noticed a book that looked familiar and I asked Lorenzo to hand it to me. It was a Time-Life book from the late fifties called photographs. Then I noticed a book that looked familiar and I asked Lorenzo to hand it to me. It was a Time-Life book from the late fifties called The World"s Great Religions The World"s Great Religions, and we"d had a copy when I was a boy. I leafed through it and I stopped at a photograph from the interior of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. A silver star was set into the stone floor and it was exactly here, the story went, that Jesus was born. I told Lorenzo that I remembered seeing that photograph. In fact, I"d been fascinated by it. It contained for me at age ten or eleven the notion that the son of G.o.d could be born in so particular a place; a spot that could be touched and photographed, an intersection of the transcendent and the concrete that for me seemed to const.i.tute the marvelous, the beautiful, and the holy. It was probably this photograph as much as anything that had launched me into that brief bout of faith in 1966 that had lasted until a little while after the flood.
"My father took that," Lorenzo said, and although as David was Life Life"s specialist in such subjects I shouldn"t have been surprised, this fact too seemed a marvel. It wasn"t a coincidence or a happenstance, but another point on a matrix that was becoming an image or at least a frame. Inside it I was beginning to see not just the flood or Florence or its art but my own life. Lorenzo asked me if I wanted anything from the archive, a photograph or a print. I took a 35mm slide, shot on what David liked to call "mia amica Nikon," from the 1972 sleeve we"d found. It was the bare cross of the Cimabue, leaning against a wall in the Fortezza, stripped of its canvas and paint as it had been shown in Baldini"s exhibition. It was a transitory, temporary phase in the Nikon," from the 1972 sleeve we"d found. It was the bare cross of the Cimabue, leaning against a wall in the Fortezza, stripped of its canvas and paint as it had been shown in Baldini"s exhibition. It was a transitory, temporary phase in the Crocifisso Crocifisso "s life, its heart laid bare, halfway between its drowning in the Arno and its resurrection ten years after, still precisely itself. The photograph itself was beautiful, as beautiful as the cross, as beautiful now as the one of Bethlehem had been once upon a time. Maybe it would lead me somewhere, to art or faith or something more. "s life, its heart laid bare, halfway between its drowning in the Arno and its resurrection ten years after, still precisely itself. The photograph itself was beautiful, as beautiful as the cross, as beautiful now as the one of Bethlehem had been once upon a time. Maybe it would lead me somewhere, to art or faith or something more.
I went back downstairs with Lorenzo. Maurizia and the signora were tending the baby. The child, I realized, was wearing tiny plastic spectacles, or rather the women were attempting to make him wear them, since he pulled them off-seemingly with great delight-every time they were put on him. Lorenzo and Maurizia had named him John Paul after the recently deceased pope. The fervency of their Catholicism made me a little uncomfortable: the enormous family; the cheerfully accepted privation of living in a blighted, dangerous neighborhood; the setting aside of larger ambitions they might have had for her painting and his own photography; and this blind or half blind child. None of it belonged to what I believed to be my life, my world of art and books and beautiful things.
John Paul seemed happy enough, as happy in fact as any baby I"d seen. I asked Lorenzo how well he could see with his gla.s.ses. They didn"t know: there was no way to test a child so small. He might see blurs and shapes, or just colors, or merely light and dark-chiaroscuro. Just then, he squealed, the avian shriek that babies produce for a few months before real words come. He"d seen something, and the feeling it gave him-the thing it pulled out of him-had brought him to ecstasy, to a vision, a depth, that only he could take the measure of.
Back in Florence I went to see Giovanni Menduni at L"Autorita di Bacino del Fiume Arno one last time. He"d agreed to take me around to some places in the city that had been important to him at the time of the flood. As a high government official, he possessed that most envied of Florentine treasures, a parking permit that allowed him to drive and leave his car almost anywhere. When the next flood came, he"d enjoy, of course, the most privileged level of access.
So we drove to Santa Croce. He could have gone straight into the piazza and left his car in front of the Basilica if he had a mind to, but instead he found an ordinary, legal parking place alongside the exterior of the second cloister and the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale. I wondered if he ever became tired of coming here, of seeing the church, the piazza, and the statue of Dante, Dante"s face fixed in a severe, perturbed expression as though he were angry at nothing so much as Florence itself.
We turned right at the northeast corner of the piazza into Via San Giuseppe. A few blocks down was the old Pestalozzi academy, which had finally been restored and put back in use as an ordinary public school. Menduni asked the woman in the vestibule if we could come in, gently, shyly, rather as I suppose he had offered his help to the despairing custodian forty years before, rastrello rastrello in hand. He wanted to show me the in hand. He wanted to show me the giardino- giardino-what I would call the playground-where so many of what now seemed to him to be the happiest moments of his life had transpired. It had once been the garden of Santa Croce"s monastery, on the far edge of the city, almost rural. It still enjoyed a view of the back of the Basilica that few people had ever seen.
We came out and continued right down Via San Giuseppe. I think Menduni was trying to give me a better, longer view of his old school, but my eye was struck and held by a plaque on a wall just ahead of us. It had been installed very recently, only a few months ago, and it marked Azelide Benedetti"s apartment. She had been powerless, the plaque said, una che deve morire e che vede la morte avvincinarsi una che deve morire e che vede la morte avvincinarsi, "one who must die and sees death approach." She had not been a hero, but only a witness, like the Cimabue Crocifisso Crocifisso that still-once more-hung seventy-five yards from her barred window. that still-once more-hung seventy-five yards from her barred window.
We walked back down the street in the opposite direction, past the intersection with the Borgo Allegri, and Menduni showed me Mayor Bargellini"s old palazzo. Members of his family still lived there, he told me. The front was as badly defaced with graffiti as any building I"d seen in Florence: supersaturated red, blue, green, orange, and purple on a buff wall; inanities-beautiful in a certain vivid way-frescoing the house of Florence"s great contemporary Christian humanist. Up the street was the old site of the Casa del Popolo, now vacated. Politics in Florence were, as Machiavelli knew, eternal in form, but subject to changes in substance. Across the street from the former Casa, a cortile now housed a mosque and on its door there was a poster expressing solidarity with the Palestinian people.
On our way back to his car we stopped again in the Piazza Santa Croce, the epicenter of the flood, the bottom of the spiral of the inferno of 1966. "You have to ask yourself," said Menduni, "why, knowing what they know, people keep rebuilding here, knowing that every hundred and fifty years there will be a deluge." He paused, as though the people walking by or sitting in the piazza might be the very ones who"d made this decision. "It seems irrational, but perhaps it"s not. Maybe people weighed the benefits of being here against the cost of losing half or a third of it every century, and they decided it"s worth it-to be here, on the Arno. There"s tradition and pride, but Florentines are practical people."
Maybe, I thought, far from destroying their community, the floods were part of what makes Florentines who they are. I remembered what the politician Enrico Mattei had once said: "The most divided, most discordant, most quarrelsome people in the world found themselves united, brothers, in the immense pity of Florence."
Back at his office Menduni showed me some photographs. He loved computers and had become extraordinarily adept at scanning images and magnifying and a.n.a.lyzing them. "Look at this," he said. It was a map from Leonardo"s Book of Water. Book of Water. Menduni zoomed in until we could see the finest lines, the threads of the smallest cross-hatching. He pointed. "Here"s Florence. Now look at this. I don"t think anyone"s ever noticed it before." I could see what seemed to be the Arno entering and leaving the spot he"d indicated. But to either side of it the line of the river divided, forked into two branches, and reunited at the other edge. Menduni zoomed in until we could see the finest lines, the threads of the smallest cross-hatching. He pointed. "Here"s Florence. Now look at this. I don"t think anyone"s ever noticed it before." I could see what seemed to be the Arno entering and leaving the spot he"d indicated. But to either side of it the line of the river divided, forked into two branches, and reunited at the other edge.
"He wanted to put a moat moat around Florence," Menduni said. "Bisect the river and have flood control and defense in one stroke." He shook his head in amazement. "That"s a pretty extraordinary idea." around Florence," Menduni said. "Bisect the river and have flood control and defense in one stroke." He shook his head in amazement. "That"s a pretty extraordinary idea."
In the excitement of hearing about this discovery, I realized I"d forgotten to ask if he ever got a Hammond B-3. No, he never had, he replied. And now they were out of production, collectors" items, hair-raisingly expensive. Seeing the wreck of the B-3 he"d coveted dragged out into the mud of the street had been his initiation into loss and disappointment-Virgil and Dante"s lacrimae rerum lacrimae rerum, "the tears of things"-back in 1966. But look at everything he"d learned from the Arno by not having it.
I had not given up looking for Umberto Baldini. The memories of the people who"d known him had gone fuzzy or, I suspected, consciously protective of his reputation. But what of the end of his life? What had he done in those last few years of his life besides read examinations and essays? Something would have been possessing him, even in his senescence, an object for his outsized ambition, energy, and intelligence, probably right up to the moment he"d gone to the hospital. It would be, of course, a had not given up looking for Umberto Baldini. The memories of the people who"d known him had gone fuzzy or, I suspected, consciously protective of his reputation. But what of the end of his life? What had he done in those last few years of his life besides read examinations and essays? Something would have been possessing him, even in his senescence, an object for his outsized ambition, energy, and intelligence, probably right up to the moment he"d gone to the hospital. It would be, of course, a restauro. restauro.
And I found there was indeed a final Baldini restoration: the frescoes Giorgio Vasari had painted for himself in his house in Santa Croce, frescoes that told the allegorical stories of the arts he"d practiced and depicted the faces of the artists he worshipped. The sala sala of Casa Vasari was, even more than his of Casa Vasari was, even more than his Last Supper Last Supper, his lost masterwork.
When the last of Vasari"s heirs died 113 years after his death, the house was deeded in accordance with his will to a lay religious order based on Arezzo. The brothers sold off the furnishings and art and the house itself pa.s.sed into the hands of several owners, most recently the Marrocchi family in 1842. Casa Vasari had undergone considerable alteration over four hundred years, but the sala sala had remained untouched. No one except the Marrocchis had seen the frescoes for 150 years but any restorer would have correctly surmised that they had deteriorated, perhaps badly. Baldini knew of the frescoes" existence, but it was during his retirement-when he became president of the Fondazione Horne, just down the street from the Casa-that he was in a position to act. In 2002 preliminary tests and evaluations were begun in conjunction with the Ist.i.tuto in Rome. Beyond the expected grime, in places the frescoes had cracked or detached from the wall. The Arno had never reached the height of the had remained untouched. No one except the Marrocchis had seen the frescoes for 150 years but any restorer would have correctly surmised that they had deteriorated, perhaps badly. Baldini knew of the frescoes" existence, but it was during his retirement-when he became president of the Fondazione Horne, just down the street from the Casa-that he was in a position to act. In 2002 preliminary tests and evaluations were begun in conjunction with the Ist.i.tuto in Rome. Beyond the expected grime, in places the frescoes had cracked or detached from the wall. The Arno had never reached the height of the sala sala, but there was extensive damage from water and damp.
Baldini"s wherewithal was still intact: the latest technology-computer scanning and spectography as well as acoustic and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging-from the best-equipped laboratories was lugged up the deep stairwell of the Casa. Cleaning and restoration were begun later-stacco, the equivalent for fresco of trasporto, trasporto, would be necessary in places-and was continuing the summer Baldini died. Someday, although no one can yet say when, the would be necessary in places-and was continuing the summer Baldini died. Someday, although no one can yet say when, the sala sala will be open to viewing by small groups. will be open to viewing by small groups.
So it was Vasari-Vasari painted by Vasari; Vasari flanked by Cimabue and Leonardo, watched over by Michelangelo; Vasari"s private, even secret gallery of Vasaris-that was Umberto Baldini"s final restauro. restauro. I stood outside the Casa on a searing afternoon at the beginning of the summer after the fortieth anniversary of the flood, 435 years after Vasari painted the frescoes, the last works he completed with his own hand. I was frustrated. I"d been trying for six weeks to get permission to go inside, to see them, but the day before I"d been formally refused. Until the I stood outside the Casa on a searing afternoon at the beginning of the summer after the fortieth anniversary of the flood, 435 years after Vasari painted the frescoes, the last works he completed with his own hand. I was frustrated. I"d been trying for six weeks to get permission to go inside, to see them, but the day before I"d been formally refused. Until the restauro restauro was definitively completed, there could be no visitors. The shutters would stay fastened against the blaze of light streaming down the Borgo from the Piazza Santa Croce. "We cannot confer eternal life on paintings and statues and frescoes," Baldini had told an interviewer once. But for the indefinite future, the was definitively completed, there could be no visitors. The shutters would stay fastened against the blaze of light streaming down the Borgo from the Piazza Santa Croce. "We cannot confer eternal life on paintings and statues and frescoes," Baldini had told an interviewer once. But for the indefinite future, the sala sala and its frescoes would belong only to Vasari, to Baldini, and the great men they had loved and devoted themselves to, their immortal intimates and brothers in art. and its frescoes would belong only to Vasari, to Baldini, and the great men they had loved and devoted themselves to, their immortal intimates and brothers in art.
Nick Kraczyna and I were having coffee in the Caffe Ricci in the Piazza Santo Spirito. If we"d gone outside, I would have been in sight or at least easy reach of almost everything that had mattered to me for the last two years in Florence, to say nothing of Nick"s forty-five: the piazza, of course, and Brunelleschi"s church, and, beyond it, the great river; the river in which Brunelleschi"s freighter of stone for the Duomo had foundered, whose hulk had so possessed Leonardo"s imagination when he was a boy, as David Lees"s photographs had possessed mine. And then, just beyond, its cities, Florence and Firenze.
That last pair did not make a distinction that Nick would much recognize, although it was still very real to me. He"d been in and out of this neighborhood since he was twenty, eating ribollita ribollita, drinking its tight-knit wine, and buying charcoal alongside people whose children had long since moved away. But he"d stayed. Unlike me and the line of English and American expatriates I felt descended from, Nick was an artist-not an aesthete, a scholar, a connoisseur, or a tourist-and for him there was no other place but this Florence, city of makers.
Here, he was midway between the Brancacci and the Pontormos in Santa Felicita. And here, for me, were Bernard Berenson"s first lodgings in Florence looking down on the piazza, the Brownings" apartment a block away, Claire Clairmont"s a little farther down the Via Romana, Dorothy Lees"s tower by the Ponte Vecchio, and, on the Bellosguardo hill beyond, the villa where Henry James had lived. And over the river, always the river, were the homes of the Sh.e.l.leys, the hotels of Ruskin and Forster, and the cellars that vibrated beneath Frederick Hartt"s room during his first flood.
We"d both be leaving Florence soon, Nick for a year"s teaching in America, a place that was now as "abroad" for him as any other. But then he had always been a refugee, except for here. And I was going home, even if after all this time here I was a little less sure of what const.i.tuted "home," just as I was about faith.
We talked, of course, about the flood. Did he still think it was, as he liked to say, the "monumental" moment in his life? He was now sixty-seven years old and he"d seen a lot of things. But yes, it still was. He"d felt, in those minutes on the crumbling parapet of the Lungarno, both entirely present and entirely unrooted, like Icarus first launching himself. Perhaps that roaring surge of time contained, ecstatically, the moment before the moment Cimabue had fixed in perpetuity on his Crocifisso Crocifisso; the instant Peter is about to enter emerging from the velinatura velinatura of of The Last Supper. The Last Supper.
I asked Nick what he"d been working on lately. He was very excited about the multiplate color etching process he"d invented and been teaching to students from around the world. But what about Icarus? He said he hadn"t done much with Icarus in the last few years. He"d painted a huge outdoor mural in the Czech Republic in 2002, but nothing since. You had to wait for Icarus to come to you like you had to wait for these once-in-a-century deluges. The Pieta motif had come back for a while a few years ago-insisted on being worked on right now- right now-and some other variation would doubtless present itself soon. Icarus was, after all, always and everywhere trapped in the labyrinth, trying to escape through his devices and fabrications. Weren"t we all? We all wanted so much and would do so much, so strangely and unpredictably, to gain it.
So we"d talked about the flood and we"d talked about art. There was a pause and then Nick said, "Here"s a puzzle, a labyrinth. The river"s flooding. And there"s a baby and there"s a Leonardo painting floating down it. Which do I save?"
I spread my arms apart, palms up, in the Italian gesture that can mean "Who knows?" or "Suit yourself," or indicate several varieties of resignation. It"s not, I realized, much different than Mary"s posture in David Lees"s mudflat photograph of Santa Croce.
Nick looked at me. "But you think you know what I"d answer, don"t you?" And I thought, yes, I do. Because there"s ordinary life and it"s good and ought to be respected, but then there is also more, much more than we can imagine, beauty that runs on forever. There"s Firenze and then there is Florence.
"But you"d be wrong," I heard Nick saying. "And you know why? Because, all right, there"s a Leonardo floating away. But suppose the baby is the next next Leonardo and there"s all this work he"s going to do? Suppose he"s even better than Leonardo? You weigh all Leonardo and there"s all this work he"s going to do? Suppose he"s even better than Leonardo? You weigh all that that, and you save the baby."
Nick seemed pleased to have confounded me. Still, I thought, suppose the baby is John Paul Lees, who can"t even see, or scarcely at all? But who knew what he might be or do? It was beyond imagining. So any of us, really, was worth a Leonardo. Ruskin-who knew almost nothing of ordinary people or the real world, who lived from beauty to beauty-said, "You will never love art well till you love what she mirrors better." You should look, but you should also see. You should pay attention, render creation its due.
So there is the city and the river, what people make and lose and what survives; and then there is the beauty of it. Here is where we begin.
CHRONOLOGY.
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