Florence [antikvár]

Preface It is an honour to introduce so succinct and scholarly an outline histoid of Florence as Dr. Luciano Berti's. Every visitor may respond to the visual magic of the city in a different manner, but Dr. Berti provides him with the salient facts of its development and friiition which will enhance his appreciation of the genius loci. When we consider the vicissitudes of its past remote and recent, the decapitation of its 150 private towers in the thirteenth century and the too frequent ravages of party faction, it seems miraculous that so much beauty has survived. Some maintain that the flood of 1966 wrought more havoc than the last world war, but the destruction of all its bridges save the Pdnte Vecchio, and of the medieval area surrounding it, was as tragic as it was avoidable. Fortunately Florentine good taste defeated those Philistines who wanted to replace the beautiful Ponte Santa Trinita with a modem substitute. The scrupulous rebuilding of Ammannati's masterpiece with as much of the original material as could be salvaged was a triumph for which we should all be grateful. The flood of 1966 caused greater damage to paintings, sculpture, libraries and furniture, but thanks to Florentine pluck and pertinacity and the active sympathy of foreign collaborators, far more was saved thp could have been foreseen. New techniques of restoration and conservation were introduced, and they are still being perfected. Here indeed one is persuaded to believe in the survival of the fittest. A quotation from Samuel Rogers's long-forgotten poem Italy, (of which nearly four thousand copies were sold within a year of its publication in 1830), has pride of place in Augustus Hare's equally forgotten guide to Florence, and it expresses neatly what many still feel in 1979: "Of all the fairest Cities of the Earth None is so fair as Florence. 'Tisagem Of purest ray; and what a light broke forth. When it emerged from darloiess! Search within, Without; all is enchantment! 'Tis the Past Contending with the Present; and in turn Each has the mastery." Yes, it is the past contending and blending with the present that exerts so potent a fascination on sensitive visitors to Florence, though their reasons for coming might be strangely mixed. When surfeited with the past, whose historical associations confront them not only in buildings which have defied the centuries but also in public squares and narrow streets, apart from the churches and museums, they could always turn to the bustling, vociferous present. Gucci, Pucci and Ferragamo contend with the UfTizi and Pitti galleries. Spiritually as well as materially the past impinges on the present. How often we notice that the passengers on streets and buses, both old and young, resemble their fifteenth-century forebears in Ghirlandaio's frescoes, and on closer acquaintance their general outlook is similar. They tend to dislike uniformity and mass production. They remain individuals, keenly critical, cautious, frugal, impatient of hypocrisy and facile sentiment. Because of their meticulousness Carducci described the Florentines as the Chinese of Italy, and I was forcibly struck by the comparison when I returned here after seven years in Peking. Bernard Berenson vwth his genial twinkle used to say of Arthur H. Smith's Village Life in China (1899): "it is an excellent study of village life in Tuscany." The paradox applies especially to the Florentine artisan, proud of his native skill and ancient traditions. Which does not signify that he lacks originality and fresh ideas. In the fifteenth century which, as Dr. Berti justly observes, "determined the unique features of Florence the serene refinement of plastic forms and lineal sobriety whose influence spread through Italy and thence to the rest of Europe," that eminently "universal man" Leon Battista Alberti chose the winged eye for his emblem: an open