Dispatch from Florence

Italy has led design since the Greeks dropped out, and Florence has long been the center of the Italian effort.  Here in Florence, cars, clothes, and cuisine stand out today, as they have since the light of the Renaissance peeked out from behind the dreary Dark Ages.  Cute and practical little cars like the “Smart” are all over the place, 2 to a parking spot.  Mini-bikes, electric taxis, busses and trikes make this pre-car city big enough for motor vehicles.   Can we learn from them again?

It was the Florentines that put pepper and potato on the menu, which lead ultimately to salami, prosciutto and pizza pie - things that Jean ponders in her second cooking class of the trip.  Meanwhile, I take in the bravado of a city that has buried and built monuments to, not only the usual popes and potentates, but also to the native sons (and a daughter or two) that opened the dim eyes of humanity. An effort, which hopefully is yet to reach its ultimate end. The history makers like Leonardo, Michelangelo, Dante, Donatello, and my favorite, Galileo - are laid in the company of new guys like Marconi and Fermi.  There are some blank spots left for those still out there continuing the Florentine quest.

Here the relics of science stand next to the saints and are even more venerated.  Yesterday, in a museum first opened when America was just an Italian named Vespucchi, I looked though Galileo’s telescope.  In the case next to it, I set eyes on the very lens that he used to put the sun in the middle of our solar system, (and his butt in hot water with the Pope).  Under threat of excommunication (which might not have cut off his route to heaven, but definitely would have cut off his funding) he backed down and dabbled in other things like the pendulum, magnetism and microscopes.  A few Popes later, he was cleared of all charges, and his body was moved into a fancy crypt in the St. Croce Church, to join so many other famous Florentines.  This was in 1737, when small pieces of saints, crosses, and other holy relics, were a hot commodity (your church just wasn’t going to draw paying pilgrims without a relic).  So they cut the middle finger off Galileo’s skeleton and mounted it in a silver and gold case.  This relic stands stiffly (no photos please) in the museum. I like to think he is flipping off towards Rome.  He who laughs last ...

Italian design is still not only leading fashion, I believe it is also affecting the evolution of a subject of interest to all painters and sculptors - human anatomy.  I did a close survey of the feet of the many goddesses, virgins, nymphs, Madonnas, muses etc., represented in hundreds of paintings and sculptures, from ancient through Renaissance.  None I could find showed any signs of bunions, trigger toes, corns, or heel spurs - or any other of the common ills found on modern female feet.  Passing the windows of the fashion boutiques, it occurred that female feet might be evolving toward a new form.  Once again, Italian design is leading the way and the world follows.  Who knows what the toe-bone relic in a future shoe museum will look like?

- Bruno Mangle