Tethered Monkeys

When we consider the role of women in the Florentine Renaissance there is a general consensus among historians that they were excluded from the public sphere. A predominant theme of confinement to the hearth and altar runs throughout the biographies of wealthy women in the period. We can find evidence to support this in the geography of the houses they were 'imprisoned' in. The Palazzo Davanzati is one of the last fully furnished houses of the period. The loggia, which creates a division through all four floors demarcates the space for both genders. The large and spacious rooms are complete with desks and was where business was conducted and was therefore a male only area. While at the back of the house are the bedrooms, cluttered and frescoed and where women and children would while away the day. Natalie Thomas in 'A Social History of Renaissance Florence' argues that in the case of patrician families it was a matter of protecting the virtuous chastity of the women as an asset essential to the securing of dowries and alliances through marriage. I would add to this that the violent factionalism and the desire to create communities of allied families was at least a contributing factor. However, when we read the literature or art of the trecento and the following centuries it is striking how prominent a role women play for a group as excluded as they are. Two extremely different celebrations of feminine attributes can be witnessed in both the Cult of Madonna and in Bocaccio's portrayal of women in the 'Decameron'. 

The proliferation of images depicting the Virgin Mary is extraordinary; wrapped in her Lappis Lazuli mantle she gazes down on you from the walls of every church and gallery. The Queen of heaven appears in several traditional forms but the one that reveals most about Florentine attitudes to women is that of Madonna and Child. The Orthodox churches created the template of Madonna and Child. A tiny but fully developed Christ stands blessing  on his mother's lap who looks more totem pole than human. The greater development of naturalism of Cimabue, Giotto and Duccio transformed this classic depiction. The most startling change is how they portrayed Christ. The transcendent majesty of Christ is morphed into the incarnate, a baby clutching at his mother. The serenity of the Orthodox image is turned into a vulnerable comment about the fragility of faith. It also elevates Mary from the foreground to a central protagonist. In so doing the relationship between a mother and her child is sacralised. It could be highlighted that Madonna represents the masculine Florentine's ideal, a virgin yet a provider of male heirs. Yet this does not successfully explain how in an age of very high infant mortality how essential the relationship between mothers and their children were. It might explain why women were encouraged to stay in the domestic realm. It does not excuse the Florentine attitude but equally it might give us an insight which from our contemporary standards might otherwise influence our perception. 

On the other hand,  others have emphasised the liberalism and promiscuity rampant between men and women during the period. In Bocaccio's 'Decameron' two of the ten days dedicated to story telling recount tales of the comedy of gender relations. P.Stewart introduces the concept of 'beffe' as a central theme of Bocaccio's novellas. 'Beffe' is the art of trickery and scandal, often the women and men are portrayed as wily Oddysseuses as they skillfuly manipulate their lovers and spouses. Reminiscent of the Wife of Bath women are shown at total intellectual parity with men by asserting their feminity. 

The second story on day seven is told by Filostrate whose protagonist is a woman named Personella. She and her aristocratic lover are interrupted by her tradesman husband. After hiding her lover in the barrel she procedes to humiliate her husband who has come home early to sell a barrel. She then manipulates her husband into cleaning the barrel while she returns to the bedroom with her lover. She concludes by selling the barrel to her lover at a greater price thus utterly humiliating her simple husband! Though fiction, this story shows that women could be influential and far from the passive role commonly assigned to them by posterity. Bocaccio's humorous tales assert the role of women even in its structure, each day the story 'queen' dictates the theme and merits of each tale. He even satirises misogynistic attitudes one of the more stupid men proclaims that men have a "God-given superiority over women". 

We should be cautious of these presentations of women; depicted and written by men and almost always paid for by men. Though we know that Bocaccio was a bestseller and Florentine women had some of the highest literacy rates in Europe. We also know that women attended church and in some cases were liberated by the church. Despite the many stories of women tragically sent to converts we also have stories of a more Boccaccio-esque tendency. For instance, Charles FitzRoy recounts how many women advertised their beauty by emphasising their piety such as praying loquaciously and seductively receiving mass. This paradox by subverting piety as exemplified by the Madonna demonstrates the methods in which women tried to create soft influence in Renaissance Florence.

 It is difficult to capture the vast range of experience for women of the period. However, there is one custom which seems to symbolise the many aspects of the experience. In the Brancacci chapel in Masolino's fresco of the 'Healing of the Cripple and Raising of Tabitha' there is a mysterious shape on the yellow house in the centre foreground. On closer inspection it is a monkey walking along a bar directly under the windows in which women frequently gazed out from. Women kept monkeys, presumably procured by their husbands while trading abroad, who lived on bars where others used to hang bird cages. The monkey is such an interesting choice for a pet. It symbolises the exotic, beautiful and alien, the 'other' which women ultimately were in terms of political power. Mischievous and naughty it is an animal imbued with the spirit of beffe but like all pets fiercely loyal to its owner. The combination of both virtues women were expected to display. The monkey seems to encapsulate women of the Renaissance. Ultimately the monkey was chained, stuck to its home and its obligations to dutifully serve and entertain. 

Ai Weiwei in the Palazzo Strozzi

Ai Weiwei has finally left town. One hundred and fifty thousand visitors have stepped into the Palazzo Strozzi's courtyard to see (according to his own posters) one of the world's most famous contemporary artist's exhibition, entitled 'Libero'. Retrospectives are expected to be self-indulgent. However, the sheer laziness and complacency displayed represented the worst in mainstream art. Weiwei's grandiose self-proclamations of 'the concept' of the installation showed such little respect for the space and historical significance of the building, it bordered comedy. Mr Weiwei sought to explore the relationship between "tradition and modernity" and where better to do that than in the cradle of Western art? If only he had even fleetingly considered to attempt this or even better had explored the tensions between Eastern and Western artistic traditions. We could have witnessed a truly fascinating exhibition. Yet besides from being a breathtakingly innovative artist he is also a martyr, a victim of totalitarian censorship. He now invites you to join the movement and witness his rebellious acts of free speech for a fee. I am in no way mocking his incarceration or underplaying the agony he must have endured but his arbitrary comparison missed a wonderful opportunity to show both the power and limitations of art. 

This leads us to the decision to hold the installation in the Palazzo Strozzi, commissioned by Filippo Strozzi in 1491. His life began tragically, his father Matteo Strozzi's political and familial ties led him to be banished by the Medici family. After his fathers death, Filippo was left alone in Palermo at the age of thirteen. So far the political victim parallel rings true. However, as R.A. Goldthwaite highlights Filipo's extraordinarily Palazzo was not a political gesture but a "public display of private status". Filippo served as little time in political office as could be expected of a leading guild figure and had worked closely with Lorenzo de' Medici, even providing him with a loan. Rather than becoming a symbol of victim-hood, the Palazzo Strozzi should be held up as a monument to mankinds irrepressible will-power to flourish. From a bereaved exile he was able to return to his home and establish his family to prominence and status through this building. While Weiwei feels righteous enough to pose on the beach as the drowned Syrian refugee boy, called Alan Kurdi, Filippo had a conflicted sense of morality. He commissioned the breathtaking family chapel at St Maria Novella, its frescoed walls utilise images from 'The Divine Comedy'- in the iciest depths of hell are those guilty of the sin of usury, an occupational hazard in the banking industry! Thus we see that Filippo Strozzi was not a righteous and confident dissident as Weiwei seeks to portray himself, he was it seems, a complex and undemonstrative creator, a builder. 

The exhibitions attempt to delve into the relationship between "tradition and modernity" went as far as to drop tradition, literally. The three images of Weiwei dropping the Han dynasty vases has to be one of the most sickening images from the art world. A tragic inversion of his 'teacher' Marcel Duchamp's aim to create beauty from the domestic, Weiwei destroyed the exceptional to indulge the domestic. Strozzi commissioned as his chief stonemason a man called Cronaca primarily because he had studied in Rome and was familiar with classical design. In case Weiwei had forgotten the Renaissance was based entirely on a desire to preserve and recreate the cultural flowering of Europe in antiquity. This failure of modernity to respect the dignity of the past was encapsulated by his portraits of 'fellow' rebels. Machiavelli; the man who wrote the manual on how to be a tyrant, Dante, who wrote 'De Monarchia' proposing a Universal Monarchy which sounds awfully similar to the United Front of the People's Republic of China. The only one he shares a similarity with is Savanorola, the austere monk who also liked destroying priceless artwork. This embarrassing attempt to modernize the past in the medium of lego bricks. An infantile idea made with a children's toy. Using historical techniques and mediums to depict contemporary objects were more successful, the marble CCTV guarding the door and the jade hand-cuffs both had an aesthetic and political impact. The irony of using semi-permanent mediums to items you hope will be abolished did not seem to inform his art. Weiwei's caution to really challenge and provoke the Renaissance and pompous western artistic traditions was frustrating, apart from an ornate Rococo wallpaper set with twitter logos and surveillance cameras. For such a 'provocative' artist he did little to illuminate any challenge on Western art. 

Thought-provoking, challenging and political are all words you are expected to exclaim solemnly as you leap onto your white charger and race to the nearest social media site to post some protest you signed about saving something, anything! How political can art be? It's a question this article is not equipped to answer. Yet after visiting Libero one suspects not really. Looking at art has to be one of the most passive acts a person can do. Weiwei is at times revealing and what he reveals is indeed shocking. For instance the 'Snake Bag' on the walls made from school children's backpacks who died in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake is harrowing and horrific, as is Weiwei's accusation that local government corruption led to vulnerable school constructions. But this does not mean that a single person who entered the gallery will leave knowing what they can do to reform Chinese building legislation. He can be defended as providing an international conscience but Thomastic 'Conscientia' involved both acknowledging right and wrong and then acting upon it. Art should act as a mirror to the conscience; making one feel impotent and useless to solve the world's ills would be fine if everyone didn't leave feeling so damn smug about visiting it in the first place!

There were moments when Weiwei did achieve success. His installation on the outside side of the Palazzo hung with lifeboats similar to those used by migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean mimicked the form of Renaissance arches. The rusticated stones looked like violent waves under the boats. Strozzi would have admired those who move away from home in order to save the home, he would have recognised himself. The final room contained a section of the Shanghai studio ordered to be torn down by the authorities. It was a fitting final ending, in Filippo Strozzi's will he ordered that the family never lose the house and they did not until the 20th century. The pace of modernity outstripped tradition, time should be respected not glamourised. I wish that Ai Weiwei remembered that.

Trial by tripe

Henry I died an unusual death, he ate too many Lamprey eels.  His death precipitated 'The Anarchy', the Civil War between Stephen and Mathilda. It caused so much destruction that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle lamented that it was as if "Christ and his Saints slept". This Christian coma has had far deeper repercussions than a grubby chapter of British history; it created a monster. The parasitic lamprey (Henry liked his stewed in white wine) is translated into Italian as 'Lampreda'. This should have been a clue. Confucius's real golden rule states: do not masticate, digest, devour, feed or dine on anything named after a king-killing regicidal river monster. 

In India, bovines are worshipped as a manifestation of the Hindu deities, in Japan, Wagyu cattle are massaged and bathed daily but in Tuscany, cows are consumed entirely and utterly.  No one is sure what cows did to warrant such cruel treatment. Maybe Lorenzo the Magnificent stood in a cow pat? Maybe it's because only pig bladders can be inflated to make a Calcio ball? Regardless of the reason it has left Florence with spots as dark as the Black Death that blight the armpits of the city. They sit there innocently simmering away on the corner of almost every major piazza waiting to strike.The Lampredotto vans serve a 'local, traditional Florentine dish' - I think all Florentines are forced to a communal oath, an act of offal double-think denying all existence of Lampredotto or they are too busy eating fresh pasta to notice. 

The cruelty, treachery and sheer heartlessness of the vendor that  nonchalantly and with not a raised eyebrow in sight accepted my order will live with me forever. With a flourish of sadistic pride and like an Inquisitor revealing his instruments of torture, he opened his cauldron. Flabbiness is an underrated word. It has the faint onomatopoeia of a fat person farting as they attempt to stand up, it even looks glutinous with the rotund 'b' letters smugly in the centre, yet it doesn't have an associated smell. A good case could be made for the smell of sweat on public transport. However, the smell that wafts from the pot is at its warmest, wettest and most gloriously flabby. 

Cows eat so much grass that they have to have four stomachs to digest the pulp. The fourth stomach, the bag of eels, is the Lampredotto. Presumably there's a Heston Blumenthal  busily experimenting on revolutionary ways of serving the third stomach. It's boiled in a thin stock of vegetables and it's own vile juices. The mass of wetness is sliced and the toasted panini bread is submerged in the juices. An oily salsa verde thinly drips on the drowned monks habit of meat.

Dante's inferno never quite captures the terror of anticipation for the Condemned, if he had, it would describe the feeling as with trembling hands you survey satan's favourite sandwich. They say that as you drown you experience a moment of utter airless hedonistic bliss. The first mouthful feels like relief, the bread and sauce seem to cover the taste. Euphoria pours through you - I will survive you exclaim as you reach for your second bite... 

Too late. It's over. The warm thickness collapses on the back of your tongue and a sense of primal self-loathing seeps into every fibre of your being. No amount of Chianti could prevent the inevitable. Sprinting to the nearest bin any hope of elegance is finished. Shame lingers just less than the residual aftertaste.

For just four euros you to can enjoy the worlds greatest gastronomical disaster. 

First Encounters

In Diana Athill's 'Florence Diaries' over a third of the (admittedly slim) journal details her painstaking journey by trains across the continent.The triumph of arrival and glamour of the destination is enhanced by the pilgrimage. The immediacy of flying leaves one hurled into the surroundings. Whereas, the gentle submersion that 1940s travellers must have experienced, as they travelled through post war Italian countryside, which judging from the pervading sense of decay has changed very little since. It must have allowed them to prepare for the assault on the senses. I am very conscious that every cobbled inch of Florence is dripping with ink from awestruck travellers! No sooner had the  15:23 double decker train pulled into Santa Maria Novella stazione one is left grasping for cliches, leaning on hyperboles for support pleased to stumble over any stereotype that might seem vaguely Italian. 

You can imagine my delight in being held up by the interminable road besides the flat to see a flying corps of Italian Vespa cyclists leaving a Versuvian cloud of ash. However, as you walk further and further into the heart of the city you realise that the 'authentic Italian' from the designer sunglasses to the immaculate healed shoe has been exported the world over. They are easily ridiculed but a Chinese tourist party provides the best example of how an Italian 'should' look in the whole of Italy. 

As we wandered over the city in the first few days we two insidious sentiments argue amongst each other- a weird sense of familiarity but also a wistful sadness that you could live here for decades and never penetrate all the secrets of Florence.