Italy ’24

Italian art, 1300-1500, was the unstated focus of our trip with the Santa Barbara Museum of Art to Hill Towns of Umbria and Tuscany from September 26 to October 9. Without notes, the stops blend together, but for the record we visited Montefalco, Todi, Spello, Spoleto, Bevagna, Clitunno, Orvieto, Assisi, Perugia, Sansepulcro, Monterchi, Siena, Pienza and, on our own, Florence. Looking big picture, I found my taste/prejudice steered or reinforced in several clear directions.

1.  I like the artists who paint detailed scenes with perspective, with lots of everyday characters and incidents around the (often seemingly secondary) religious subject. If they show identifiable people, or a self-portrait looking out, so much the better. I start with Benozzo Gozzoli, move forward to Domenico Ghirlandaio and Pintoricchio and on to Filippino Lippi.

2. I never warmed up to “Sienese” art. A visit to the National Gallery in Siena was deadening. Duccio continues to strike me as overrated. Maybe the new show at the Met will change my mind.

3. I learned to identify Perugino, a name I often see, and now dismiss his work as insipid. You can see the thread to his student Raphael, but that’s about it.

4. Piero della Francesca rose even higher in my estimation, if that is possible. The clarity of his vision, the grounded timelessness of his figures is more remarkable when you see what others around him are doing at the same time.

In no particular order, I will list the most memorable sights of the trip.
There were three spaces I found overwhelming: The Magi Chapel in the Medici-Riccardi Palazzo, the Piccolomini Library in Siena Cathedral and the Chapel of the Princes in San Lorenzo. Only the Library was new, and it played into my newfound admiration for Pintoricchio, which had led me to buy the Great Master volume on him while in Perugia. Viewing conditions are less than ideal. We jumped our route when we saw a short line to enter, but once inside you have to keep moving around the room, taking in ten large, multi-figured frescoes by Pintoricchio and assistants while the vitrines below hold illustrated manuscripts by Liberale da Verona and other masters. Lengthy contemplation not permitted. My book described the frescoes as “limpid, resplendent and filled with ornamental elements…The precedents for such meticulously depicted scenes…are to be found not so much in Italian fresco painting…as in Franco-Burgundian and Flemish miniatures.”
I had seen parts of the Basilicaa of San Lorenzo complex before but putting them all together on two visits astounded me. Siri and I visited the Medici Chapels on one day; then our guide friend Klaas Tonckens took me back the next day to the Laurentian Library and the Basilica itself. With so much design by Michelangelo and Bramante you feel the Renaissance at its height all around you, but it is the first step into the Chapel of Princes that takes your breath away. All that marble in a large, soaring, domed space, in a deep green color we saw nowhere else reeks of opulence, the last stop before decadence, the culmination of the Renaissance.
Far simpler and purer is the Magi Chapel, with frescoes by Benozzo that have lived in my mind since an art history professor at Harvard spent an entire class on them (if I remember correctly). When I first saw them in person forty years ago I was blown away. Two years ago I trudged through the rain to visit them and came away with photos and post cards galore. This time, again, we were not rushed. With my camera I could focus in on details: a hand raised with fingers stretched, a rook on the ground, a hawk over a hare, and all the wonderful horses, seen from the front, the back, the side, each with personality. The costumes are gorgeous, the setting wondrous, and the three kings majestic. Every inch is covered with richness.

Our best single day saw us visit two masterworks by Piero: his Resurrection in Sansepulcro and the Madonna del Parto in Monterchi. Siri and I first saw the Madonna in 1981 when Siri was pregnant and the Madonna was housed in a country chapel outside the small town which we needed to have a caretaker open for our viewing. Now it is given a museum of its own in the center of town, in a theater setting with perfect lighting and plenty of seats. The Madonna may not be the most beautiful face in Italian art, but the angel on the left comes close. After seeing all the busy frescoes in other churches and museums, the simplicity and purity of Piero’s work is astounding. No one else is composing paintings as he is. As our guide Nigel said about Piero’s art, “You may like it or you may not, but you will never forget it.” As part of the new complex, there was a room with a video that demonstrated, a revelation for me, how the subtle indications of perspective in the painting allowed a reconstruction of the setting. What I had always taken as a two-dimensional picture with curtains drawn as on a theater stage turned out to be a three-dimensional tent that encircles the Madonna. As in his Flagellation and other works, Piero perfectly constructs the depth of a scene with a precision way beyond anything the viewer can discern. It is like he is solving a mathematical puzzle just for his own satisfaction.

Each hill town we visited was a treasure, and each had an artistic highlight: Benozzo’s frescoes of St. Francis in Montefalco, Pinturicchio’s in Spello, Filippio Lippi’s Life of the Virgin in Spoleto. The perfectly Renaissance temple in Todi (Santa Maria della Consolazione), the brilliantly facaded cathedral in Orvieto and the remarkably preserved Lombard-era Temple of Clitumnus were architecture that stunned and stuck. Assisi was overwhelming for the quantity of its frescoes, not to mention the appearance of Giotto. Perugia was the one place we lingered, which allowed me to take in secondary sights: the Etruscan well, the Cathedral Museum, the very open and tourist-friendly Corso Vanucci.

The museologist in me delighted at the National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia for its novel use of video, starting with one in the opening gallery that brought to life a gold-ground altarpiece that would otherwise have gone unremarked. Its spare display showcased major works, principally important altarpieces by Fra Angelico, Benozzo, Piero and Pintoricchio. In a pleasant rare trip beyond the Renaissance, one gallery showed a typically handsome painting by Orazio Gentileschi, contrasted with more violent works by Valentin de Boulogne. By contrast, the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Siena piled one undistinguishable gold-ground Sienese work on another, with the result that I have no lasting impression of anything. My impression of the Uffizi in Florence is one of crowds, starting with the half-hour line to get in (with a reservation) and then bobbing and weaving amid the tour groups camped in front of Piero, Botticelli, Raphael, et al. Unlike the Met or other major museums, there is one through route, from Cimabue to Caravaggio, so the feeling of exhaustion upon finishing is inevitable. And then there is one through route that takes another five minutes to exit the gift shop!

The food, I must say, was disappointing. Partly this was due to our eating en groupe, which meant not only we couldn’t choose but more problematic was the quantity put before us. Every restaurant wanted to show off its full menu, which resulted in our eating from obligation as much as desire. There was a nice restaurant we returned to in Perugia, Oltromondo, but also the one exceptional dinner at L’Officina, where Siri and I took Nigel on a night off. It was recommended along with two Michelin-starred restaurants, so perhaps there was better cuisine to be found, in Perugia at least.

Last but not least I hope to always remember the views of the Umbrian landscape. Fortunately, many painters put it in the background of their religious scenes, which will serve as a reminder. The light is soft, the hills are green and gentle. The few buildings are concentrated on hilltops, so field after cultivated field stretch as far as the eye can see. It is not so surprising that one of the valleys we drove through is itself a UNESCO Heritage Site, because it looks much as it did during the Renaissance.