Art and Alchemy in Florence

It would be remiss to visit Florence without: a) eating a steak as big as your head b) doing the art thang, c) crossing the Ponte Vecchio and d) (if one of you has a thing for mozzarella and you aren’t headed to mozzarella country) visiting the Obikà mozzarella bar for a tasting.

Since Zac’s ruin fatigue and church fatigue has not yet extended to art – he actively enjoyed both the Guggenheim and the Accademia in Venice, though I didn’t want to push the boundaries by taking him to church after church after bloody church in search of Renaissance masterpieces, which is where I lost the plot with Italian art as a slightly older teen – we, therefore, do the art thing.

We also do the sunset cocktail thing, on the terraces below Piazza Michelangelo, in Oltr’Arno. The boy is a little disappointed that they don’t run to Virgin Mojitos, but the views over the river and the old city make this quite possibly one of the most scenic Negronis of my life.

If not the most historic. That would have to be the grotesque pale pink fizzy thing that I drank in the Cave Bar at Petra, Jordan, caringly carved out of a millennia-old rock tomb.

And, no, I am not making this up. And, yes, you can smoke inside. And, no, the boy did not approve. And, no, I’m not sure I actually put the cigarette out. I probably just waved dismissively and bitched about the quality of the Negroni.

But… to Florence!

Seriously. When you go see David in Florence, take a look at his toes. They’re awesome, I tell you. Awesome.

First up, naturally, David, whose iconic status is intensified by the presence in Florence of no fewer than two copies, in bronze, and rendered positively irritating by the fact that his genitalia, and their very weird pubes – well, how DO you render pubic hair out of marble? Classically, that’s how! You’re welcome! — boast a starring role on everything from aprons to boxer shorts and teatowels.

And, yes, I very much expect that that vague humming you hear at the souvenir stand is, indeed, Michelangelo spinning in his grave.

Top Italian art tip? Go towards the end of the day when all the coach parties and people who prebooked tickets have fucked off, and you won’t have to queue for anything, and will likely also be able to get a seat to contemplate the immortal work of art you’re looking at.

One of the great things about David? He’s in the Accademia (Florence’s Accademia, not Venice’s, keep up at the back there!), not the Uffizi. So he’s surrounded by gallery after gallery of, frankly, pretty darn average sculpture, which makes his magic all the more obvious.

David’s contemporaries support their rocky weight on flat feet, leaden draperies, convenient tables, perhaps even an undisguised buttress: David, despite the fact he’s twice the size of any of them, levitates, his left foot poised, his right foot only supported by a terribly discreet thing-that-might-be-a-tree-trunk-but-also-vaguely-suggests-a-sandal.

The detail is phenomenal. Homosexualist, bisexualist, try-it-all-ist, dissector of corpses or all of the above – whatever and whoever he was, Michelangelo knew and adored the male form. Just the hint of a vein illuminates the muscles of David’s arm; his toes, and toenails, are sketched into solid marble with infinitesimal subtlety.

And, sparing you digressions on the classical Greek attitude to penis size, and sexuality for that matter (yes, they liked teens, yes, they liked small penises, yes, those two attitudes might well be connected, and, wow, isn’t the past a different country?), David is the Platonic ideal of a hawt young man.

Hell! Even the boy doesn’t object to spending twenty minutes sitting on a bench contemplating David. Although, when I start to whisper about the toes, he does say, “Yes, Mum. I think it might be time to go for steak now.”

Seriously. When you go see David in Florence, take a look at his toes. They’re awesome, I tell you. Awesome.

That’s the problem with the Uffizi, frankly. It sends even theoretically grown adults (moi) into full-on school trip mode. By the time we hit room 44 (or possibly room 101 – the Uffizi is, seriously, enormous), I’m on the verge of heading behind the bike sheds for a sneaky fag.

Top Italian-art-with-kids tip? The Gates of Paradise are a very easy wander from the mozzarella bar, and post-lunch is a good time to see them, since most of the coach parties or walking tours seem to do that and the hideously stripy cathedral first thing.

Next up? The Uffizi.

Top Italian-art-with-anyone tip? You can’t see everything in the Uffizi in one day. Or two days. You could spend a lifetime popping in and out and still find something new and joyous each time. So we don’t even try.

We admire Michelangelo’s Virgin Mary, with her remarkably studly arms, the Birth of Venus, a piece of work so deeply ingrained within its own future that it now makes me think of 1950s soap ads, a particularly gory Dürer, a few Titians, a ridiculously bling-bling salon, some more Botticelli, and…

…Oh, yeah, and the Niobe Room. Top Italian art-with-kids tip! Take your kids to the Niobe Room at the Uffizi. Rather in the manner of a Daily Mail columnist taking aim at a celebrity, Niobe had the unwisdom to compare her parenting skills with those of the goddess Leto. And, as anyone who has seen Clash of the Titans will know, comparing oneself to a goddess is NOT.A.GOOD.IDEA. Leto’s daughter, Artemis, killed all her children — horribly. (Jenifer Aniston! Take note!)

What might, in its lifetime, have been a wonderful composite sculpture has now been broken into its component parts, all disporting themselves in inadvertently hilarious attitudes like something out of a Japanese Noh play.

Zac throws a few shapes, Niobe-style, which sends me off into fits of hysteria that make me worry we’re both going to be thrown out.

That’s the problem with the Uffizi, frankly. It sends even theoretically grown adults (moi) into full-on school trip mode. By the time we hit room 44 (or possibly room 101 – the Uffizi is, seriously, enormous), I’m on the verge of heading behind the bike sheds for a sneaky fag. The cafe, though, has a balcony. Praise the lord.

We meet initially for lunch, both get lost en route to a not terribly challenging location and have to phone each other about 17 times, then only have to fence very briefly before ordering a mezzo of vino rosso, then fucking that for a game of soldiers and ordering un litro, per favore.

One of the things I like about blogging, btw, as I mentioned a propos of Amsterdam, is the opportunity to meet interesting people, such as Laurel, who’s based between Florence and Florida, and does photography and tours and, ya know, stuff, when she’s not writing her book about the Costa Concordia disaster.

I like Laurel immediately, not least because we meet initially for lunch, both get lost en route to a not terribly challenging location and have to phone each other about 17 times, then only have to fence very briefly before ordering a mezzo of vino rosso, then fucking that for a game of soldiers and ordering un litro, per favore. Also, she has spawn Zac’s age, and, since her spawn lives with Aspergers, speaks tween nerd as fluently as a native.

“Zac and I were,” I say, in medias vino, “Talking about the street signs. What IS it with the street signs here?” (The term “talking about”, in this context, since Zac is about to embark on his teen years, means “bickering, viciously, with a mutual refusal to back down”.)

It’s very hard to pass through downtown Florence without seeing a lovingly customised street sign: a little man labouring under the weight of a no-entry sign, perhaps, or a man doing the roadworks encumbered by a ball and chain.

“Oh,” Laurel says. “That’s Clet! His studio’s round the corner. We can go and see him, if you want.”

“I TOLD YOU!” I say to Zac, recapping a monologue full of undigested and only-very-vaguely-remembered 70s and 80s critical theory (seriously, those weren’t just bad decades for fashion). “It’s transgression! It’s ALL ABOUT TRANSGRESSION!”

And so off we toddle, pleasantly buzzed, into Oltr’Arno, which is not only great for cheap accom and sunsets, but also a place where locally successful artists hang out. Clet is, Google will later inform me, rather more than locally successful, but, hey, whadda-I-know, right?

Western Europe’s answer to Banksy is hard at work plotting out a new addition to a street sign, using tracing paper on what looks suspiciously like a stolen street sign (though at least he hasn’t turned said street sign into a table, Bedouin style).

In Clet‘s studio, Western Europe’s answer to Banksy is hard at work plotting out a new addition to a street sign, using tracing paper on what looks suspiciously like a stolen street sign (though at least he hasn’t turned said street sign into a table, Bedouin style).

There are little street-sign stickers: hilariously transgressive violations of the routine instructions that barrage you every day. I especially like the man sawing through the no-entry sign, but that’s probably because I’m shallow.

There is, further, a large, rotating artwork featuring a copulating couple who fall into new and impressive positions with every degree of rotation, an art form that reminds me oddly of that sub-genre of Victorian pornography where you poked your fingers through the holes in the pop-up books.

I look at Zac. Zac looks at me. Neither of us are going there, so the pair of us look at Clet, unassuming and, ladies, frankly kinda hawt, below his glasses. “Can I buy a street sign sticker for my dad?” asks Zac.

He gives him one for free. And poses for a photo, in which it’s difficult to tell who looks the more awkward, the great man or the boy. Probably fortunately, my 80s critical theory deserts me.

In fact, as so often when confronted with interesting/famous/talented people and unprepared with interview questions, I can’t think of much to say at all. Hey-ho.

It’s a meditation on time. In 2000 years, it will all be gone, and only the mercury will remain from the failed attempt to turn base metal into gold. “Oh!” says Zac. “It’s an alchemiser!”

Next up? An alchemist-cum-pharmacist-cum-art-jeweller, Alessandro Dari, who’s at work in his studio with one of his triplet sons, doing something complicated to a gold baby’s head. The jewellery is impressive. Sculptural.

Yet it’s less this that takes my eye, and Zac’s, than the cabinets with incredible machines. “What’s this?” he says, peering into what looks like a Rube Goldberg contraption, yet one that’s gradually rusting away, as it rotates, with liquid mercury dropping steadily through the centre.

Laurel’s partner, Tomasso, translates. It’s a meditation on time. In 2000 years, it will all be gone, and only the mercury will remain from the failed attempt to turn base metal into gold.

“Oh!” says Zac. “It’s an alchemiser!”

And, as Tomasso drops us at the station en route for Rome, we feel that Florence has been a great success.

Well, apart from the bit with the buses when we got there, where I almost punched a wall. And then the bit where we got a taxi and they lost our reservation. And then the thing with the slugs.

But I’m behind on my life. Critically behind on my life. And, unsurprisingly perhaps, it’s the highlights that remain and the whines that disappear. There are, gentle reader, advantages to hindsight.