I'm Falling in Love with Il Magnifico

Florence is the center of the world. Perhaps, geographically, this pronouncement is a little suspect, but art historically, at least in the Western tradition, it is the Gospel truth. It's been about a month since I was there, and I've been galivanting around Ireland with my family since (more on that later), but the experience was a pilgrimage not soon to be forgotten.

I made it to Florence from Rome in the middle of the day on Saturday, after a morning of frantically cleaning the apartment with Kelcie after our slovenly roommates left, leaving a fridge full of rotting food and full garbage cans in their wake. So, good riddance to them... I'm never going to see them again, so I don't feel bad for saying that the experience of living with them was one I am glad is over. But that's beside the point. I got to Florence, found my hostel after a little walking up and down the same street over and over before finally noticing the sign, and set out to explore the city in the late afternoon.

Ever had one of those moments where you know, categorically, that you've never been somewhere, and yet you know exactly where you're going? I guess, in this case, it's not a spooky reincarnation thing so much as a "I've basically studied this city exclusively for the last three years of my life... lots of maps involved in that" thing. But it was still a little unnerving to have the layout of a place so firmly lodged in my brain, while the on-the-ground scene was totally new.

Walking around, I was shocked by how close together everything is. Yes, that's what you hear about Florence all the time, but they also say that Rome is a very walkable city, which it is, but my hostel was literally a street away from San Lorenzo, which is a street away from the Duomo, which is only about 5 minutes from the Palazzo Vecchio, which in turn is only a hop, skip and a jump away from the Ponte Vecchio and the River Arno. You could hold your breath and walk from one famous, world-alteringly influential building/sculpture/site to another one and not even get woozy. I tried. Involuntarily, of course, because when I am confronted with things like that... which is basically the whole city of Florence, I tend to stop breathing.

I could go on rapturously about how much I loved Florence and how cool it was to see everything I've been looking at continuously for three years, but I won't. It was a lot more matter-of-fact than that. It wasn't like the first couple days in Rome, when I was wandering around, lost as the writing staff of Lost, and things like the Pantheon would just pop out at me from nowhere. The element of surprise was missing in Florence, because I know how everything in that city fits together, and where all of it is in relation to the surrounding areas.

And that was very exciting in its own right, actually. Because who doesn't like to realize that they actually do, when they're education is put into practice, know something? Sure, my education often seems sort of limited to the confines of once city, but I'm secure in that, too. Because the one city my education has equipped me very well to know things about and be able to share that knowledge is not Cut Bank, Montana. Nothing wrong with Cut Bank, you understand, but if I only knew stuff about Cut Bank, I would know decidedly less.

Florence is the cradle of the modern Western artistic aesthetic. It's the reason why a lot of Western people look at a very skillfully rendered Chinese silk-screen and not be as impressed as they are by Leonardo's Last Supper, because of the lack of Brunelleschian perspective. Sure, you can make the argument that it was the Greeks during the Golden Age of Athens who really developed the perception of conventional beauty that is still widely acknowledged, but it was the citizens of Florence (the Ninja Turtles in particular) who solidified the representational, perspectival ideal into a subconcious way of seeing that influences the way we judge all art, right up until today. They messed with our collective mind so effectively that we don't even realize, when looking at art, that we're being messed with.

And when you're walking around Florence, contemplating how this tiny little city changed the entire world, and probably gave rise to your discipline of study, you can't help but ask who is responsible. I am prone to put the blame to the Arno, since basically all of the influential players in the Renaissance (politically, literarily and artistically) came from Florence. There has to be something in the water. Galileo, Machiavelli, Dante, Donatello, Giotto, Brunneleschi, Michelangelo, Alberti, Leonardo... all of these guys were hanging out in Florence.

But if you look deeper... or maybe just more pragmatically, it's pretty clear that the Arno isn't to blame here. It's pretty, yeah. But not sentient, as far as I'm aware. There was just a very welcoming environment for innovation in Florence that allowed all these men, over the course of some years, to become what we remember them as: geniuses who changed the way we see the world. There was a particular burst of creativity and innovation at one point toward the end of the 15th century, and the blame for what we now know as the Renaissance can fall squarely on the shoulders of one man: Lorenzo "Il Magnifico" of the Medici.

With a nickname like "The Magnificent", you know this guy had to be good. He patronized Leonardo and his family fostered Michelangelo from childhood. He promoted humanism and scientific inquiry during a time when a lot of people were still rubbing bird poop into their skin to get rid of acne. He believed in the power of the human mind and free thought. He decided that it was good to be feared, great to be loved, and pretty awesome to be both. He's "The Prince".

The Florentines, up to this day, really enjoy Il Magnifico, but discreetly. He is, after all, the one who made them FLORENCE and basically invented their tourist industry. There are statues of him in a few select, highly prestigious places, but for the most part, he's part of the ether. The fact that Florentine is the language that was adopted as official upon the unification of Italy, the fact that they own more than 50% of the world's recognized artworks, and the fact that people like me will pay lots of moola to go to the Uffizi and bask in the glory of Bottecelli, del Sarto, Leonardo et al. make him the reason that Florence achieved the vaunted status it has.

So the next time you're giggling at a Dress-Me-Up-David magnet or staring at the stars with the surety that they are, in fact, stars and not fireflies stuck up in that big bluish-black thing or describing some exacting professor as being Machiavellian... thank Lorenzo. He's the man.