"The Stones of Florence"

[fiefoe]

This is the first book "Mad Men" led me to. I didn't expect it to be so like a guidebook, but of course that's not Mary McCarthy's fault.

• Florence .. makes no concession to the pleasure principle. It stands four-square and direct, with no air of mystery, no blandishments, no furbelows - almost no Gothic lace or baroque swirls.
• The Florentine palaces, on the contrary (to Venice), hide their private life like misers, which in fact the Florentines are reputed to be.
• (On the Via Romana) a donkey cart from the country delivering sacks of laundry that has been washed with ashes, in the old-fashioned way... It is as though the whole history of Western locomotion were being recapitulated on a single street; an airplane hums above; missing only is the Roman litter.
• There is a story in Turgenev of a retired major who used to practice doctoring on the peasants. 'Has he studies medicine?' someone asks. 'No, he hasn't studies' is the answer. 'He does it more from philanthropy.'
• ... decay being but as aspect of time's grandeur. If St Peter's were permitted to fall to pieces, it would still inspire awe.. while the dilapidation of Venetian palaces, reflected in lapping waters, is part of the Venetian myth.
• Until the middle of the 18th century, the Florentines dated the beginning of the year ab incarnazione, that is, from the conception or incarnation of Christ.. on the 25th of March. This is the Day of the Annuciation.
• The statuary of Florence is its genius or attendant spirit, compelling awe ...because... it is part of the very fabric of the city.
• At one point, Florence, acting though the bishops of Tuscany, turned around and excommunicated the pope.
• 'The small state,' says Jocob Burckhardt, 'exists so that there may be a spot on earth where the largest possible proportion of the inhabitants are citizens in the fullest sense of the world.'. he might also have been describing the Florentine Republic;
• A mystery attaching to the full, swelling, looping curve of the three arches - the slender (Santa Trinita) bridge's most exquisite feature...The original of the curve was found, where no one had thought of looking for it, in the Medici Tombs, on the sarcophagi that support the figures of Night and Day, Twilight and Dawn.