Dark Water_ Flood And Redemption In The City Of Masterpieces Part 3

He mourned that loss later-the impossibility of visiting that particular past-but he did the things people always did in Florence, that they still do, imagining themselves in the footsteps of Claire Clairmont, Ruskin, Elizabeth Browning, Henry James, or perhaps, today, Bernard Berenson: he took a room on the Piazza Santo Spirito, sat in the caffe caffe, and watched the fountain spill and flood; walked to the Piazza del Carmine and the Brancacci Chapel and its Masaccios; bore down the Via San Agostino in the opposite direction to the Boboli Gardens and the Pitti Palace; then across the Ponte Santa Trinita and to the churches of Santa Maria Novella, San Lorenzo, Santissima Annuziata, and, not least, Santa Croce; and then, day after day, hour after hour, the Uffizi.

He was more than busy, he was inundated, swamped and overwhelmed by artworks and history, by the originals of the objects he had only heard about at Harvard. He felt he had no time to write his underwriters, who supposed he still planned to become a literary critic or novelist, but now there was nothing that interested him but art. Mrs. Gardner let her irritation be known-she wanted intelligence, information, news from abroad-and with that she cut off their correspondence. But within a few years she came back to him and, being Mrs. Jack, she would want much more.

Ruskin had pressed himself to the limit trying to "see things-as they Are." He was a visionary, but Berenson had an "eye": he didn't see what Ruskin might see, but he looked with rare, dispa.s.sionate acuity. Where Ruskin couldn't recollect whether Cimabue's dove wings tended up or down, Berenson could soon claim to differentiate the merest stroke of one Florentine studio from another. He loved art, but perhaps not "what she mirrors better." Just a painting, preferably a masterpiece, would do nicely.

Other people had an eye too. They scrutinized rather than contemplated. For example, the story of the Borgo Allegri and Cimabue's Rucellai Madonna Madonna had always seemed suspect: Charles of Anjou came through Florence in 1267, when Cimabue was an unknown whose work would scarcely occasion a royal procession. Then in 1889, the year that Berenson arrived in Florence, Franz Wickhoff, an Austrian archeologist and historian, suggested that the had always seemed suspect: Charles of Anjou came through Florence in 1267, when Cimabue was an unknown whose work would scarcely occasion a royal procession. Then in 1889, the year that Berenson arrived in Florence, Franz Wickhoff, an Austrian archeologist and historian, suggested that the Madonna Madonna wasn't even by Cimabue. He'd found an archival doc.u.ment of 1285 showing that a painter from Siena named Duccio di Buoninsegna had been commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella that could only be the Rucellai wasn't even by Cimabue. He'd found an archival doc.u.ment of 1285 showing that a painter from Siena named Duccio di Buoninsegna had been commissioned to paint an altarpiece for Santa Maria Novella that could only be the Rucellai Madonna. Madonna. Cimabue's masterpiece was, it seemed, no longer a Cimabue. Within a dozen years another art historian, R. Langton Douglas, concluded that, given extensive and dubious restorations, the poor state of the paintings, and the absence of doc.u.mentation, there were no works at all that could be attributed to Cimabue: "to scientific criticism Cimabue as an artist is an unknown person." He might be no more than a Florentine legend. Cimabue's masterpiece was, it seemed, no longer a Cimabue. Within a dozen years another art historian, R. Langton Douglas, concluded that, given extensive and dubious restorations, the poor state of the paintings, and the absence of doc.u.mentation, there were no works at all that could be attributed to Cimabue: "to scientific criticism Cimabue as an artist is an unknown person." He might be no more than a Florentine legend.

Bernard Berenson decided he must stay in Italy at any cost. Without quite intending to, he'd run away from Harvard and America and found himself in the Shangrila of art. Of course there would be no more support from Boston and Cambridge, so he went to London and more or less conquered it. His charm and brilliance brought him into contact with Bernard Shaw, Oscar Wilde, and, most intimately, with Frank and Mary Costelloe, a young couple nearly as witty and art-obsessed as Berenson. They traveled through Europe together (largely at Frank Costelloe's expense) and let one masterpiece after another wash over them, and at some point Bernard and Mary fell in love. Being together would involve enormous pain, difficulty, and sacrifice, and the stakes were high: "I want you to realize that beauty is scarcely less than duty," Bernard wrote Mary from Florence. "You do naturally, I am sure, otherwise I should scarcely have become your friend." They would be lovers, perhaps even marry, but, most important, they would devote themselves to art. The Uffizi would be their "workshop," the Pitti their "parlor." Mary and Frank Costelloe's children would remain with their father.

While Mary negotiated her separation and divorce in England, Bernard pursued his latest quarry, the work of Giovanni Bazzi (known as Sodoma), to the monastery of Monte Oliveto Maggiore near Siena. He took a room in the cloister and listened to the monks chant and pray as he read his Vasari. Four days pa.s.sed and it came to him that he ought to become a Catholic: Mary had converted in order to marry Frank; he would convert in order to wed-or at least be closer to-Mary. A few months later, in February 1891, he made his first confession and was received into the Roman church.

Mary secured her separation from Frank the following year and joined Bernard in Florence, albeit in separate households to avoid further scandal. Still, there remained the question of how they would support themselves. Berenson had finished his first book, The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance The Venetian Painters of the Renaissance, but writing art history was scarcely lucrative. Then, in the spring of 1893, he was asked, almost by chance, to give some advice to a group of wealthy Americans looking for art to buy. "I made a lot of money out of them," he wrote, and "they are likely to prove a pretty constant source of income." The following year Isabella Stewart Gardner reentered Bernard's life. Seeking to mend fences, he'd sent a copy of his Venetian book to her together with an apologetic, not to say fawning, letter. She replied and, after scolding him for his long absence, expressed an interest in acquiring a few paintings.

Unlike his first trip to Florence, this time Bernard now wrote back frequently and at length. But he got to the point quickly enough: "How much do you want a Botticelli? Lord Ashburnham has a great one." It seemed that Mrs. Jack would like one very much, and so began Bernard's thirty years of service to her as adviser and broker. She insisted on acquiring "only the greatest in the world" and he obliged. He had a knack for making her feel an insider of the highest order for whom he would sweep aside the mystic curtain of lost masterpieces and reveal finds and opportunities that only she was privy to and worthy of: "And now I want to propose to you one of the most precious works of art. It is a madonna by Giovanni Bellini, painted in his youth after his wife, as I have every reason to believe." And after a sale was made he never forgot to congratulate her on her wisdom and good fortune: "Brava! a hundred times brava! I cannot tell you how happy it made me to think of your possessing the most glorious of all Guardis."

Mrs. Jack and, increasingly, her other millionaire friends enabled Bernard and Mary to live on in Florence, to begin building their own collection of masterworks, and to research and write. In 1896, Bernard published his own magnum opus, The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance. It was a capaciously authoritative work and an immediate cla.s.sic whose success made him an even more sought-after adviser and broker. It also took his scholars.h.i.+p beyond history and connoisseurs.h.i.+p into the realm of theory. Art does not transcend reality, but distills it to its visual essence, "giving tactile values to retinal impressions," and it is this to which the viewer responds in a masterpiece: "It lends a higher coefficient of reality to the object represented, with the consequent enjoyment of accelerated psychical processes . . . hence the greater pleasure we take in the object painted than in itself." It was a capaciously authoritative work and an immediate cla.s.sic whose success made him an even more sought-after adviser and broker. It also took his scholars.h.i.+p beyond history and connoisseurs.h.i.+p into the realm of theory. Art does not transcend reality, but distills it to its visual essence, "giving tactile values to retinal impressions," and it is this to which the viewer responds in a masterpiece: "It lends a higher coefficient of reality to the object represented, with the consequent enjoyment of accelerated psychical processes . . . hence the greater pleasure we take in the object painted than in itself."

To ill.u.s.trate his point, Berenson compared two Florentine paintings of roughly the same age and subject, an enthroned Madonna, or Maesta. Maesta. The first The first Maesta Maesta was by Cimabue, the second by his pupil Giotto. "With what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality we turn to the Giotto," Berenson opined, his disdain evident in writing Cimabue as "Cimabue," shrouded in quotation marks, as though the artist's existence were as dubious as his talent. was by Cimabue, the second by his pupil Giotto. "With what sense of relief, of rapidly rising vitality we turn to the Giotto," Berenson opined, his disdain evident in writing Cimabue as "Cimabue," shrouded in quotation marks, as though the artist's existence were as dubious as his talent.

At the very end of December 1900, Bernard Berenson and Mary Costelloe at last became man and wife. With marriage came a home, and not just a house but a villa worthy of masterpieces. The sixteenth-century I Tatti, on seventy acres outside Florence in Settignano, was vast and beautiful. The grounds spilled down the hill in the direction of the river and the light was like water and oil: Samuel Clemens, who met the Berensons at lunch, marveled "to see the sun sink down on his pink and purple and golden floods, and overwhelm Florence with tides of color that make all the sharp lines dim and faint and turn the solid city to a city of dreams." Its rooms called out for beautiful artworks and decoration, which would require even more money than the considerable sums Bernard was now generating.

I Tatti also had its own chapel and it was there that Mary and Bernard were married-though both were now lapsed from Catholicism-by a priest. Their patience with Catholic morality had been exhausted during the almost decadelong scandal of their love affair and the Costelloe divorce. And once married Bernard's view of his vows would be rather more elastic than the Church's. He would collect s.e.xual liaisons much as he did miniatures and objets. In that, he was culpable, but he came by his avarice innocently, for good and exalted reasons, because "beauty is scarcely less than duty."

4.

As the Berensons were settling at I Tatti, Edward Morgan Forster was finis.h.i.+ng his last year at Cambridge. He was a diffident boy, a little oppressed by his mother Lily. What he would do with himself next was unclear, so in the mode of other such young men, he traveled, joined, of course, by Lily. They would go to Italy and they would go, naturally, to Florence. They spent their first three days in a hotel midway between the San Lorenzo market and Santa Maria Novella, but, as Edward wrote a friend, "my mother hankers after an Arno view," so on the fourth day they transferred to the Pensione Simi on Lungarno delle Grazie, with the river before it and Santa Croce and the Biblioteca n.a.z.ionale just behind.

Lily was pleased by her view, but as far as Edward was concerned they might as well have been "in Tunbridge Wells" as in Florence. The landlady was English with a c.o.c.kney accent and the other guests were English ladies all of a piece with his mother, clutching identical editions of the Baedecker guide. At dinner they recounted their identical days spent trawling the Uffizi, the Academy, the Pitti, and the rest. Edward's own days were filled with magnificence punctuated by squalor: "Yesterday I went to San Lorenzo. I had got ready all the appropriate sentiments for [Michelangelo's] New Sacristy and they answered very well. More spontaneous perhaps were my feelings at seeing the cloisterful of starved and maimed cats."

Florence, he supposed, was not exactly a disappointment: it did not fail him; rather, he failed it. He could not quite summon up a feeling commensurate with the city's beauty and greatness, his own responses numbed and m.u.f.fled as though by a thick and clumsy pair of gloves: by the acc.u.mulation of previous responses of renowned writers, critics, and culture heroes; by the guidebooks and their checklists; by the mob of women like his mother. Later, he would write up the experience in a novel from the point of view of a girl named Lucy Honeychurch on a visit to Santa Croce:

Of course, it must be a wonderful building. But how like a barn! And how very cold! Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper. But who was to tell her which they were? She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authors.h.i.+p or date. There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transepts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.

Edward and Lily were in Florence five weeks and at some point he did find a refuge from the legion of English ladies. The art historian R. H. Cust held a salon each Sunday-exclusively male-for young art historians. Cust was an expert on the art of Siena and a friend of Berenson's, having recently served as his stalking horse in a feud with Langton Douglas (the erstwhile debunker of "Cimabue") in an exchange of vituperative reviews and articles in The Burlington The Burlington magazine. Cust appeared in the character of Mr. Rankin in an early draft of Edward's Lucy Honeychurch novel: magazine. Cust appeared in the character of Mr. Rankin in an early draft of Edward's Lucy Honeychurch novel:

"It is inconceivable," concluded Mr. Rankin, "how Ales...o...b..ldovinetti can have been so long neglected. This alone"-he pointed to the Botticelli-Rafellino-Baldovinetti-Lippi-Goudstinker Madonna, which hung behind them on the wall-"would be sufficient to make his reputation enduring."

Like Lucy in Santa Croce, Cust and his young men were less interested in art and paintings than in reputations and attributions. And well they might be: at around the time Edward was in Florence, Berenson was in London concluding an arrangement with Joseph Duveen whereby he would receive an annual retainer of $50,000 plus a percentage of each sale he facilitated. One could, it seemed, reap a considerable income while simultaneously enjoying "accelerated psychical processes."

But after a few afternoons at Cust's, Edward came to feel that the art historians were but a more polished version of the English ladies; that their smart talk and handsome profiles were only another aspect of connoisseurs.h.i.+p and collecting for Cust, who "delighted to fill his rooms with viewy young men and hear them talk on art." The men were "viewy," forever appraising and being appraised. His mother wanted a view of the Arno in order not so much to see Florence as to possess a postcard of it. The whole pathetic, frustrating, and comic business would become a novel called A Room with a View A Room with a View six years later, in 1907. And it would be misunderstood: perhaps people confused the t.i.tle with a work of his friend Virginia Woolf, six years later, in 1907. And it would be misunderstood: perhaps people confused the t.i.tle with a work of his friend Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own A Room of One's Own, but the phrase came to represent not folly but a further piece of the legend of the epiphanies you might experience in Florence. And how could it be helped? Even Lucy was not so benumbed by her Baedecker and her provincialism to escape seeing it:

Evening approached while they chatted; the air became brighter; the colours on the trees and hills were purified, and the Arno lost its muddy solidity and began to twinkle. There were a few streaks of bluish-green among the clouds, a few patches of watery light upon the earth, and then the dripping facade of San Miniato shone brilliantly in the declining sun.

On November 4, 1903, more or less simultaneously with Forster and his heroine Lucy Honeychurch, a young Englishwoman named Dorothy Nevile Lees arrived by train in Florence:

It looked little like what my imagination had pictured, and yet the dull, badly-lit station, tumultuous with shouting porters and aggrieved tourists bewailing lost luggage, was indeed Florence, Florence the beautiful, the birthplace of Dante, the City of Flowers, the goal of a thousand precious hopes.

Dorothy was twenty-three years old, the daughter of a once-wealthy Staffords.h.i.+re family now reduced to fending for herself. She was an Italophile on principle and a devotee of Sh.e.l.ley, Byron, and the Brownings in particular, and if she was forced to eke out a living why should she not indeed do it where they-the poets and the artists-had done it?

She took a room in a cold, damp, and dark palazzo and s.h.i.+vered through the long winter studying Italian. The following spring Dorothy found work as a governess to a wealthy Italian family with a palazzo on the Arno and a villa in the hills, tutoring three children in English and French and taking them on cultural walks in the city and strolls through the country. It was an agreeable position with time to spare for reading, writing poems, and cultivating vistas and views. She might, for example, rise at dawn and render what she saw into poetical language:

Towards four o'clock the thunder died away in the distance and, as I looked out from my window, the grey light was stealing, and torn ma.s.ses of white cloud lay among the hills. The river was in flood, and the swirling torrents of brown water rushed down under the bridges, roaring like some tameless and infuriated beast. The mountains were purple, almost black, and the jagged clouds hung low above them, but in the midst, serene and unshaken, rose the great tower of the Palazzo Vecchio . . .

As she acc.u.mulated such impressions, she ceased to feel herself a tourist. But, unlike many artist/expatriates, neither did she become a sn.o.b in the mode of A Room with a View A Room with a View's pretentious belletrist Miss Lavish, who proclaimed that "the narrowness and superficiality of the Anglo-Saxon tourist is nothing less than a menace." Dorothy's curiosity, energy, and independence of mind were inexhaustible. She wondered what it was that drove people to Florence, and especially, "what it is which brings the Americans, above other nations, in such numbers, to the Holy Land of Art?"

Sometimes, like other expatriates, Dorothy felt that the natives were not quite equal to their heritage. She jettisoned Sh.e.l.ley and Byron in favor of St. Francis as her patron and muse-"he who was the poet, not of the love of the women but of the love of G.o.d"-but lamented the "dirty and commonplace" monks she found in contemporary Franciscan monasteries. Instead, like Francis, she immersed herself in "the green cathedral" of the Casentine Forests, "the altar of the hills, the dwelling place of G.o.d," among Dante's "green angels."

In the city, Dorothy haunted the churches, not from any religious impulse-she had an English aversion to the "errors" and superst.i.tion of the Roman church-but in search of art. A year and a half after her arrival in Florence, she spent an evening in Santa Maria Novella contemplating the Rucellai Madonna. Madonna. She knew there was a controversy regarding its attribution, but she favored Cimabue and his studio in the Borgo Allegri: "For my part, I love the story of the Merry Suburb, the jubilant city, the triumphant painter, the glad procession . . ." She knew there was a controversy regarding its attribution, but she favored Cimabue and his studio in the Borgo Allegri: "For my part, I love the story of the Merry Suburb, the jubilant city, the triumphant painter, the glad procession . . ."

And although at one time she might have marked it a distraction, she liked to watch people pray before the Madonna, lighting their votives and leaving their gifts, and Dorothy imagined that the Madonna, too, liked it: "Ah, Madonna, how much happier are you, with your candles and flowers in your dim chapel, than your many sisters, torn from their seclusion and set in rows in the great bright galleries, where only the critical eyes of strangers rest upon them, and no one burns candles in their honor . . ."

That evening in May at Santa Maria Novella, she watched a young woman, bareheaded and dark-eyed, pray before the Madonna. Dorothy knew that "young girls came to pray for their lovers" but grief and trouble hung over this woman, the double solitude of a pregnant girl on her own. After some time "she rose at last, laid a bunch of violets below the picture, and, leaning forward, kissed the frame." It seemed just then that Florence was infused-as much as by art and beauty-by prayer "articulate or inarticulate, and everywhere goes up, night and day, conscious or unconscious, the cry of the finite to the Infinite . . ." Or perhaps this was the art the Italians still excelled at, the seizing of expectation or at least hope, of the possibility of something rather than nothing as a form of beauty.

For that little time Dorothy, although not precisely a believer, became preoccupied with prayer, the least lucrative of occupations. She may have put her hand to it as she did to poetry. But then, like prayer, she wrote books no one seemed likely to read.

She sent off two rather similar ma.n.u.scripts of her impressions of Italy to London, one called Scenes and Shrines in Tuscany Scenes and Shrines in Tuscany and the other and the other Tuscan Feasts and Friends. Tuscan Feasts and Friends. That autumn Dorothy went to work with another expatriate woman and set up the "Literary and Foreign Office," which offered translation services as well as typing for the last survivors of Henry James's old literary set in Bellosguardo. She also freelanced for the expatriate newspapers That autumn Dorothy went to work with another expatriate woman and set up the "Literary and Foreign Office," which offered translation services as well as typing for the last survivors of Henry James's old literary set in Bellosguardo. She also freelanced for the expatriate newspapers The Italian Gazette The Italian Gazette and and The Florence Herald. The Florence Herald. Then, much to her surprise, she heard from London: both books had sold. Both would be published the following year. Then, much to her surprise, she heard from London: both books had sold. Both would be published the following year.

With two books appearing in 1907-issued by major firms, Dent and Chatto & Windus-Dorothy suddenly found herself a professional writer. True, she'd managed to sneak only one of her poems into the books; and true, a reviewer had compared her prose style to that of Miss Lavish in A Room with a View A Room with a View, which had also been published earlier that year. But against that, in the new year she received an offer for a two-book contract from yet another prestigious publisher, Methuen. And she met and fell in love with Edward Gordon Craig.

Craig was entirely a creature of the theater, of acting, directing, and stage design, the last being the metier of his indubitable genius. His mother was Ellen Terry, the greatest English actress of the late Victorian age. He had just ended an affair with Isadora Duncan in Paris and was now collaborating with Eleonora Duse (herself the biggest star in Italy and the lover of the flamboyant writer and dramatist Gabriele d'Annunzio) for a production in Florence. He liked women: over his lifetime he would father ten children by five different mothers.

Craig was no mere craftsman: he was not only an artist but a philosopher, a theoretician, and a prophet. His aim was to set aside all the previous "Laws of Art . . . , to transform and make the already beautiful more beautiful." To that end, he would found a journal called The Mask. The Mask. Dorothy would be his largely anonymous collaborator-he was the genius-but Craig made a wood-block image of her as a rough-hewn Etruscan deity to adorn the cover. Dorothy would be his largely anonymous collaborator-he was the genius-but Craig made a wood-block image of her as a rough-hewn Etruscan deity to adorn the cover.

The first issue of The Mask The Mask appeared in 1908, filled mostly with articles penned by Dorothy and Craig under an a.s.sortment of a.s.sumed names. Over the twenty years of its life appeared in 1908, filled mostly with articles penned by Dorothy and Craig under an a.s.sortment of a.s.sumed names. Over the twenty years of its life The Mask The Mask would be much admired if not often purchased or subscribed to. Dorothy sold her jewelry to keep it afloat. As for her own work and royalties, she'd declined Methuen's offer lest it interfere with Craig and their mission to transform beauty into still greater beauty. would be much admired if not often purchased or subscribed to. Dorothy sold her jewelry to keep it afloat. As for her own work and royalties, she'd declined Methuen's offer lest it interfere with Craig and their mission to transform beauty into still greater beauty.

They did not marry nor did they live together: as with Bernard Berenson and Mary Costelloe a few years earlier, that would have been a scandal neither expatriate bohemianism nor Italian tolerance could allow for. Instead, Dorothy took a room of her own-without heat or water and lit by candles-in a tower by Ponte Vecchio. There was a single chamber, a window and shutters, books and bookcases, a writing table with a vase of lilies upon it, and an Annunciation Annunciation on the wall. It would be her home for the next thirty-five years. on the wall. It would be her home for the next thirty-five years.

Dorothy and Craig met at the office of The Mask The Mask and, otherwise, where and when they could-hotels and borrowed apartments and villas-usually away from Florence. In her diary she referred to Craig as "Signor," and recorded their encounters-"magical," "exquisite," "precious"-in shorthand. Nine years into their collaboration, early in 1917, Craig proposed a rendezvous in Rome, specifying not only food but dress: and, otherwise, where and when they could-hotels and borrowed apartments and villas-usually away from Florence. In her diary she referred to Craig as "Signor," and recorded their encounters-"magical," "exquisite," "precious"-in shorthand. Nine years into their collaboration, early in 1917, Craig proposed a rendezvous in Rome, specifying not only food but dress:

Dine first-dine well and have a good bottle of vino for the sake of me-capito?You know I like things loose . . . Veiled is best.

That September, Dorothy's son, David, was born. Several weeks before her due date she quietly left Florence and settled into a hotel room Craig had found for her in Pisa. On the page for the date of his birth in her diary she copied a line from Dante: Incipit Vita Nuova, Incipit Vita Nuova, "Here begins a new life." "Here begins a new life."

There being no father of record, David was given his mother's last name and he also became, by default, an Italian citizen. There would be no ties to England: Dorothy's family, shamed, cut her off and disowned her. Craig had meanwhile left Florence for France-for other veiled women, other transformations of the beautiful-and the mother and the boy lived together in the tower. She reported on Italian affairs for the better cla.s.s of English and American newspapers and periodicals and resumed work on her own books, finished, t.i.tled, but ultimately unpublished: Life Goes On Life Goes On, Living in a Tower Living in a Tower, and A Small Boy in Tuscany A Small Boy in Tuscany, the last a heroically fictionalized tale of her own David. In fact, they were both very brave. They lived alone in a foreign country on very little and at a very great alt.i.tude. David was strong and of stern enough stuff to swim in the Arno.

Dorothy tried to prevent David's becoming estranged from his father. Perhaps, she wrote, "by-and-bye you may go and be with him a while. Papa is so wonderful and I love you both so much. All your life you can be proud of your father for he is one of the great artists of the world."

When David was about twelve, Dorothy gave him a camera, a caterpillarish thing with bellows, and now he too was an artist. Dorothy herself took on a life of contented forbearance: the life of a secular St. Francis, of unconscious but perhaps not unheard prayer; of the Madonna, candles, and violets.

5.

In 1926 The Last Supper The Last Supper of Giorgio Vasari was moved from its chapel at Santa Croce to the refectory. Its condition was recorded as being of Giorgio Vasari was moved from its chapel at Santa Croce to the refectory. Its condition was recorded as being molto guasto- molto guasto-"very damaged"-but that was no one's concern. The refectory was considered the backwater of Santa Croce's artworks, and there Vasari's painting joined a Crocifisso Crocifisso, reputed to be by the dubious "Cimabue," that had once, in better days, hung over the high altar itself.

But regardless of the condition or reputation of particular paintings, connoisseurs.h.i.+p flourished. At I Tatti Bernard Berenson was, as his biographer put it, "afloat on a golden flood." His yearly income exceeded $100,000 and he had an additional $300,000 in investments. He began to give some consideration to his estate, and met with an official from Harvard, who agreed that the university would be pleased to take over I Tatti at Berenson's death and operate it as an inst.i.tute for the study of art history.

But then came the Great Depression. In 1932 Berenson's dealer, Joseph Duveen, wrote to inform him that henceforth his annual retainer would be reduced to $10,000 and he would receive only a ten percent cut of sales. Under present circ.u.mstances, the millionaires they had both depended on no longer had the means or the inclination to expand their collections. Still, it was Duveen who kept Berenson afloat, who paid for I Tatti and its maids, cooks, and gardeners, its rare books, its motorcars and, of course, its paintings. And it was Berenson who provided the guarantees that made Duveen's deals possible. They were in too deep together to part.

Five years later Duveen asked him to confirm an attribution of a Nativity Nativity generally believed to be by the Venetian master Giorgione. Berenson thought the painting was an early work by Giorgione's compatriot and student t.i.tian. But Duveen had already lined up the banker Andrew Mellon to buy it at a record price of $300,000 on the understanding that it was a Giorgione. Apprised of Berenson's opinion, Mellon told Duveen, "I don't want another t.i.tian. Find me a Giorgione." generally believed to be by the Venetian master Giorgione. Berenson thought the painting was an early work by Giorgione's compatriot and student t.i.tian. But Duveen had already lined up the banker Andrew Mellon to buy it at a record price of $300,000 on the understanding that it was a Giorgione. Apprised of Berenson's opinion, Mellon told Duveen, "I don't want another t.i.tian. Find me a Giorgione."

But Berenson was unwilling to reconsider his attribution, or, rather, unwilling to do so without a return to his previous financial arrangement with Duveen. Negotiations stalled, Mellon died in the interim, and the painting was sold as a t.i.tian to Samuel Kress, the department store magnate. Duveen and Berenson never spoke again. On Kress's death the Nativity Nativity pa.s.sed to the National Gallery in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. It is today almost universally ascribed to Giorgione. pa.s.sed to the National Gallery in Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C. It is today almost universally ascribed to Giorgione.

Berenson now felt pressed from every side: the art market was stagnant and the collectors that might have bypa.s.sed Duveen and come directly to him for advice had stopped traveling due to mounting global tensions. Moreover, he was an American citizen and a Jew living in a country increasingly allied with Germany. It seemed wise to transfer the deed for I Tatti now rather than at his death and to take an annuity from Harvard in exchange. He did not entirely trust Harvard. He feared they would turn I Tatti over to the academics and theorists who did not love painting as he did. But he trusted Mussolini less: Mussolini was a philistine. He didn't care about art. He was said to like modern art, which was even worse.

By 1938, Dorothy Lees was, among her other literary endeavors, "our correspondent in Florence" for The Times The Times of London. She was not exactly a reporter, but she sent the paper short features, anecdotes, and information and tips for tourists. She was also often able to arrange for David's photographs-he'd begun entering photography compet.i.tions when he was still a high school student at Florence 's Scuola d'Arte-alongside her own work, credited simply "David-Firenze." Now twenty years old, he was serving in the Italian army but still billeted in Florence. of London. She was not exactly a reporter, but she sent the paper short features, anecdotes, and information and tips for tourists. She was also often able to arrange for David's photographs-he'd begun entering photography compet.i.tions when he was still a high school student at Florence 's Scuola d'Arte-alongside her own work, credited simply "David-Firenze." Now twenty years old, he was serving in the Italian army but still billeted in Florence.

On May 8 one of her items appeared under the headline "Brilliant Display for Herr Hitler." The German Fuhrer was coming the next day to Florence, escorted by Benito Mussolini. Banners and decorations would be erected and a state apartment in the Palazzo Pitti redecorated for his stay. But above all, Dorothy wrote, "in Florence another side of Italian life will be displayed before Herr Hitler-the domain of art and culture." David too was caught up in the Fuhrer's visit: with the permission of his superiors, he posted himself along the route of the motorcade and tried, unsuccessfully, to photograph the two great men.

Adolf Hitler was scarcely a pa.s.sive dignitary being shown the highlights of the city: he had an appet.i.te for art. At his specific request, Mussolini took him to the Uffizi. They went into Room 2, the new home of Giotto's and Cimabue's respective Ognissanti and Santa Trinita Madonnas Madonnas, recently removed from their churches so that they might be better seen by the public. Here, as in the other galleries, it was clear that what people said was true: Mussolini gave not a fig for masterpieces. Journalists accompanying them noted Hitler's scarcely disguised shock at this realization.

The Fuhrer inspected every artwork microscopically and four hours pa.s.sed inside the Uffizi. Mussolini grew bored and exasperated (Tutti questi quadri, "All these paintings," sighed Il Duce). Hitler meanwhile listened contentedly to the explications of his guide and interpreter, Friedrich Kriegbaum, the Italophile (and secretly anti-n.a.z.i) director of the German Art Historical Inst.i.tute of Florence. When Hitler stopped for a long time before a t.i.tian and expressed his admiration, Kriegbaum steered him on to another, lesser work, fearing that Mussolini, given to impulsiveness and looking to ease his boredom, might decide to offer it then and there as a gift to the Fuhrer.

Kriegbaum was also an authority on the architecture of the bridges of the Arno, and in particular on the Ponte Santa Trinita, in which he'd proven Michelangelo had a role. He took Hitler to a window overlooking the river. But Hitler was less impressed with the Ponte Santa Trinita and its magnificent statues of the four seasons than by the Ponte Vecchio. When Hitler had been an art student in Vienna before the First World War, he'd specialized in ill.u.s.trations of the most winsome and characteristic spots in the city. He hadn't lost his eye for the picturesque. He'd toured Rome with King Victor Emmanuel III at his side, but later confided that "those moments of joy pa.s.sed in front of the Arno exceeded anything in Rome." He knew a view when he saw one.

Afterward, atop a hill in Fiesole overlooking the city, the Fuhrer rhapsodized to the press corps: "The greatest wish I have would be to go incognito to Florence for ten days and, at leisure, study the unparalleled masterpieces of the Uffizi and Pitti galleries. I'd put on a false beard, dark gla.s.ses and an old suit, and comb my hair a different way. Then I'd spend that ten days in those art galleries of Florence wors.h.i.+ping as an artist at the feet of the old masters."

As. .h.i.tler prowled the galleries and the loggia overlooking the Arno, Ugo Procacci was at work in the Gabinetto dei Restauri, the Uffizi's restoration laboratory. The Gabinetto was Procacci's own creation, then Italy's first and only dedicated art conservation studio, founded four years before. He was scarcely twenty-nine then, and he might have been called a prodigy but for his evident humility. His brilliance took the form of curiosity, and that was unstoppable.

Only a year after he'd joined the Uffizi staff fresh from graduate school, he removed pieces of an altar in the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine and uncovered two spectacular fragments of early fifteenth-century fres...o...b.. Masaccio and Masolino. These works along with the rest of the Brancacci Chapel were considered the bridge between the dawn of the Renaissance and its full flower in the later 1400s and the 1500s-from Cimabue and Giotto to Botticelli, Leonardo, and beyond-and Procacci's discovery would lead to their full restoration over the next fifty years.

But Ugo Procacci was not simply an earnest young art historian but also a committed anti-Fascist. To have Mussolini plus. .h.i.tler inside the Uffizi seemed both an outrage and a sacrilege. Procacci's mentor and teacher Gaetano Salvemini had been dismissed from his university post and sent into exile for his anti-Fascist activities two years into their collaboration. Procacci subsequently served in two other anti-Mussolini groups, but by a combination of luck and a grasp of the precise level at which to keep his head down-the authorities did not in any case consider art history a breeding ground for subversives-he clung on in his laboratory and the galleries and moldering churches Il Duce so disdained.

Despite that, when Mussolini declared war on the Allies in June 1940, Florence immediately began to pack away its art for the duration of hostilities. Among his other responsibilities, Procacci was now second in command in the Superintendency-the agency with overall responsibility for Florence's museums and cultural monuments-and took charge of the evacuation of artworks to refuges in the countryside. With his customary energy, he emptied the Uffizi in ten days and then went to work securing the remainder of the city's art. What could not be moved to rural villas and caves was covered up with timber and scaffolding, cus.h.i.+oned with sandbags, or barricaded in masonry. It was an impressive effort: each of Della Robbia's tondi on the front of the Ospedale degli Innocenti sheltered in its own bombproof shed and in the Accademia Michelangelo's David David was enclosed in an enormous silo of bricks. was enclosed in an enormous silo of bricks.

That autumn Hitler returned to Florence. He was angry with Il Duce, who had just then invaded Greece against his wishes. But the Fuhrer had earlier expressed an interest in acquiring a painting by the nineteenth-century Austrian artist Hans Makart for a museum of art he was founding in his hometown of Linz. The current owners, relatives of the Rothschilds, had hung it in their villa in the Florentine hills. Mussolini had it confiscated as materiel essential to the war effort (in the possession of Jews no less). A whopping seven-foot-long triptych in the late Romantic style, it was presented to Hitler by Il Duce in the Piazza della Signoria. Its t.i.tle was Die Pest in Florenz Die Pest in Florenz, "The Plague in Florence."

To this and other travesties, indignities, and evils, Procacci could only resign himself and do what he could to keep the Gabinetto afloat: "Every day, another piece of good news," he wrote a friend archly. Despite shortages of money, supplies, chemicals, and even paint, he managed over the next two years to restore works by both Botticelli and t.i.tian.

In the autumn of 1943 Mussolini had been deposed and Tuscany and northern Italy were under direct German administration. The Allies commenced bomber missions against the occupiers, focusing on installations like the Campo di Marte railway yards not far from Procacci's home while taking special care to avoid hitting the historic city center. They were by and large successful in this, although 217 Italians died, as did one German, Friedrich Kriegbaum, of whom Berenson would later remark, "He was one of the most thoroughly humanized and cultured individuals of my acquaintance, gentle, tender, incapable of evil."

Kriegbaum was having a drink at a friend's near San Domenico, the village of Fra Angelico, when the raid began. His host fled to the cellar, but Kriegbaum remained upstairs. He'd seen much, much worse on his trips back to Germany, and he was confident the Allies would continue to be careful with Florence: Chi potrebbe distruggere una tale bellezza? Chi potrebbe distruggere una tale bellezza? he'd asked recently. "Who could destroy such beauty?" he'd asked recently. "Who could destroy such beauty?"

Eleven months later, in the summer of 1944, the Allies were closing in. Among them was a thirty-year-old American army lieutenant with a degree in art history from Columbia named Frederick Hartt, an owlishly intent young man rendered still more owlish by round spectacles. His eye landed him a posting as a reconnaissance photoa.n.a.lyst and when victory approached he was a.s.signed to the Allied Commission for Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives. Fluent in Italian and familiar with Tuscany and its art-he'd written his thesis on Michelangelo-he was charged with following just behind the troops to locate and secure artworks and other culturally important property.

Hartt had reached Siena on June 30 in a jeep called "Lucky 13," ironically so in light of its shattered winds.h.i.+eld, concussed body, leaking radiator, and lame shock absorbers. But his goal was Florence. Hitler had promised that Florence would be considered an "open city," treated as a no-combat zone on account of its beauty, history, and art. But there had been no further confirmation from Berlin that Hitler would honor his previous a.s.surances. On July 20, when the Allies were perhaps ten days away from Florence, a group of Hitler's own generals had attempted to a.s.sa.s.sinate him and the Fuhrer disappeared from public view.

Allied intelligence had in the meanwhile surmised that the Florentine museum authorities, believing Hitler's a.s.surances, had begun or were about to begin moving their artworks back into the city. But given the actual state of affairs in Germany and on the battlefront-now perhaps twenty-five miles from Florence-this would be disastrous.

On July 31 Hartt, moving forward with advance troops from the U.S. 8th Army, reached a hilltop several miles short of Florence. He could make out the city, the hills on either side lit by German and Allied artillery flashes, the Arno a dark swath between them. But his goal, although in sight, was still out of reach: it seemed unlikely the Allies could take control of Florence for at least another week. Meanwhile, there was no telling what damage might be done, particularly if the Italians naively began moving things back to the city.

For Hartt, who knew the art intimately, the worry and frustration were overwhelming. He could reconnoiter the countryside south of the city in Lucky 13, scour likely villas, castles, and farms, and perhaps locate and secure artworks in storage there, a.s.suming there still were any. But the most crucial thing he most needed to do was, for now, impossible: to get inside Florence and locate Ugo Procacci.

Hartt would have found Procacci just then neither at the Gabinetto dei Restauri nor at his home (that had been bombed) but living and working in the Palazzo Pitti, now the headquarters of the Superintendency. During the last few days he'd received several inexplicable requests from the Wehrmacht: first, on July 29, the Germans asked for a detailed map of the Arno riverfront, and then an unidentified officer called him to ask if the four statues representing the seasons on the Ponte Santa Trinita could be removed on short notice. Procacci doubted it-not without damage, in any case-and the German hung up before he could ask why this might need to be done.

Later that day, a proclamation was issued ordering all persons living or working within three blocks of either side of the Arno to evacuate their homes and businesses by noon on July 30. With no place else to go, a significant portion of the Oltrarno moved into the staterooms, halls, courtyards, and gardens of the Pitti. Procacci a.s.sumed that at a minimum, the Germans wanted civilians out of the way while they made their retreat or, worse, that they planned to use the river as their battlefront and defensive line.

Two days later, August 1, Procacci sneaked through the Corridoio Vasariano, the elevated pa.s.sageway designed by Giorgio Vasari to connect the Palazzo Pitti with the Uffizi by way of the Ponte Vecchio. From a window just short of the bridge he saw German soldiers kicking in the doors of abandoned houses and businesses, lobbing a hand grenade into each vestibule, presumably to flush out any stragglers. One of the soldiers glanced in the direction of the Corridoio and Procacci ducked down, fearing he'd been seen. When he was certain the patrol had moved on-when the sound of the grenades echoing out of the doorways began to fade-he looked out onto the deserted street again and now he noticed a series of rather elegant black, bell-shaped devices connected in succession by strands of cable fastened to the walls of every edifice standing near the Ponte Vecchio and those on the streets extending away from it.

Procacci realized these were charges of some kind, perhaps to stop an a.s.sault by the Allies by bringing the buildings bordering the riverbank down on their heads. Procacci's guess was close, but the actual German plan-code-named Feuerzauber Feuerzauber, "fire magic"-was to withdraw from Florence but make the Arno impa.s.sable to the Allies. To that end, the Wehrmacht was installing bombs on all six Florentine bridges, including the Ponte alla Carraia, Ponte Santa Trinita, and Ponte Vecchio in the historic center. But that same day, as the Allies pressed within twenty miles of Florence, a telegram arrived from Berlin. Someone-at the very highest levels-had revised Operation Feuerzauber Feuerzauber in a very particular way: in a very particular way:

By order of the Supreme Commander Southwest, no military measures are to be taken against the Ponte Vecchio, not even antipersonnel mines and the like. Measures already taken are to be immediately canceled. Confirm that this order has been executed.