Polishing the piglet's snout

# 56

   This last week, The Bus Lane has extended to Firenze and back. To be honest, we cheated; the Bus Lane ran only between Pisa Airport and the train station in Florence. We would have flown to Florence if we could but, from London, it is served only by BA and two comical airlines, neither of which showed any interest in selling us tickets.

 

“Terravision” – are they sure that’s such a good name these days?

   Airborne from Gatwick, courtesy of Easyjet, I have two immediate but unrelated thoughts as the grey-green acres of Sussex slide under the clouds. The first is that no matter how much Easyjet may drive you mad (with their interminable faffing about) at least they’re not Ryan Air and therefore not dead-set on punishing you financially for any and every transgression. Secondly, thinking ahead to Italy, I am trying to recall the description of the origins of the Renaissance offered by Orson Welles’ (as Harry Lime) in The Third Man[1].  Lime had just been riding on a ferris wheel in Vienna, looking down on the people of the city and dismissing their existence as mere dots. Speaking to the ‘good guy’ (Martins), Lime says:

“In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed – they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!”

   Great line, but, historically, almost totally inaccurate. In fact, by the end of the 15^th Century the Swiss Confederacy was a formidable and highly successful military power, capable of taking on and defeating the Hapsburgs. Thereafter, Switzerland defended its independence and supplied countless mercenaries whose fighting abilities remained a significant factor throughout all the Italian wars of the 16^th Century. Oh, and the cuckoo clock? That is said to have originated in Germany, in the Black Forest, and not in Switzerland at all.

   In respect of Florence, substitute Famiglia de’Medici for the Borgias and you get a ruling dynasty who managed to control Florence, the Papacy and therefore much of Italy, on and off, for three hundred years; from the 1430s until the 1730s. They are a difficult family to untangle, not least because they relied upon a very restricted list of first names and it’s not always easy to know which Cosimo, Piero, Lorenzo etc was doing what and to whom and when. You do get a bit of help from their subsidiary titles, eg. ‘the Gouty’, ‘the Magnificent’, ‘the Unfortunate’, ‘the Bastard’ and so on.

   Grand Duke Cosimo I, it was, who in 1564 ordered Giorgio Vasari to construct an enclosed corridor running at first floor level all the way from the Palazzo Vecchio, past the Uffizi, across the Ponte Vecchio and on through the existing buildings of the Oltrarno to the Palazzo Pitti.

  

The Vasari Corridor emerges from the Uffizi, turns right at the Arno and then left over the Ponte Vecchio.

It wasn’t just that the plebs were often a bit smelly. Cosimo had good reason to fear for his safety when out on the street since he had replaced the Florentine Republic with his own Dukedom in 1537. Vasari’s corridor enabled him to commute in peace and quiet between his residence in the Pitti Palace and his political offices on the other side of the river.

   I hadn’t realised until this trip that the name ‘Uffizi’ simply means ‘offices’ in Italian. If I’d thought about it at all, I must have assumed that there was once upon a time a Grand Duke or a Cardinal Uffizi whose surname became attached to the picture galleries. Visiting the Uffizi is a pretty daunting undertaking. Apart from pre-booking tickets on-line, you need to limber up and do some mental stretching before you start. You can, in the space of a few hours, stare to your heart’s content at some of the major works in the development of European painting from Cimabue (died 1302 ) and Giotto (died 1337), past Leonardo da Vinci (died 1519) and Michelangelo (died 1564) to Titian (died 1576 ) and Caravaggio (died 1610).

   Visitors are asked not to take photographs and, given all today’s miniature cameras and sundry digital gadgets, this makes for a running battle between the custodians and the users of i-phones, i-pads and so on. Drawing is allowed but, sadly, we didn’t see anyone else putting pencil to paper. There are some tourists who arrive equipped to photograph everything they see and I sometimes wonder how much, in the end, they really do see. ‘Seeing’ is a first hand experience and in respect of many of the things tourists travel to see – paintings, sculptures, buildings, landscapes – the actual ‘seeing’ takes time. Hours, days, weeks; in some instances, a lifetime. So it is somewhat weird to see folk arrive (at often vast expense) in front of, say, Gentile da Fabriano’s Adoration of the Magi (1423) or Botticelli’s 1475 depiction of the epiphany –  take a surreptitious snap and, almost immediately, stroll on. Would they, I wondered, be looking at their photos later in the day? At their hotel, maybe?  Or perhaps even when they are finally back at the ranch or ensconced in their Tokyo high-rise?

   Quite possibly, all this ‘seeing’ business is not the real point for some (or even most visitors) to the Uffizi. There’s a very evident ‘ticking off’ going on. There are probably some long lists and some shorter lists.

   “Martini & Memmi’s Annunciation with Saints?”

   “Nah, not on my list.”

   “Giotto’s Ognissanti Madonna?”

   “Yep, got that one. Had it first, in fact.”

   “Okay, let’s see; Leonardo’s Annunciation?”

   “Sure thing, seen that.”

   “Botticelli’s Cestello Annunciation?”

   “Err, did we? Oh yeah, here it is. I’ve ticked that one too.”

   And the photographs are always available on a friendly laptop as proof of the visit. In some respects, having the photos, also confers a type of ‘ownership’ – ‘I went there, I saw these things and now I have them about me and, as a result, I’m a better person and more cultured than I was before…aren’t I?’

Detail of ‘The Annunciation’ . Simone Martini & Lippo Memmi. Siena. 1333

   In the little street market selling leather goods and souvenirs (known as Mercato Nuovo’s Loggia) just south of the Piazza della Repubblica, there is a fountain and the bronze statue of a wild boar. This is known to Florentines as the Fontana del Porcellino. But a ‘piglet’ it certainly isn’t. The fountain was made by Pietro Tacca in 1612 and is a copy of an original Roman piece which can be seen in the Uffizi. According to legend, good fortune will be bestowed upon those who stroke the boar’s snout and drop a few coins in the fountain. Guess what? That snout shines like the sun. Physically reaching out to stroke the works of art on display in the galleries is, of course, not encouraged but oh how those paintings would shine if it were!

Fountain of the Piglet, Florence.

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[1] The Third Man. 1949. Director: Carol Reed. Screenplay: Graham Greene.

They need to talk about Boris

# 55

   We once heard tell of an African tribe whom their neighbours called ‘The Fekarwi’.  They were a people of limited stature who dwelt on an endless plain, densely covered by tall grasses. Their curse was that the average height of a fully grown adult was less than 150cm [59 inches] and most of the grass that surrounded them grew to heights exceeding 180cm [71 inches]. The only way they could travel was in single file behind their leaders, one of whom would have to jump as high as possible after every few paces, just to see over the otherwise impenetrable wall of greenery. They had acquired their name because, with every strenuous leap, the followers would be heard to chant, as with one voice, “Where the fek are we?...Where the fek are we?” For a fraction of a second the jumper’s head would appear above the waving grasses, frantically seeking clues about which way to go. Sadly, none of the jumpers was ever heard to report, “Grass. I just see grass and still more grass; it goes all the way to the edge of the world.”

   We were reminded of this unfortunate tribe several times this week when listening to excerpts from speeches being made at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in Birmingham. The economic recession in which the UK is still so deeply mired is having the same effect on the Tories as the grassland had on the Fekarwi. The leadership of neither tribe can glimpse where they are going for long enough to give any convincing description of the way ahead to their frustrated followers.

   The Labour Party, it must be said, did scarcely any better at their gathering in Manchester the previous week. Ed Miliband, in fact, seemed able to do no better than to reach back into the nineteenth century and purloin the idea of ‘One Nation’ from the Tories' own original arch-smoothie, Benjamin Disraeli. Still, at least that cuts him free from the burden of having any proper policies. It also leaves Ed leading a party which is clearly no longer either ‘New’ or possibly even ‘Labour’.

   On Monday, Boris Johnson arrived in Birmingham bouncing through the long grass on the pogo-stick of his own ego. Unconstrained by reality or the burden of having to implement anything he might promise, Boris broke records for the number of silly ideas and empty gestures per sound-bite that could be received by the faithful with rapturous applause.

The Night Mayor of London

But, Boris not withstanding, still they went on chanting “Where the fek are we?” and will doubtless continue to do so until the truth finally dawns on them that the cause of the recession is the abysmal failure of their own belove'ed free market capitalism.

   Arguably, one of the greatest of all Victorian inventions was the joint stock company, with limited liability for shareholders. When this was applied to the banking system, it was eventually made to work by the addition of two other elements – both supplied by government. One was the application to public spending of Keynesian ideas concerning demand management and the other was the careful regulation of all banking activities, and especially of their capital and liquidity ratios. It seemed like a rocky road at the time, but the financial system thus evolved brought unprecedented stability to the British economy for four decades after 1945. It wasn’t perfect by any means and the prosperity it generated wasn’t evenly spread but it worked a whole lot better than anything ever seen before (or since).

   Then we came to the 1980s and everyone became seriously bored with economics and with economists. Too many people looked the other way while the advocates of laissez-faire applied their brilliant ideas to the financial system. De-regulation was all the rage and suddenly everyone could borrow almost as much as they’d ever dreamed they might want. Government borrowing was no longer restrained by the effect that a rising PSBR would have on the banks’ ability to create credit and private lending was only vaguely and half-heartedly linked to the bank’s own liquidity. Surprise, surprise, after less than two decades, the free market system went ‘pop’! Or – to be more accurate – it went ‘BANG!’

"Oh cripes! Oh lor! I say you chaps, crikey!"

   The system we once had is broken and has either to be fixed or replaced by something better. Some very silly ideas will have to thrown away before we can find our way out of the long grass. So, if you’re travelling in The Bus Lane anywhere near Birmingham and happen to hear plumy voices in the distance chanting, “Where the fek are we? Where the fek are we?”  - those will be the Tory faithful trying to wend their way homeward. If you’re feeling generous, you might tell them roughly where they are and exactly where they can go. If you’re feeling worried, you might also remind them that they’re supposed to be the ruddy government.