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"I can't help loving the Italians and not loving the French," Mary McCarthy once wrote to her friend Hannah Arendt. On publication of McCarthy's The Stones of Florence (1959) Arendt sent her compliments: "You have made a city sit for its portrait." Other critics concurred with the praise:
"A triumphant jewel of a book," one said, "about one of the rarest jewel in Italy's unique collection of cities." Carol Brightman, McCarthy's biographer, defines the strength of her Florentine portrait as "the vigor of its characterizations of both the artists and the art of the Italian Renaissance." Michelangelo and "the tyranny of genres," da Vinci, Donatello, Brunelleschi and their relations with the popes and power families of their times, all receive cold-eyed scrutiny. The Florentines invented the Renaissance, she declares, "which is the same as saying that they invented the modern world." Seeing Florence from Mary McCarthy's many-angled perspective enlarges the reader/traveler's appreciation of both the city and its prominence within the history of art. Her contribution to the art of travel writing is an impressive mix of art history, social commentary, criticism, and gossip. Her attention to the "jewel's" particularities
signals her affection.
by Mary McCarthy
The Florentines, in fact, invented the Renaissance, which is the same as saying that they invented the modern
world--not, of course, an unmixed good. Florence was a turning-point, and this is what often troubles the
reflective sort of visitor today--the feeling that a terrible mistake was committed here, at some point between
Giotto and Michelangelo, a mistake that had to do with power and megalomania, or gigantism of the human ego.
You can see, if you wish, the handwriting on the walls of Palazzo Pitti or Palazzo Strozzi, those formidable
creations in bristling prepotent stone, or in the cold, vain stare of Michelangelo's David, in love with his
own strength and beauty. This feeling that Florence was the scene of the original crime or error was hard
to avoid just after the last World War, when power and technology had reduced so much to rubble. "You were responsible for this," chided
a Florentine sadly, looking around the Michelangelo room of the Bargello after it was finally reopened. In
contrast, Giotto's bell tower appeared an innocent party.
But the invention of the modern world could not be halted, at Giotto's bell tower or Donatello's
San Giorgio or the Pazzi Chapel…….
FROM THE STONES OF FLORENCE
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