![\"\"](\"http:\/\/idecrawford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Screenshot-2020-11-19-at-22.22.07-1088x769.png\")
<\/p>\nThis story was inspired by Pontormo\u2019s Annunciation in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence. It was painted 1527-8, during a time of crisis in Italy after the collapse of the lengthy peace engineered by Cosimo de Medici.<\/p>\n
The Italian republics, until recently the cultural and financial heart of Europe, were being subdued one by one by foreign powers. <\/p>\n
In 1527 Rome was brutally sacked by the army of the Holy Roman Emperor.<\/p>\n
Florence still clung to its freedom, and took advantage of the chaos after the sack to declare itself a republic for the last time, with Niccolo Capponi, the man who commissioned Pontormo\u2019s work, as leader.<\/p>\n
The republic lasted only two years. In October, 1529, Florence too fell to Charles V, becoming a client state of the Holy Roman Empire under Grand Duke Alessandro. The Dukes ruled until the mid-eighteenth century.<\/p>\n
Of all the paintings in Florence, none moved me more than this relatively little-known work \u2013 hidden in a locked side-chapel in a tiny church and lit only by my coin in the machine. I was haunted by a need to understand how the historical moment of its creation contributed to its distinctive emotional power.<\/p>\n
The melancholy, reclusive Jacopo Pontormo was one of the first mannerist painters. Mannerist art looks back at the confidence and balance of the high renaissance from a perspective characterised by tension and instability.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Florence, 1569<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n All still. Only motes dancing, playing in a shaft of wan gold. Faintly falling, settling softly.<\/p>\n The children pattered in on either side of their mother.<\/p>\n Fiore followed behind.<\/p>\n The clear smooth floor of an aisle always seemed to make little Lilo run, in spite of hard words after.<\/p>\n Pippa put two small hands on his shoulders and hauled him back. \u2018It\u2019s God\u2019s house!\u2019 she whispered, shaking her curls fiercely. \u2018Into the chapel! Brunelleschi made it,\u2019 she added, proud of knowing. \u2018Nonna said. You know who he is, Lilo? He built the great dome!\u2019<\/p>\n Lilo was peering into the dimmer chapel. His mouth opened into a perfect tiny circle as he looked up at the fresco, his eyes growing as round.<\/p>\n \u2018Who is it?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018You naughty thing!\u2019 said Pippa. \u2018It\u2019s the Holy Mother \u2013 and the Angel Gabriel there! Say a prayer now.\u2019<\/p>\n The children knelt, eyes fixed on the semblance of sunlight on the wall and the tremulous turning face of the madonna.<\/p>\n By candlelight the fresco was different from Fiore\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It was not her custom to remember often. \u00a0But now she saw one October evening in her mind\u2019s eye, and did not blink it away \u2013 the light dripping very quiet and slow like honey. The olive groves sweet-smelling, with the harvesters homeward bound. A few still remaining, singing at their work, and one calling to her that it was a fine season.<\/span><\/p>\n Always around the feast of San Michele the green things grew young again, even as the sun fled. It was like another spring, one that promised nothing but lengthening shadows, the earth drifting asleep instead of wakening.<\/p>\n She had brought a knife for the bristling ox-tongue growing strong about San Miniato. Navelwort there, clinging to the moss, quenching leaves as small and round as scudi. She put one into her mouth, letting it lie on her tongue for a moment like Christ\u2019s body at the Mass, before she bit.<\/p>\n Borage, dandelion, and ears-of-the-hare, fresh and bright and bitter. Fiore squashed them into the basket with both hands, but still she wanted more, and gathered the rest into her gown.<\/p>\n Her back ached with stooping, and she enjoyed the moment of straightening as she began to knot her skirt, sun gentle on her face.<\/p>\n She turned to the valley, dim and warm as a womb, with Florence lying safe, caressed by the muscle of the hills.<\/p>\n The Arno slipped silverly, doubling its bridges, palazzi along the water bathed in a clear glow, the crowned tower rising proud. The dome, like a ripe perfect apricot, above all.<\/p>\n Fiore paused in the breath of light, holding the tails of her unfished knot. She looked forward to the first mouthful of salad, crisp beneath a silky slick of new oil, singing with all the most savoury memories of a summer well past. It would bring pleasure to Mama\u2019s tired face. Bello would call it bitter, screwing up his little nose, cheeks dimpled like a ripe hazelnut, but enjoy it still. She was not tired at all for the walk home, but happy to be still.<\/p>\n As she watched, the cupola of the Duomo gave a quick dancing spark, as you see sometimes in eyes.<\/p>\n \u2018Madonna!\u2019<\/p>\n A man\u2019s voice! Half the dandelions went spilling down the moss. It was too vexing. She bent to gather up the toothed leaves.<\/p>\n \u2018Madonna!\u2019 A voice urgent as the pealing of the Vacca. A hand on her arm \u2013 she started round.<\/p>\n It was a young man with hungry eyes, whose face had the pale, hollow life of the worn statues that looked down from the campanile.<\/p>\n \u2018You saw it!\u2019<\/p>\n His eyes burnt deep into her face. She ought to drop her own, and she wanted to, but her gaze was fixed by his.<\/p>\n \u2018I was only looking at\u2026our city\u2019.<\/p>\n \u2018Yes! I have seen this in dreams,\u2019 he cried, eager hands twisting the air in front of her into wild shapes, \u2018but always, in waking, the memory fades before I comprehend. I never thought to see it on a living face! You must come with me.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Are you mad, messer?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I beg you! You cannot go away from me as if it had never been! Come, I will take you only to a holy place.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I am sorry.\u2019<\/p>\n There was quick terror in his face. He reached out a hand towards her. \u2018You must<\/em> come \u2013 you must understand. Not to the workshop \u2013 to a holy place!\u2019<\/p>\n Fiore felt bound to do it, in mere Christian pity, for it was as though he meant to fall at her feet and die, and she knew she would not be missed at home a while yet. But it was madness, still.<\/p>\n \u2018You will tell no one?\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n \u2018How could I ever tell of such in words?\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Her heart was throbbing in her mouth as she followed at a seemly distance. Down to the city, between the shadows of the black cypresses beckoning on the night.<\/p>\n Arnolfo\u2019s tower rose above the roofs, like a big clock\u2019s hand, the last light blinking on the little golden lion.<\/p>\n Through the Porta San Miniato. The sun nearly gone from the streets, the yellow stone of the old wall soaking up the last of it, like four-days old bread finding oil from the latest press at the bottom of a bowl.<\/p>\n Down the Via de\u2019 Bardi. She thanked the Virgin it was so quiet. From a far street came the sorrowful sound of drunken singing: \u201croses and violets, all in the Spring\u2026let he who will be gay, for the day will never stay.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n By Santa Felicita he stopped.<\/p>\n \u2018Is not the chapel being adorned for Messer Capponi?\u2019 said Fiore, by way of saying something, so that he did not stare at her silently.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the sun shall set in the East, and rise again in the West, thou with thy love may rest\u2026\u201d <\/em>sang the drunkard.<\/p>\n \u2018I have been set the work,\u2019 he said. \u2018I thought I never could undertake the annunciation \u2013 I thought all in vain \u2013 until I saw you.\u2019<\/p>\n The chapel was cool and clean enough to keep cheeses in, with a small, sweet-curving dome.<\/p>\n Fiore started at the great fresco on the wall; Christ just taken from the cross, pale and painfully dead, and a multitude of figures with the saddest faces and bodies twisted in glowing torment. They were so close, as though they wanted her to come and writhe among them, and yet there was no place for a basket of greens in their weightless world.<\/p>\n Her companion had turned to the wall still blank.<\/p>\n \u2018There will the Holy Virgin stand.\u2019 He waved a hand to one side of the narrow window. \u2018Now I have seen the moment with these very eyes \u2013 I understand how she must be \u2013 turning \u2013 with the light on your face!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Mine, messer?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I saw you receive it! I must take your likeness direct onto the wall. Turn a little to the side \u2013 as you did on the hill. You saw it \u2013 God\u2019s miracle \u2013 our miracle \u2013 Florence!\u2019<\/p>\n The echo returned his words flatly, drained of eagerness.<\/p>\n The air shivered in the dimming chapel. It was as though the Vacca should peel with all the breath in full brazen lungs, and not a single citizen rush out in answer \u2013 piazze empty, the ranked palazzi looking at nothing, their windows barred and shuttered.<\/p>\n \u2018Where is the light?\u2019 he cried.<\/p>\n He was white, lip caught between his teeth, brows bent together. Fiore flinched from his gaze, and looked at the black and white tiles, wearily repeating their pattern at her feet.<\/p>\n \u2018How can you be so changed? What you saw is not gone! Parting perhaps \u2013 not yet gone! Pray, look but as you did.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018Messer, I cannot tell how!\u2019<\/p>\n A nightmare in his face, as if he watched the recognition fade from the eyes of someone beloved and dying. She must change that look.<\/p>\n She tried to remember the moment by San Miniato. She had been thinking of her skirt full of green things. She had stood up to relieve the ache in her back, and looked into the valley of the Arno.<\/p>\n The swift sun sinking in the west, low enough to take in through the corner of her eye, and the bright roofs still warm in the last light. The palazzo tower calling bravely to the sky. The Duomo like another sun that would not go down.<\/p>\n Two suns, as sometimes on the surface of water.<\/p>\n The gleam of the cupola.<\/p>\n She frowned. The image was fading, and instead she saw the face of the painter. A single tear gleamed in his eye.<\/p>\n \u2018Then \u2013 it was almost as if I saw it again.\u2019 His sadness seemed drawn from the deepest well. \u2018I saw it\u2026fade. What shall I do?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018You must paint me as best you can,\u2019 said Fiore. Now she felt sure she understood better than he. \u2018There is no help for it.\u00a0 Was not our blessed mother a woman born, with a woman\u2019s feelings, fleeting with the waning hours?\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The light is gone!\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018There is never much of sunlight in a chapel \u2013 look how small the window. You can paint light, cannot you? We must light candles and ask a blessing, and you will paint light from a setting sun.\u2019 She was speaking to him the way she did to little Bello. \u2018The sun was going down<\/em>! That is why it looked so clear and gentle.\u2019<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Day after day, she stole down to the chapel, and stood where he asked. She looked in fascination at the flickering lines traced out on the wall. Some seemed to be her shadow, but others were strangely unlike \u2013 though she never told him so. Perhaps she was wrong. She had no Venetian glass, and had seen her own face only in pools after rain.<\/p>\n She told him at last she could not keep coming, or she would be found out. She felt sorry at the thought she would never see him again; but then there was life to go on with. He kissed her hand and said he would never cease from seeing her face, and they parted.<\/p>\n It all felt very like a dream after, and when she heard Gonfaloniere Capponi thought a great deal of the fresco, and that it was talked of in the piazza, she almost stopped believing it was she who had been painted.<\/p>\n Still she liked to think about it, as though instead of remembering, she were imagining a dream of the future that could never come true.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She had not been to Santa Felicita since the dome was lopped off, leaving this blank, flat roof, painted to look like a curve. It had stood in the way of the Grand Duke\u2019s private passage, built so he might pass from one palazzo to another without meeting the gaze of the likes of her, or soiling his shoes with the mud washed down from the hills. They said too that he feared a cold knife slipped in through the gold threads of his farsetto as he passed through the crowd on the Ponte Vecchio.<\/p>\n Fiore saw that little Pippa and Lilo had their faces still up-turned to the fresco, and their mother had knelt down behind them with a hand on each small head.<\/p>\n Pippa twisted suddenly round to look up into Fiore\u2019s face.<\/p>\n \u2018Nonna Fiore! Why is Mama crying?\u2019<\/p>\n Fiore reached forward to wipe away her daughter\u2019s tear \u2013 but it glittered in the candlelight like the cupola of the Duomo \u2013 and she let it fall.<\/p>\n \u2018Our Lady knows our loss! I don\u2019t say you will forget. It was here I came after I lost your sister, not six months mine. Forty years, and it feels yester-night I last kissed her sweet face. But the grief will grow gentle, like evening light.\u2019<\/p>\n And there was the turning face of the Holy Mother \u2013 a girl with eyes a little widened, looking to a remembered annunciation, the divine light fading from her face.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Santa Felicita was the patron saint of women who had lost a child.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n La Vacca, \u201cthe cow\u201d, was a large bell in the Palazzo della Signoria\u2019s Arnolfo tower. It summoned the citizens of Florence to take their part in the democracy of the city, and was a symbol of republican pride. When the king of France threatened Florence with military subjection in 1494, Piero Capponi, father of Niccolo who commissioned Pontormo\u2019s painting, replied \u201cif you sound your war trumpets, we will ring our bell.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This story was inspired by Pontormo\u2019s Annunciation in the church of Santa Felicita in Florence. It was painted 1527-8, during a time of crisis in Italy after the collapse of the lengthy peace engineered by Cosimo de Medici. The Italian republics, until recently the cultural and financial heart of Europe, were being subdued one by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"image","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,29,9,38,36,26,27,39,31,33,35,40,34,30,41,37,32],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_1011-3.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1699"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3193,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1699\/revisions\/3193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1699"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1699"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/idecrawford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1699"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/idecrawford.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/72c0979646d290830a03da0d8768aa7c.jpg\")
<\/p>\n