My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-three

Wednesday, 28 December, 1988
Firenze [Florence]

Tired, so I slept till nearly 10:00. Got up, hit a pastry shop/snack bar for some breakfast (Italian pastries aren’t as good as French ones) then a bank for some Italian currency for some traveller’s cheques.

Then, since my main personal reason for coming to Firenze (apart from the external feeling that I "ought" to see it) was to do a bit of shopping, I hit the open market.

After about three hours of wandering up and down the Via dell’Ariento I came away with a brown leather belt for 15,000 lire (the man put a different buckle on for me), some four-button-length silk-lined black leather gloves for around 22,000 lire (to replace the pair I lost the left hand to in Lyon), a dark wine red leather dress purse for 35,000 lire, and a large (120 cm square) wool navy, gray, and red scarf for 27,000 lire.†

The young man who sold me that might be going to Philadelphia in the next year-- to study at Wharton. Ye gods. That’s where Mort Levi* [one of our best architecture clients back in the States] went. He’s not sure he wants to leave his friends and family, though, since he feels that if he goes to America he goes for good.

This city is funny for the language. I’ll be struggling along in Italian and the Florentine will inform me he or she speaks English-- and so they do, often better than I.

Bought some dates and some black olives in the adjacent covered market. Interesting thing about that place. I’ve seen nudie posters in machine shops and car repair garages, but I’d never thought to see a picture of an all but naked woman hung up as an inducement to buy vegetables. Maybe I’m silly but I gave such stands no consideration.

My shopping accomplished, I went over to the Duomo and went inside. Very much a tourist church, though some people were managing to pray in a side chapel or two.

Paid the fee to go up Brunelleschi’s dome. The inside of it was covered with the omnipresent scaffolding so I have no idea how it’s supposed to look from the floor of the cathedral. But you can go up to a gallery around the springing point and then on up over the dome itself (someone had chalked on the upper surface of the inner dome, in English, "BRUNELLESCHI IS GOD") then up and outside onto a deck around the cupola.

Damned shame it was so blasted foggy today. The view must be magnificent when it’s clear.

I’d gone through most of my Italian currency at the markets and I still had to pay the hotel for tonight. So I went back, paid the lady, dropped off my purchases, and got more traveller’s cheques out of the money belt. Changed those at a different bank than before. Better exchange rate at the second. Oh well! Bought a very good hot proscuitto ham and mushroom sandwich at a snack bar and ate it on the way there.

Went by Santa Maria Novello to look at the façade but didn’t go in. Headed down to the Arno to look at the river from the Ponte S. Trinita. Ponte Vecchio to the east there, all lined with shops. Went and half-crossed it as well. This place is unbelievable like Toulouse and Paris. Jewelry and fashion and other high priced shops all crammed in one after another. Who buys all this stuff?

The Piazza Signoria next. And the woman at the lecture last night was right (not the Canadian I spoke to, but another Toronto native who either works for or lives with or is married to-- or all three!-- Mr. von Durer)-- the place is dripping with scaffolding. You can just see Cellini’s Perseus standing above it in the southern arcade. Nevertheless, this was the artistic reason I’d come to Firenze. Berlioz stood here, about where I was standing, and saw that statue. He was inspired by it and by the memoirs of its sculptor to compose his opera Benevenuto Cellini. He saw all this, that I was seeing (sans scaffolding), and he gazed on these very buildings and sculptures-- oh God!

OK, then, time to go home!

No, at least one museum had to be done and I chose the Uffizi. Saw everything there (that wasn’t being cleaned). I love the way they can afford to let all these Roman copies of Greek sculptures just sit out unlabelled in a dimly-lit corridor. Hell, they’ve got more where those came from.

When I was still in the early period galleries a girl came up and asked me if I spoke English. I said yes and she said, "Are you Blogwen*-- I forget your last name." I looked and it was Melissa* from the program in Oxford. Well.

We stood and talked for awhile. She’s travelling with Lucy*, another of the OOSC people, and is heading for Greece tonight. She, too, was in Paris the 18th and saw Darrell* and Harriet* [two more of our Oxford American contingent and fellow-lodgers at Coverdale College*] at the Louvre. They were looking for the Impressionist paintings . . . †† And if I think I’ve been having problems with French, they were really in difficulties. Melissa told me they knew none at all.

It was nice to see a familiar face like that. Very encouraging.

She'd been at the Uffizi for awhile already and was getting ready to leave. Me, I still had a lot to see. And so, dutifully, I did. I know it’s blasphemy to say it but, on this trip at least, I find myself unmoved by great paintings per se. Oh, it was nice seeing all the famous art history slide subjects in person, such as the Giottos from last night and the Botticellis and then the Raphaels and the Titians. But after awhile my eyes just glaze over. I got a pounding headache from staring at things and playing the intellectual. I ought to be more heart-stirred by these but . . . I don’t know. I did enjoy them, yes, but after awhile it’s like ticking off a checklist.

There was a Visitation scene that impressed me, by Mario-- damn, now I can’t recall his name; begins with an "A," I think‡-- anyway, I liked it for the originality of the facial expressions of the two women, neither hyper-humanistic nor "unco gude." Mary looks as if she’s wordlessly saying, "Oh, cousin, it’s all too wonderful for me, I don’t know how I can express it or even bear up under it!" And Elizabeth’s expression replies, "That’s all right, little one, you don’t have to try to tell me, I know!" This Mary looks as if she has an appreciation of the long centuries of Jewish prophecy leading up to this moment that now find their fulfillment through her. She has a happy lack of that sense of being herself the pivot of history so obnoxiously present in so many pictures of the Virgin Mary. I’ll admit the effect was more 19th Century Romantic than 16th Century classical Renaissance, but that’s the Renaissance’s problem.

I still can't get over how badly-lit the art is in that place. What with that, sensory overload, and maybe my feat of Alpinism earlier at the Duomo, by the time I left the Uffizi I had a raging headache. I’d thought I’d find a restaurant and sit down for a meal, but no way. I bought some cheese at a shop and ate it for supper with the olives and dates and more of a chocolate bar I bought in Dijon.
______________________
†As far as I can figure it, the exchange rate was around 1,230 lire to the dollar.
‡Mariotto Albertinelli.
††Oh, dear. Those had all been moved to the Quai d'Orsay.

Kirk von Durer, Art Historian: A Memorial

These past few years I've come to notice that just about anybody and anything can be found on the Internet. Conversely, it now seems that if something or somebody can't be found on the Web, it's as if they've never existed at all.

In my post of March 8th, I reproduce a travel journal entry of late December 1988, wherein I write of being in Florence, Italy, and going to a lecture on early Renaissance art given by an American art historian and gallery owner named Kirk von Durer. I had thought it would be nice to link to something about him. But when I Googled his name, nothing came up other than a reference to a poster on his lectures tipped into a book on art in the Uffizi that some dealer has for sale.

True, I hadn't expected anything current. Maybe six or seven years ago I was reading that entry in my handwritten journal and did a Web search for Mr. von Durer. But I came up with only a remembrance written by a friend of his: he had died suddenly, of cancer or some other disease, in the early or mid-1990s.

But by now, even that webpage has disappeared.

So in my small way on my small blog, I'm going to perpetuate the memory and existence of a unique person.

I know of Kirk von Durer little more than I put in my last entry. He was an American national resident in Florence for I don't know how long. Certainly long enough to become an institution. He was thoroughly trained in the history and aesthetics of Italian Renaissance art. He pitched his lectures to the interested amateur, using humor and liveliness as his vehicle, so that, when the visitor stood in front of the actual work of art the next day, she would know and appreciate what she was looking at.

Kirk von Durer loved his subject and he loved to communicate on it. Constantly, in the best sense of the term-- with constancy. His effort and energy were astounding. As I recall, he gave his lectures on Italian Renaissance art every single night at 8:30 PM. Maybe not on weekends, but even so, every single weekday night any interested English-speaking visitor could climb the stairs to his flat at the top of No. 20 Borgo San Lorenzo and for little or no charge could drink his Chianti, admire his view of the Duomo, and partake of his slides and his knowledge.

Kirk von Durer was a fixture in Florence in the late 1980s, and could have been for many more years, had he been spared to us. I doubt he could have been older than his late 40s when I met him; I certainly was shocked when I read that he'd died.

I haven't returned to Florence these past twenty years, but if in the future I do, it will be odd knowing that Mr. von Durer is not still there giving his witty and informative lectures.

Though maybe, like so many other things that linger in the atmosphere of that ancient and storied city, in some ghostly way he still is, and he still does.

Kirk von Durer, requiescat in pacem. And if any others who knew you or your work should come across this inadequate memorial, I urge them to post their own fuller, more accurate accounts, and keep your name alive in cyberspace. Because these days, that seems to be the place it really matters.

My Cut-Rate Grand Tour: Day Twenty-Two

Tuesday, 27 December, 1988
Löhenthal* to Firenze [Florence]

10:36 train from Olten. Frau Renzberger* packed me a nice lunch and Lukas* took me to the station. He was gracious enough to wait with me till the train came but it seemed a real strain for both of us. I’ve been trying to figure out what I could’ve done to make him act like this and can come up with zip. But something’s happened to make him act like a вопреки and it’s really too bad. I need to make some good friends at Coverdale* this next term and I’d thought he’d be one. But apparently not. I’d thought we’d get to know one another better on this visit, but now he seems like a permanent stranger.

This was so frustrating and depressing I could’ve cried right there in the compartment. But instead I wrote a long letter to Janie*. Had cause in the course of it to think about Nigel* and that made me feel a lot better.

The Alps were quite lovely. Sun came out and showed them up beautifully. And I enjoyed looking at the little Tuscan churches in the Italian part of Switzerland.

Funny thing at the border crossing. Italian customs man came in and asked the guy opposite me a question in Italian. He answered, and then the official addressed me. Out of habit I said, "Pardon?" in French. At which the customs man rolled his eyes, lifted his hands towards heaven, and departed, without asking for passports or anything.

Train change in Milan. Found a first class compartment this time. Second is supposed to be so much more atmospheric and authentic; I just found it tiring. Seats are too shallow.

Hit the closest Frommer selection for places to stay in Florence. Unfortunately the city was pretty thick with students on holiday, like me, and I ended up renting a double room for around $24 a night. Couldn’t deal with schlepping bags any farther. So the Locanda Marcella it was.

In the Frommer book I’d read of a nightly lecture on Renaissance art given by a American art historian in Florence. It’s being on for this evening was confirmed by a poster in the railroad station, so as soon as I’d dropped my bags in the room on the Via Faenza, I headed over to the Borgo San Lorenzo.

Paid my respects to the Duomo first-- what I could see of it in the fog.

Streets of Florence are frequently narrow, darkish (yet people are on them anyway), and have very narrow sidewalks. The pavement is blocks of stone, cut rectangular maybe 12" x 15", and laid diagonally. Sidewalks usually have cars parked halfway on them, making it quite a game to walk along, what with the cars coming, and especially with the motorscooters whizzing by.

Quite a few people around the cathedral (at 8:00 PM) but still I didn’t feel comfortable going around back of the chevet. Too dark.

The Borgo San Lorenzo was lined with black men, apparently North African, selling belts, jewelry, and other souvenirs off mats and blankets spread out on the pavement. I wondered that they don’t worry about the motorcyclists coming along and destroying their goods.

There were also a lot of different languages to be heard there, including American English. Seemed quite odd, after France.

Waited for 8:30 and time for the lecture. It’s at the top of the house at No. 20 and given by a Kirk von Durer, who also runs a gallery at that address.

It was worthwhile going, more from a social than from an art historical standpoint. There was Chianti on the deck (view of Duomo) beforehand and I talked with a couple from Toronto, also students on Christmas break, about travels in France (she’s a student in Grenoble) and other things . . .

They mentioned it and I’ve become conscious of it, too, that my accent (English) has changed and become less "American." I honestly think that has intensified since last weekend with Lukas’s family. I knew they'd learned British English so I felt I should modify my speech with them so I could be understood (Lukas told me that at Coverdale he could understand me almost all the time and ditto Sam* [another compatriot in our year abroad program], despite his broad Oklahoma accent, because he speaks so slowly. It’s Darla* he could never make out. This surprised me as she seemed the most cosmopolitan of any of us. And now I can’t listen to her and discover what he means, because she’s returned to America).

In style the lecture, which was on the late Gothic/early Renaissance Florentine and Siennese painters, such as Massaccio and Giotto, was kin to Ed Eglinski’s Art History for Non-Art Majors at KU, but with even more of the stand-up comedy. I felt von Durer could have done with rather more content but I’m coming from an art historian’s viewpoint.

Not that I didn’t appreciate the humor; I did. When showing Giotto’s painting of the Stigmatization of St. Francis, he quipped, "For living such a holy life, St. Francis received the same wound marks that Christ had on the cross. Wouldn’t you rather have a Ferrari!?" "Well," think I, "only if Tom Selleck is driving it!"

The greatest thing I got out of it substantially was a realization first of how Italy was ripe for the Renaissance style, its Gothic being largely held-over Byzantine, and then of where many of the trademarks of the "Pre-Raphaelite" movement style came from. For here were the original preRaphaelites whose work inspired it.

The lecture got out at about 10:45 and I thought, I’ve heard this town is not too big on nightlife and no telling what the streets are like this time of night. So let us get back to the hotel presto.

So I set off walking very fast in what I thought was the right direction. But after awhile I realized that I’d walked for much longer than I had coming over and was nowhere that I recognised. I was using the map torn out of the Frommer book and couldn’t find the street I was on listed. And up ahead was a group of young guys who may’ve been perfectly innocent but I wasn’t taking any chances.

So I cut over to the right (after backtracking at a run) and came to a street called after St. Catherine d’Alessandria. Started heading up it, trying to get to the Via Nazionale, but decided maybe I should ask the desk clerk in a nearby hotel for his advice.

I ducked into the lobby and inquired where I was in my limited Italian: "Dove io sono?" He said something obviously contemptuous about the map I had and pulled out a better one. Turns out I hadn’t taken the radial layout of Florentine streets into consideration and was an appreciable distance away from where I wanted to be. He gave me to know I could keep the map-- grazie-- and I hoofed it back to the hotel, allowing the effect of two glasses of wine on no dinner to deceive me into thinking I could do that much running. Made it back safely but the experience was a little surreal.