We Visit Florence Privately «

We Visit Florence Privately

Friday 15th August 2014

Today is Ferragosto or Ferra or Ferragamo, if Val is to be believed in continuing bulletins as the Titular Abbess of Aleppo. The novices, Antonia and Nigella, are coming along very well doctrinally, by the way.

On Wednesday we visited Florence privately. Prince Dmitri’s friend, Carolina Bellinegozi, until recently in charge of all the shops of a certain designer in Europe except Regent Street, met us at the Impruneta exit of the Strada. We were escorted into Firry and passed a sign saying ‘All You Can Eat Diner’ in English. At once Laura Malcolm texted from the other car recalling the Toby Carvery at Buckhurst Hill, Essex, whose 6pm-on-a-Monday Happy Hour was so beloved of her mother’s late bridesmaid. Our first halt was a secret viewpoint for the ancient walls of Florence never seen before by me, and the sloping gardens coming right into the city, also San Miniato where Cousin Teddy and Cousin Lunetta’s grandfather is buried. So redolent. We probed further the English connection with Tuscany and Florence at its centre. From there, we drove on to the station car park (fearsome heat) and went straight to the roof-top of the Hotel Minerva, right by Santa Maria Novella, for exclusive views. This hotel, the Hotel Minerva, was one of the 4-stars we weren’t staying in when I first visited Firry with the Gay Mother and Father and Aunt Olive in 1973. I spent many hours outside it peering in, longing for a more international life.

Over lunch at a new fish restaurant by the station which Carolina had personally selected, Val’s bulletins from the Abbey became more concerning. Sister Dymphna was launched on making her own pici, the adored Tuscan speciality pasta which nearly destroyed Val’s digestion for good after he took it in the villa and about which he became increasingly bitter while still here. Then the Abbey pici were finished. They were like old rope. At lunch Sister Tobira’s teeth were undone by the pasta. She was heard to curse and take the Lord’s name in vain, so terrible in a nun. Val himself was fast descending into fury. ‘You’re on that phone the entire time,’ he screeched electronically. It was time to cease to read but the first line of the next instalment was unavoidable: ‘Compared to me, you’re ESN.’ If you don’t know, that means, ‘Educationally Sub-Normal’, a term no longer in use.

Bottarga featured at lunch. Have you ever tried it? Challenging? Also octopus. Laura and Matt were thrilled with the lunch. Laura had Carolina’s sons at her end and they loved her and could suddenly speak English. They like football and meat. With me, they froze. On the Minerva rooftop though, Laura and I had managed to explain in Italian, not English, to these ragazzi that Laura has two sons but one daughter, who came last and is a blessing because able to undertake maiding work and ideal for trying out clothes, hair and make-up. They seemed to grasp this very well.

On the way to Santa Maria Novella after lunch, where we were to make an Art Visit, I suddenly had a brain-wave re: Val. He’d mentioned while here that there was something v. special to see at Santa MN but what? Why not just call him and sweep aside all the cruelty about the pici? So I did that. He answered, in a manner of speaking. There was much duchessy warbling but finally he managed to annunciate: Uccello: The Flood. I chirruped for the required amount of time on the line from Firry then came alive. The one thing I wanted to do was to see Uccello’s The Flood at Santa Maria Novella. Uccello, if you don’t know, is an important old painter. Val had informed previously that Uccello grasped perspective whereas Piero della Francesca, whose Storia della Vera Croce I took him to see last week at Arezzo, did not . We surged into the Church, ecstatic with purpose.Where was the Uccello? I decided to delay the great moment, skirmishing with the Church’s other treasures first. Very nice but not Uccello. No sign of a promised Botticelli Nativity. The leaflet hopeless, not mentioning the Bronzino but referring to a Botti Nat not to be found. At last, by now drooling, craving, tortured for the Uccello, I entered the Cloister where it was. All the way round I went. The works were marked, one after the other, ‘Unknown Florentine Artist’. Then there were three blank spaces and beneath a sign ‘Paulo Uccello: Il Deluge: In Restauro’.

So that was that. Back to the quest for the Bott Nat. There is a magnificent cycle of The Life of Virgin by Ghirlandio behind the altar but I didn’t fancy it. I hunted high and low in that church for Botticelli’s Nativity. Could some interfering flower-arranging ladies have put it away in a cupboard? At last, at last, behind a glass case – well, it was a Nativity. But could it be by Botticelli? What do you think?

So we left Santa Maria Novella. In my early days in Firry, in the 80s with Anthony Mottram, with whom I made a world for 43 years, we thought it full of boiling primmys – that’s primitive paintings only fit for boiling rather than roasting. Not the best. Now, after 35 years of visiting Firry, Santa SM has offered up its treasure or will do soon – when the Uccello is back.

Leaving on foot, Laura first of all wanted to hang around to see some nuns going through a door. Then she espied a figure: ‘Is that not,’ she cried, ‘the Titular Abbess of Aleppo elle-meme.’