Whether it’s the first one or the latest of many, a visit to Florence’s Uffizi is bound to leave you breathless. Such are the quality and the breadth of its collection, it’s like embarking on a relentless quest for the best picture, with the disarming awareness that it’s impossible to pick one. So you just keep going, room after room, masterpiece after masterpiece, soaking it all in until you’re almost drunk. Hoping that at least a tiny fragment of the exhilarating energy that is running through your body and soul is going to stay with you.
My aesthetics are firmly rooted in the works of the Italian Renaissance masters. My Baxandallian ‘eye‘ is shaped around them. When I think of a blue sky, I visualise Bellini’s serene backgrounds. My ideal man looks like Moroni’s tailor (look him up, he’s at the National Gallery in London). For me, there is no doubt that Bronzino painted the most obnoxiously gorgeous women, that Titian changed the way we engage with portraiture with the use of that haunting dark background, that Lotto gave us some of the most insightful and honest portraits. And if I were to reincarnate, I want to look like a Botticelli Madonna. Alternatively, a Veronese courtesan will do. Ah those pearls around their neck.
I realise this post is verging on the incoherent, for such is the power exercised by Renaissance art on my psyche. I’m in a glorious daze driven
by colour, form, light and composition. Most likely though, I just wanted an excuse to share a small selection of what I’ve seen today with you. So here it is. You’re welcome.