Not in Florence

Back in the day, not so long ago, we went a number of times to Florence just before Christmas. The best time to go, with the city returned to the Florentines, with so few tourists, the shops festive, and the restaurants relaxed and pleased to see you. And the galleries and museums are almost empty — you can wander so slowly and peacefully. We have, for example, even had to have the lights especially turned on for us in the Chapel of the Magi in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi to see Gozzoli’s stunning frescos. But after some trying months, we couldn’t quite muster the required zest and get-up-and-go to travel this year. So this is written from home instead.

But there arrived today (another) book about one of my favourites among the Florentine artists — an as-new (yet remarkably cheap) copy of the very large-format volume on Ghirlandaio in that terrific old Masters of Italian Art series. And the really spacious pages for once do justice to the extraordinary frescos in Santa Trinita and Santa Maria Novella. Not quite the magic of being there in the Tornabuoni Chapel, and seeing for example the Visitation again (as pictured above) with the poignant portrait of Giovanna degli Albizzi Tornabuoni, already dead at the age of twenty in her second pregnancy, and here memorialised for ever. But it is a real delight to slowly browse through the book by a warm fire on a cold evening, not in Florence. And next year, maybe …?

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