Machiavelli's Oak

A frustrating yet fruitful exile

Florence seen from just outside the village of Sant'Andrea in Percussina where the Machiavelli family had their estate.

In 1513, when the historian, politician, diplomat, philosopher, author and playwright Niccolo' Machiavelli (1469-1527) was banished from Florence to his family estate by the reinstated Medici, it must have been poignant, if not painful, to see the towers and cupolas of his native city, so near and yet so far.

The Machiavelli seat, essentially a grand farmhouse, on the road winding between Florence and San Casciano: on the opposite side of the road stands the Albergaccio inn which Machiavelli frequented. Note the height and security of the lowest windows: the road would have been a busy and at times dangerous thoroughfare.

the entrance to L'Albergaccio

A 19th century vision of 15th century Florence

George Eliot and the Passage of Time in Florence

"...a world-famous city, which has hardly changed its outline since the days of Columbus, ...seeming to stand as an almost unviolated symbol...to remind us that we still resemble the men of the past more than we differ from them..."

Florence in 1490: bird's eye view from the west

In her novel Romola (1862-63) George Eliot (or Mary Anne Evans) offers a vision of Florence which, besides displaying her deep grasp of the history, language and culture of the city during the Renaissance, regales the modern reader with a vivid portrait of the town at the height of its glory.

 

1914 edition of Romola

But it is her Proem which interests me here. Eliot begins her preamble to Romola by underlining how little many world-famous cities have changed over the centuries, at least at their historical hearts. Her assertion held truer in the 19th century than it does in the 21st, but in the case of historical Florence, it is arguably still - miraculously - the case.

The Garden at Villa La Foce

Foreigners in Val d'Orcia

Cecil Pinsent's closed green garden at La Foce with its crisp hedges. Monte Amiata is palely visible to the south-east

If you look at the historical black and white photographs on the Villa La Foce website, as backdrop to the depictions of hardworking and celebrating sharecropping farmers, you will see a lunar landscape: harsh, barren-looking hills, and stretches of empty terrain succumbing to the plough for the first time. Today's intensely-cultivated, ordered and verdant sweep of valley and hills with the famous cypress-lined road winding up the hill opposite La Foce were unimaginable 100 years ago. 

Val d'Orcia before the new owners of La Foce intervened

This ostensibly timeless scene has come to symbolise Tuscany, despite the fact that it represents only the area south of Siena, that it is completely man-made and of recent creation, and that its creators were a British garden designer, a British-American woman and her Florentine husband.

Weeding Shakespeare

The Bard in the Yard 

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds

2 Henry IV 4.4.

Spring!

When daisies pied, and violets blue,
And lady-smocks all silver-white
And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue
Do paint the meadows with delight,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
“Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo...” 

When shepherds pipe on oaten straws,
And merry larks are ploughmen’s clocks,
When turtles tread,and rooks, and daws,
And maidens bleach their summer smocks,
The cuckoo then, on every tree,
Mocks married men; for thus sings he,
“Cuckoo; Cuckoo, cuckoo...”

William Shakespeare, 

Song from Love's Labour's Lost (1594-5)

in advance celebration of the 450th anniversary of his birth 

(circa 23rd April 1564)

Wool and Culture

Another glimpse into Florence's past: the Arte della Lana and the custodians of Dante's legacy 

The Arte della Lana building, formerly tower of the Compiobbesi (13th century) with the Orsanmichele church behind, to which it is linked by a bridge. It stands between via Calimala, via Orsanmichele and via dell'Arte della Lana

From 1308 the Arte della Lana building was the 'headquarters' of one of the richest and most powerful of the seven major guilds of medieval Florence, the Wool Guild. At its height the Arte delle Lana employed one third of the working population of Florence. Its coat of arms is an Agnus Dei, lamb of God, an emblem to be found in various representations within and without the building.

The Nightingale

A Nightingale Sang 

Luscinia megarhynchos

A small, modest, brown and beige bird, the nightingale, thanks to his song (for only the male sings), has inspired authors and composers from Homer to T.S Eliot and counting. So you're curious? Here's a partial list: Homer, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Ovid, Virgil, Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, George Gascoigne, Shakespeare, Milton, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Beethoven, Hans Christian Andersen, Joseph Lamb and T.S. Eliot have all either mentioned the nightingale or the myth of Philomena and Procne associated with the bird. Keats's Ode to a Nightingale is the poem which first springs to mind, but to quote another particularly apt example, here is Shelley in his A Defence of Poetry:  

A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody of an unseen musician, who feel that they are moved and softened, yet know not whence or why.
 

sheet music for Lamb's Nightingale Rag - which is attractive but bears little resemblance to a nightingale's warbling

Roses are Pink, Violets are Purple

 Presenting Le Ripe's Roses

My favourite colour for roses is pink, preferably palest pink. Many modern romantic clichés are connected to the red rose. Do we have Robbie Burns to thank for that, or is the source medieval, cf. the Roman de la Rose and the earlier cultivation of red and white roses in Europe?

illuminated manuscript of Roman de la Rose: note red roses in border; red and white roses were de rigueur in the medieval garden

Despite this, pink has to be the rose colour par excellence and by definition: rosa in Latin and Italian means rose, rosea in Latin is 'rosey' and in Italian rosa or color rosa means pink. The first recorded use of rose as a colour in English was in 1382.
 
More from Wikipedia: "The etymology of the color name rose is the same as that of the name of the rose flower. The name originates from Latin rosa, borrowed through Oscan from colonial Greek in southern Italy: rhodon (Aeolic form: wrodon), from Aramaic wurrdā, from Assyrian wurtinnu, from Old Iranian *warda (cf. Avestan warda, Sogdian ward, Parthian wâr)."

At Le Ripe we have mostly pale pink, white and some yellow/pale apricot roses. There is also a raspberry-pink intruder which may be relegated to a far corner of the orchard one day.

Here are some examples from our garden, flowering right now:

This is a David Austin, may be 'Shepherdess': pale apricot pink, wonderful fragrance

our beloved Nahema

Of middle May within a garden green

I’ mi trovai, fanciulle...
 

Angelo Poliziano 1454 - 1494

Politiano, detail from Sassetti Chapel, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Santa Trinità
 Florence

Angelo (or Angiolo) Poliziano, (Angiolo Ambrogini da Montepulciano), was born at Montepulciano and became tutor to the sons of Lorenzo de’ Medici; in 1480 he was professor of Greek and Latin literature at Florence; he held many benefices which were withdrawn on the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici in 1492; Poliziano died two years later. He wrote  numerous Latin poems, and, in Italian, lyrics, stanzas in praise of a tournament in which Giuliano, Lorenzo’s brother, had taken part, and the Orfeo, a lyrical drama. He perfected the ottava rima; was among the first scholars of the Renaissance, and a poet of great artistry.

Here is a ballad of his which illustrates both the art of the poet and the natural 'art' of the garden: 

a Literary Pie: the Timballo di Maccheroni

Timballo di Maccheroni - Macaroni Pie

 not a Tuscan dish but at times cooked at Le Ripe

The English translation - macaroni pie - simply does not do justice to such a grand and elaborate culinary creation: to render the idea one has to resort to French: Timbale of Pasta would be an improvement.

By contrast with the relatively simple and wholesome dishes of rural Tuscany, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies in its long and varied history gave rise to grand recipes of lengthy and complex preparation with the occasional surprising ingredient. Simpler fare flourished too of course, but here I am referring to the sort of food prepared for aristocratic banquets such as that described in Tomaso de Lampedusa's The Leopard. Here is the quotation in the original and in an adapted translation.

"L'oro brunito dell'involucro, la fraganza di zucchero e di cannella che ne emanava, non era che il preludio della sensazione di delizia che si sprigionava dall'interno quando il coltello squarciava la crosta: ne erompeva dapprima un fumo carico di aromi e si scorgevano poi i fegatini di pollo, le ovette dure, le sfilettature di prosciutto, di pollo e di tartufi nella massa untuosa, caldissima dei maccheroni corti, cui l'estratto di carne conferiva un prezioso color camoscio."

The burnished gold of the casing, the fragrance of sugar and cinnamon it exuded, was but a prelude to the sensation of delight which was released from the interior when the knife pierced the crust; first a spice-laden steam burst forth, then one glimpsed the chicken livers, the hard-boiled eggs, the slivers of ham, chicken and truffles in the rich, hot mass of pasta, to which the meat juices lent an exquisite chamois hue.
 

The recipe presented here is not the original one as described so sensuously in The Leopard. It is the Neapolitan version, as prepared in my husband's family's kitchens for decades. The principles and the procedure are the same, but the ingredients are less sophisticated; yet the end result is surely as mouthwatering, surprising and delicious as any timballo prepared in 19th century Donnafugata.

Water

Water II

Borro delle Ripe

Borro delle Ripacce

At le Ripe there are two streams which carry water down the hill towards the Pesa. The Pesa is a 'torrente' or ephemeral river, which means that it dries up or goes underground in the summer months. 

 The two streams can be seen on this map from the Catasto Leopoldino, the land register in Siena which dates back to the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Le Ripe was called Le Ripacce then.
In the Catasto today's borro delle Ripe was fosso del Nicione and the borro delle Ripacce was fosso delle Stinche. 

original land registry map with two streams in bottom right hand corner: 
the Pesa is at the top of map

 

The day before we returned home last November, a tremendous rainstorm had inundated the hill.The two streams overflowed and swept stones and earth every which way. 

For one account of this event, see our post for Saturday December 1st 2012. 
For another, more classical and poetic account of such phenomena, 
read below.

"...sunt igitur venti ni mirum corpora caeca,
quae mare, quae terras, quae denique nubila caeli
verrunt ac subito vexantia turbine raptant,
nec ratione fluunt alia stragemque propagant             
et cum mollis aquae fertur natura repente
flumine abundanti, quam largis imbribus auget
montibus ex altis magnus decursus aquai
fragmina coniciens silvarum arbustaque tota,
nec validi possunt pontes venientis aquai              
vim subitam tolerare: ita magno turbidus imbri
molibus incurrit validis cum viribus amnis,
dat sonitu magno stragem volvitque sub undis
grandia saxa, ruit qua quidquid fluctibus obstat."

"....the winds,

'Tis clear, are sightless bodies sweeping through

The sea, the lands, the clouds along the sky,

Vexing and whirling and seizing all amain;

And forth they flow and pile destruction round,

Even as the water's soft and supple bulk

Becoming a river of abounding floods,

Which a wide downpour from the lofty hills

Swells with big showers, dashes headlong down
Fragments of woodland and whole branching trees;

Nor can the solid bridges bide the shock

As on the waters whelm: the turbulent stream,

Strong with a hundred rains, beats round the piers,

Crashes with havoc, and rolls beneath its waves

Down-toppled masonry and ponderous stone,

Hurling away whatever would oppose."

Lucretius, De Rerum Natura Book I Verses 277-289

trans. William Ellery Leonard (1876 - 1944)

...content by De Rerum Natura 

Selva Oscura

from Gustave Doré's Inferno

  Dark Woods

 Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

mi ritrovai per una selva oscura

ché la diritta via era smarrita.

  Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

che nel pensier rinova la paura!

Midway on our life's journey, I found myself
In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell
About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough 

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel
The old fear stirring... (trans. Pinsky)

Not exactly a jolly post, but not without a point either. Dante Alighieri, who wrote these immortal lines, lived and breathed the air of this land in the late 13th and early 14th centuries. At Le Ripe we have such a 'dark wood' on our property, where we do not like to roam: it is north-facing, dank and the trees have been abandoned to themselves to grow tall and fall in storms. Yet it is a fragment of wilderness where porcupines, deer, boar and all the other creatures find refuge.

Dante is using the dark wood as a metaphor for a difficult moment in his life and these lines are the opening to his masterpiece La Divina Commedia. I studied Dante's Commedia many years ago; amongst other things it introduced me to the marvels of medieval Tuscany, echoes of which linger in our hills to this day.

All this was brought to mind by a delightful entry in our Visitors' Book, which I quote in part:

Midway through the potholes on the steep way
Where the straight path is lost in darkling woods
We longed to see the lights of Le Ripe
Promising cheer and warmth and other goods
Books, talk, food and suites....