How to avoid Stendhal’s syndrome in Florence

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An Art Lover’s Guide to Florence

By Judith Testa

A book that combines politics, sex and religion is bound to be a bestseller, but it may come as a surprise to find that these topics form the core of an art book centred on Renaissance Florence, and one aimed directly at art tourists. Guidebooks are usually written for those who intend to travel but don't know where to start. In the past, those unversed in academic art history and seeking an authority that would direct them to the most prized art in Florence had to turn to the broader base of tourist guides, or those that are specifically focused on a single gallery with explanations of the art pieces held in its collection.

The reasoning of author Judith Testa, professor emerita in art history at Northern Illinois University, is simple. Art, she says, cannot be appreciated through the checklist approach. Indeed, Florence is known for infecting summer art tourists with ‘Stendhal’s Syndrome’, a malady described by the 19th-century French author. The symptoms include dizziness, panic, confusion, fainting and overwhelming exhaustion caused by trying to see too many works of art in too short a time. ‘By stopping to look closely at just a few works’, writes Testa, ‘visitors can slow themselves down’. In contemporary life where we are rushed, pushed and thrust into tight schedules that focus on productivity and outcomes, this strategy is refreshing.

Testa brings us into the world of Florentine art through the people who commissioned and created it.Her eye for historic detail weaves a rich cloth when combined with context and her direct and engaging style compels one to continue reading.

Establishing,in the first chapter, the historical background of Florence in the 15th and 16th centuries under the governance of the Medicis, Testa then encourages the reader to wander in any order through the 15 buildings and their art covered in the rest of the book, just as one would when approaching the actual city and its artworks. Her selected buildings include the Cathedral of Florence, the Cathedral Baptistery, the Brancacci Chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, the Piazza della Signoria, Orsanmichele, the Ospedale degli Innocenti, the monastery of San Marco, the Medici Palace and its chapel, the Rucellai Palace, the Sassetti Chapel in S. Trinita, the Tornabuoni Chapel in S. Maria Novella, the Museo degli Uffizi, the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Michelangelo’s David, and Michelangelo’s Medici Chapel.

Where contemporary art is often the product of a single person’s interpretative experience, art in the Renaissance was considered a necessary part of people’s lives, conjoining public and private experiences, often binding together politics, sex and religion in ways that we may find hard to understand today. Sexual themes were incorporated for political purposes, and religious art commissioned by secular institutions were imbued with political meanings.

For example, Donatello’s Judith Beheading Holofernes, thought to be commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici in the 1460s, clearly links sex and violence, but knowing its historical context is to imbue it with political understanding. Donatello stays true to the story, taken from the Book of Judith in the Catholic Old Testament, of a beautiful and virtuous widow who saved her city from the invading Assyrian army led by Holofernes. Its initial commission was for the private garden of the newly completed Medici Palace, and the original inscription asserted Medici power. Its confiscation and migration to the public space of the Piazza della Signoria after the expulsion of the Medici family, and the removal of the original inscription for another that relished civic victory, served to remind those in power of the fate of tyrants.

Nevertheless, in 1504 the city council felt the statue was too confrontational. It was, after all, a seductive woman in the act of murdering an unsuspecting, attractive, well-muscled man, and they removed it from public view. By situating each work in its changing historical context, the reader feels they are undertaking a complex journey made understandable by a personal guide.

As an anecdotal conclusion, it is said that Queen Victoria enjoyed Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland so much that she suggested he dedicate his next book to her. Working within the academic discipline of mathematics, he duly presented her with An Elementary Treatise on Determinants. In line with this spirit of affectionate paradox, and drawnto Testa’s writing, it was no surprise to learn that she is also the author of Rome is Love Spelled Backward: Enjoying Art and Architecture in the Eternal City. Once Testa retired from teaching, she focused her research on her childhood love of baseball, and wrote a biography of Sal Maglie, a star pitcher from the 1950s. Other reviews have indicated that Testa’s satisfying writing skills smoothly carry over to baseball. I, for one, am delighted that she has returned to art history with this current work, and it comes with the highest recommendation.

An Art Lover’s Guide to Florence  by Judith Testa is published by Northern Illinois University Press, 2012. 269 pp., 37 mono illustrations, 1 map ISBN  978-0-87580-680-8 (pbk)