Others speak of other starting points. Giotto's work is one. Even if he never mastered the rules of mathematics that Brunelleschi did, it is in that early Master that we see the stirrings of what would become the art of the Italian Renaissance. Others write of the poet Petrarch, and the symbolism of his ascent of Mount Ventoux, and the emergence of a new world-transcending spirit evidenced there. Perhaps at the root of all of these are those who mark the start of this cultural shift as beginning with the figure of Francis of Assisi. Poor, powerless, and broken, there was no force greater for the Italian imagination than this figure who opened up all of nature and nature's world to the future. The heritage of not-quite vanished Rome and the impoverished broken body of the Christian saint of Assisi are the two ingredients most needed to understand the particular flavour of the Italian Renaissance.
Here we were accosted by more beggars, including the woman we had run into before. We declined each of them in turn as we made our way toward the steps of the Cathedral, but I was beyond shocked when the original woman answered my "no" by taking her cup and hitting me in the face with it! I was more stunned than hurt, although my lip and nose smarted for some minutes. I kept repeating to Erik, "I can't believe she hit me!" And it was here that Erik and I both noticed two things. First, it seemed that every one of the beggar-women begging among the tourists around the Cathedral was pregnant. Odd, that. Right? Then, just as I was beginning to get suspicious, Erik pointed to one on the steps for whom the seam running around the edge of her "pregnant" belly was visible through her clothes as she paused in her work. Unbelievable. Here I was stuck in between my admiration of a celebration of human achievement, but also having been worried and ashamed of my unwillingness to trust that those begging of me had a real need that I was neglecting or rejecting. And the truth here was something else.
Go to: Florence: Day One, Part Two