Unschooling in Florence

My husband and I have just celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary. I can’t quite believe so many years have rushed by; I certainly don’t feel 20 years older J... Anyway, we went to Florence, Italy, for a week, and immersed ourselves in art, culture and history. The ultimate art education experience!!!

It was wonderful, and  the realisation of a dream that was born the first time we ever did anything together – we were just friends back in 1986 when we went to see that movie called ‘Room with a View’, set in Florence. On our anniversary we stayed in the beautiful hotel on the river Arno where the movie was filmed. So special, and a lovely way to celebrate so many years of love and friendship.

We had an AMAZING time. Florence is special. There are no proper words to describe the feast of art, culture, history. One drowns in it, comes up gasping for breath and dives down again for more. It was wonderful. (As you can see, I am still gasping...)

Craig and I spent about an hour sitting in front of the David. Nothing is like the reality. He has to be one of the most photographed sculptures in the whole world, but when you see him, you feel as if you have never seen him at all. What beauty, power, strength. He makes me believe the Bible story – that it was really just as described. Michelangelo’s David is so young, so vulnerable, but so sure of himself. At the beginning of his path – well prepared and able to do what is needed. Gauging the risk but confident in his God-given ability. Oh, I can’t put it in words yet. Maybe I will be able to later....

I felt that all my youthful championing of Michelangelo Buonarroti (he was my favourite artist from when I read ‘the Agony & the Ecstasy’ when I was 15) was validated. We saw every one of Michelangelo’s works in Florence; hunted them down as the days went by. It was such a special experience. Which is my favourite??? Sooo hard to say... Really, he was an absolutely outstanding artist. A career spanning 70 years, and so consistent.

One of my favourites was his ‘Battle of the Centaurs’ – completed when he was just 16 years old. So much for the idea that it is not possible to see what you are alive for from a young age!!! The hand of destiny must have been upon him from birth.

We enjoyed the ‘Bacchus’ – it is really a fun sculpture, but yet with a hint of a deeper message (warning?) if one is willing to look for it.

Photographs of his incomplete ‘Slaves’ had never interested me; in real life they moved me to tears. They sum up so much of what the struggles of life are about.

And his Pieta, incomplete, carved in his old age for his tomb (but not put there in the end), and reputedly with his self-portrait in the face of Nicodemus – I loved it.

I was surprised at the Doni Tondo  in the Uffizi. It is so much bigger than I thought. And once again, photographs do nothing to prepare one for the reality, beyond helping one identify what one is looking at. He always said that he was not a painter. Hmmmn! No comment needed – just look at the work Outstandingly beautiful.

We did all the touristy things – climbed to the top of the Duomo to see the view, did the bus tour along the Piazzale Michelangelo, wandered along the Arno, shopped and ate until the purses were empty, and of course, rubbed the boar’s nose to ensure that we would return one day. I discovered another sculptor whose work I liked – Giambologna. Do you know him? How about ‘Rape of the Sabine Women’ to jog the memory? I knew the sculpture, but not that it was done by him. He did some lovely work. My favourite was one called ‘Victory’, about the victory of Florence over Pisa in some conflict that had occurred. Florence is depicted as a graceful woman; Pisa as the strong but beaten man. The grace and movement in the sculpture is lovely.

And of course Donatello. Craig loved his Mary Magdalene, carved in wood. Her humble, uncertain supplication; her longing for mercy but her knowledge that she did not deserve it. It all shows. But they have positioned the sculpture in front of a sculpture of Jesus on the cross – she seems to be looking into the eyes of Jesus and He, knowingly, back into hers. And her prayers are answered. Powerful stuff.

We also did a few less ‘usual’ things – eg we, not Italian, and not Catholic, went to mass at Santo Spirito (where Michelangelo’s wooden crucifix humbles one in its simplicity); we didn’t understand a word of the service, but it was a special experience. God’s presence supersedes language. We also searched for and found the English cemetery, where Elizabeth Barrettt Browning is buried (‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways...’). We visited the first orphanage in Europe – where scenes from another favourite move ‘Tea with Mussolini’ were filmed. Found where Michelangelo carved the David and imagined him hard at work. Saw Ghirlandaio’s beautiful frescos in Santa Maria Novella, done at the time when Michelangelo was one of his many apprentices, and could easily visualise the excited and happy youngster he must have been at that time, finally getting parental approval to be involved with art. We wandered the streets at night, listening to an achingly beautiful flautist (we bought his CD later) play in the Piazzale Signora, practised our little bits of Italian with increasing confidence as the week went by. We were there at a good time – apparently it gets sooo busy as the years goes on. We were told that there are times that you literally can’t move in the streets.

On our anniversary we stayed at the very expensive Hotel Degli Orafi – on the banks of the Arno with a view of Ponte Vecchio. We stayed in the room in which scenes from one of our favourite movies ‘A Room with a View’ was filmed, and came home after an excursion to find a basket of fruit and a very expensive bottle of champagne laid in ice – complementary from the hotel for our special anniversary occasion!

Florentine food is excellent. We stuffed ourselves, particularly as the menu has so many courses - appetiser, prima (first course - normally pasta of some sort), main course (fish, meat or pizza), cheese, desert, coffee and all this finished off with limonchello, a rather potent lemon liquer, especially to me, who so seldom drinks alcohol of any sort!!!

We found Florence clean and safe; patrolled by friendly, handsome and very well dressed Carabinieri (police) – complete with beautiful black capes in the evenings! Sadly, there are lots of beggars (Eastern European and Roma (Gypsy)), and we were warned to watch out for pickpockets on the buses of all places! And we had a good giggle at the illegal itinerant streetsellers – selling art and other odds and ends, they set up their wares and keep an eye out for police. When they see them they pack up their stuff in seconds and join the meandering crowds. It seemed that the cops knew exactly what was going on and that it was a complicated game of cat and mouse, the rules of which were not terribly clear, but which remained lighthearted. I suspect that the cops just keep things under control so that tourists are not unduly harassed, but that it is not a main agenda item to stamp out.

Anyway, I am sounding horribly like a travel agent, so I will end this missive, get dressed and spend some time with my kids. Poor things – they were sick all week, and no Mom to take care of them. Still, they seem to have survived, and Kerrin seems rather pleased with the leather jacket we brought her as a thank you for all the extra childcare. We had friends come and stay in the house with the children, but Kerrin was the main caregiver for our family.

I thought I would tell you all of the above because my heart is full and overflowing, but also because it is such an illustration of unschooling. No one made us go to Florence and spend a week looking at art. There were no textbooks, no teachers, no tests or exams. There was only interest, affinity, curiosity, wonder.... We have come back enriched, enlightened, informed – in short, educated. Craig and I were saying that one should be allowed to collect one’s diploma at the airport – just being there opens up the world in new ways.

We know that unschooling works. It was great to see it in action in such a concentrated way in our own lives. As Charlotte Mason said: “There is no education but self-education”.

To conclude, a little story: At one of the museums, we were waiting in a queue behind some American tourists. There was a mother and daughter in front of us. Daughter was about 10 or 11. Mom jokingly said: “Remember, there will be a test after this” “Oh stop it Mom” said daughter. “Well, you must not think that just because you are not in school you can’t learn...” I thought of interrupting their conversation with a comment or two of my own, but my English blood won through – it would have been rude. So I contented myself with a look at Craig. In spite of her words, everything in the interaction conveyed this lady’s underlying belief that school IS where we learn....