This summer I spent a few days among friends in a very nice house in the South of Tuscany. A happy life in Chianti’s perfectly mastered but enchanting landscapes: good food, excellent wines, the discovery of Sienese painters from the « Buon Secolo della Pittura Senese » in Montepulciano, Pienza and San Quirico d’Orcia, and a few outings to Siena. Maybe because it is essentially a pedestrian city, walking in Siena, even more than elsewhere in Italy is like entering step-by-step in the history of the city and its neighborhoods – the contrade – from the Renaissance to the Middle Ages up to the Roman foundations.
During these few days, between the exhibitions, walks in the cities and the hours chatting with friends, there was little time left for books. Furthermore, breaking my habits, I had come without any reading taking place in Tuscany. Fortunately, our friends’ library was resourceful. “Il Palio delle contrade morte (not available in English) by the Italian duo Fruttero – Lucentini is an excellent novel that leads the reader in the secret, fascinating but sometimes scary world of the Palio, the century-old horse race on the Piazza del Campo which captivates the entire city twice every summer.
Another book which I recently read and which takes place, at least in part, in Tuscany is “The English Patient” by Michael Ondaatje. Those who first watched the movie, will probably remember more the scenes in the desert and in Cairo. But a large part of this wonderful novel’s plot, distinguished by the Booker Prize, is set during the Allies’ advance through Italy, in the Villa San Girolamo, an old Tuscan monastery damaged by bombs. It is there that Hana, a nurse in the Canadian Army takes care of Count László de Almásy, a Hungarian cartograph who was burned in Northern Africa. Step-by-step he reveals the secrets of his desert expeditions and of his love story with Katharine Clifton. It is also in this former abbey – close to Pienza in the movie, but it seems Ondaatje took inspiration for the novel from one villa in Fiesole – that Hana falls in love with Kip, the Indian sapper. If like me you have seen the movie more than 20 years ago, I encourage you the read the book, and then watch the movie one more time.
If the most memorable scenes from the movie « The English Patient» are those in the North African desert, there is one in Tuscany which I find fascinating. It deviates somewhat from the novel by embellishing a few of its lines, but this detour gives us the pleasure of watching Juliette Binoche, dangling from the ceiling and lighting flares to discover and then admire the wonderful frescoes of The Legend of the True Cross painted by Piero della Francesca in the Bacci chapel in San Francesco church in Arezzo.
