The Stones of Florence

Rating:
Summary: Jade colored glasses
Review: After reading The Stones of Florence, I speculated that although author Mary McCarthy has a good feel for words and a certain passion for Florence, she must have been in a bad mood when she started writing.

Now, I'm not someone who looks for travel literature that overly romanticizes the places it covers. But painting an accurate picture of a place is one thing, and grumbling under ones breath is something else.

Yet with The Stones of Florence one can almost imagine Ms. McCarthy's scowl as she rails against other writers who write about Florence, about the tourists who visit the city, the traffic on its streets, and the smog that surrounds it. Although modern environmental laws have improved the air quality in Florence in the years since this book was written in 1964, the city has become an ever more popular subject for writers, the traffic has worsened, and the crowds of tourists have grown larger and less cosmopolitan ... I shudder to imagine what Ms. McCarthy would write today.

In my eyes, most of the book's value comes from the fact that it is considered one of the parents of modern travel writing, a blend of history, literature, autobiography, and intelligence gathering. For students of the genre, this would probably make an interesting read. But for anyone thinking of reading this ahead of a long-awaited trip to the storied Tuscan capital, I dare say that seeing the city first from Ms. McCarthy's often jaded point of view could color the experience in an undesirable way.

Rating:
Summary: SHAMELESSLY UGLY!!
Review: Forget about this edition of the book--which I would love to find another original 1963 edition of to replace the one I gave away. The cheeseballs at Harvest who choose to reprint this title by shooting pocket edition-sized pages of toothy paper and then enlarging it to trade paperback size should be horsewhipped. Fat broken type throughout. Nearly unreadable. Coyote, buck ugly printing. I understand the margins in publishing, but a good selling backlist title like this should elicit some respect from the publisher, even if they have none for their readers. Somebody should be canned for this want of taste and judgement. We're talking about Florence here. The point of the book is aesthetics. Get the book from the library and wait for a new edition from another publisher. Are all Harvest books this poor? Venice Observed is also a travesty.

Rating:
Summary: History, art, literature all rolled into one
Review: I have the large hard-cover version of this book with absolutely wonderful black and white photographs. They are what originally drew me to it - I had read "The Group" in college but wasn't a big fan of Mary McCarthy. Well, that changed fast!

In Florence, more than in any other city I know of, history and art are entwined in such a way that you can't talk about one without talking about the other. In this book, Ms. McCarthy conveys this duality better than I have ever seen done before. Her style is quite literary, in a dreamy way, so it reads smoothly and flows logically. You learn a lot without realizing it. The photographs are somewhat old-fashioned; sharp-focus B&W, many of minute details. The text and the pictures complement each other beautifully - her style is such that even without the pictures, you can see what she's talking about in your imagination - the very best kind of writing.

Ms. McCarthy also wrote "Venice Observed," a similar kind of book. Both are out of print, but are not too hard to find in used book stores, where I found the Venice book. I highly recommend them to anyone with an interest in Florence, art, the Renaissance, history...

Rating:
Summary: History, art, literature all rolled into one
Review: I have the large hard-cover version of this book with absolutely wonderful black and white photographs. They are what originally drew me to it - I had read "The Group" in college but wasn't a big fan of Mary McCarthy. Well, that changed fast!

In Florence, more than in any other city I know of, history and art are entwined in such a way that you can't talk about one without talking about the other. In this book, Ms. McCarthy conveys this duality better than I have ever seen done before. Her style is quite literary, in a dreamy way, so it reads smoothly and flows logically. You learn a lot without realizing it. The photographs are somewhat old-fashioned; sharp-focus B&W, many of minute details. The text and the pictures complement each other beautifully - her style is such that even without the pictures, you can see what she's talking about in your imagination - the very best kind of writing.

Ms. McCarthy also wrote "Venice Observed," a similar kind of book. Both are out of print, but are not too hard to find in used book stores, where I found the Venice book. I highly recommend them to anyone with an interest in Florence, art, the Renaissance, history...

Rating:
Summary: After an irritating start, a real pleasure
Review: In the first chapter of THE STONES OF FLORENCE Mary McCarthy weighs in against everyone who might want to know about Florence who deeply irritates her: casual tourists, Europeans who love Florence deeply... who, you might wonder, is the book intended for? But once she gets this out of her system (though not ever entirely--as the book continues she often takes little sideswipes at everyone, even including Goethe!), the book settles down to be a very idiosyncratic and informative study of a city Mccarthy loves and knows well. Skip the intro (or at least try not to let it get under your collar) and keep plugging along: this is a highly readable and fun little book.

Rating:
Summary: Essential if going to Florence
Review: McCarthy writes with wit about the history, current conditions(1964, when the book was published) and tourist attractions in Florence. Her advice is invaluable for finding little-known churches, and her descriptions of life in the city, and advice on when to go and where to stay, are vivid and helpful for any traveler in Italy.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the best travel book ever. The best book on Florence
Review: Of all the works on this great city, this book stands above the rest. It is both a travel guide and a art history book.

Rating:
Summary: If these stones could talk....
Review: THE STONES OF FLORENCE is a complex art history book Mary McCarthy first had published in 1959. The original contained photographs and this paperback has none. I think my reading would have been a bit easier if I had seen the photographs, but perhaps they were few or not that good. I've taken enough art history classes that covered Italian art and traveled and visited museums housing Florentine art, so I could visualize many of the works McCarthy discusses. If you have no background on this suject you might find the book tough going. On the other hand, one has to start somewhere (though this may not be the best place). STONES is filled with enough anectdotal material to make it interesting, but if you don't aready know who Giotto, Cimabue, Ucello, Masaccio, Fra Agelico, Donatello and Brunelleschi were, McCarthy's discourse may prove dense at times.

McCarthy covers the history of Florence, but she is mainly interested in the Medieval and Renaissance art of the city so she moves very quickly to the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. My sense is that she is favorably disposed to the Medieval art (13th and 14th), likes the Renaissance art a little less (14th and 15th), and positively dislikes the mad, bad Mannerists (16th). For example, describing the Mannerist Il Rosso's painting "Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro" she says it reminds one of "the half-carnival atmosphere of an insane asylum or of a brothel during a police raid."

McCarthy says Florentine art collapsed in the 16th Century and never recovered, largely owing to the Medicis--those former pharmacists who thought they understood art. She says perhaps the Mannerists only reflected what they saw--Florence as a commercial hub with no spritiual core.

She says Florence, unlike Venice and Sienna is a manly town. Although various illustrious visitors have been attacted to the city over the ages, like Queen Victoria who "did water colors" at Vincigliata, or Florence Nightengale's parents who named her for the city, they mostly preferred to stay in villas in the Tuscan countryside or other cities in Tuscany. Florence has been and remains a commercial city (home of Gucci and Feragamo) and for the most part, it's buildings are blocky, black and white, and businesslike. She says Florence was a Guelph city (for the Pope, one of whom was a Medici) and one of the many Guelph-Ghibilline conflicts that involved Florence took place with Pistoia--source of the word pistol.

STONES is an interesting book and one that may provide you with some colorful information about the city of Florence, and perhaps persuade you to take your next vacation in Venice.

Rating:
Summary: If these stones could talk....
Review: THE STONES OF FLORENCE is a complex art history book Mary McCarthy first had published in 1959. The original contained photographs and this paperback has none. I think my reading would have been a bit easier if I had seen the photographs, but perhaps they were few or not that good. I've taken enough art history classes that covered Italian art and traveled and visited museums housing Florentine art, so I could visualize many of the works McCarthy discusses. If you have no background on this suject you might find the book tough going. On the other hand, one has to start somewhere (though this may not be the best place). STONES is filled with enough anectdotal material to make it interesting, but if you don't aready know who Giotto, Cimabue, Ucello, Masaccio, Fra Agelico, Donatello and Brunelleschi were, McCarthy's discourse may prove dense at times.

McCarthy covers the history of Florence, but she is mainly interested in the Medieval and Renaissance art of the city so she moves very quickly to the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries. My sense is that she is favorably disposed to the Medieval art (13th and 14th), likes the Renaissance art a little less (14th and 15th), and positively dislikes the mad, bad Mannerists (16th). For example, describing the Mannerist Il Rosso's painting "Moses Defending the Daughters of Jethro" she says it reminds one of "the half-carnival atmosphere of an insane asylum or of a brothel during a police raid."

McCarthy says Florentine art collapsed in the 16th Century and never recovered, largely owing to the Medicis--those former pharmacists who thought they understood art. She says perhaps the Mannerists only reflected what they saw--Florence as a commercial hub with no spritiual core.

She says Florence, unlike Venice and Sienna is a manly town. Although various illustrious visitors have been attacted to the city over the ages, like Queen Victoria who "did water colors" at Vincigliata, or Florence Nightengale's parents who named her for the city, they mostly preferred to stay in villas in the Tuscan countryside or other cities in Tuscany. Florence has been and remains a commercial city (home of Gucci and Feragamo) and for the most part, it's buildings are blocky, black and white, and businesslike. She says Florence was a Guelph city (for the Pope, one of whom was a Medici) and one of the many Guelph-Ghibilline conflicts that involved Florence took place with Pistoia--source of the word pistol.

STONES is an interesting book and one that may provide you with some colorful information about the city of Florence, and perhaps persuade you to take your next vacation in Venice.

Rating:
Summary: A City of Age-old Contradictions and the Great Renaissance
Review: There are several reasons to go for Mary McCarthy's THE STONES OF FLORENCE. You are about to go to, are in or have been to Florence, Italy; you enjoy the literature of travel; you appreciate a well-written book. I fall into the latter two categories and thoroughly enjoyed this idiosyncratic work. McCarthy wrote this in the very early 1960's when the very nature of Tuscany's chief city couldn't help but attract tourists at the same time it seemingly did everything to discourage them. She swiftly dispenses with the contemporary city and spends the book peering back into its Renaissance soul, primarily the 14th through the 16th centuries when Florence was the Western center of intellectual activity. What emerges is the picture of the greats-Dante, Giotto, Brunellseschi, Donatello, Fra Angelico, della Robbia, Botticelli, Da Vinci, Machiavelli, Michelangelo, Cellini, and various Medici to name a few-functioning amidst social, political and occasional natural upheaval. As she suggests about one artist, perhaps the productivity was inspired by the need to make order out of chaos. That and no doubt the fact that the Florentines used and valued art in their daily lives in ways that it is not today. That science, engineering, architecture and art were closely aligned offered cross disciplinary assistance is also key-without the mathematicians, for instance, would artists have been able to as easily co-opt perspective and volume?

THE STONES OF FLORENCE is both direct and impressionistic. McCarthy's prose moves right along, never bogged down by a "perhaps" or the need to recite contemporary opinion. Her progress from the 14th to the 16th century is zig-zaggy, so that most of the Renaissance is spoken of as if on a continuum. There is a sly wit at work (in the personality contest, the score is Leonardo 10, Michelangelo 0) and McCarthy presents a strong spine-she is unequivocal about the decline of the Renaissance in the 16th century as the major players moved away from Florence and the populace fell into a "gee-gaw" mentality.

This is a travelogue and, after a fashion, an art history catalogue, and yet there are no pictures (in this edition). That and its not too chronological organization would suggest an abstract mess but it is nothing of the kind. I became very much aware of how much of the Renaissance was covered in my early education as every reference brought up old lessons and visits to museums out of the tar pits of memory. I felt at home, not at a loss.