Tuscan Traveler

The mayor says he’s going to fix it, but he doesn’t seem to have time while he’s throwing White Night festivities and Blue Night parties and stopping the bus system in its track by creating the fabulous pedestrian zone around the Duomo. He’s having equal trouble with potholes. But potholes and graffiti aren’t sexy and aren’t likely to disappear. So I will stay Burnt To A Crisp about the graffiti destroying Florence.

OPEN YOUR EYES TO comics DAY & Duke of Urbino

The mayor granted a permit to OPEN YOUR EYES TO comics DAY –maybe to glam up graffiti. But it was for only for one day and now the artwork has been vandalized.

OPEN YOUR EYES TO comics DAY on Banca Toscana

Florence has a long history of graffiti. But the graffiti of the 16^th century  now peeks out from behind the graffiti of today.

16th century graffiti meets 2010 graffiti

Scrawls flank my front door.

Burnt to a Crisp about my doorway

The most famous ugly graffiti in Italy is in Verona – along the wall to the fake balcony of Shakespeare’s fantasy Juliet.

Mess in the name of Love

Most of the graffiti in Florence is attributed to teenaged dweebs. Gangs aren’t tagging boundaries inside the historic center. English proficiency isn’t common, which doesn’t necessarily let the thousands of American students off the hook. Italian is the language of choice for these vandals.

Madonna in tabernacle looks down on scrawled walls

But not always … In 2008, a Japanese television crew filming on top of the Duomo caught some familiar scribbles and broadcast them. Unlike the justice system of Florence or, in fact, anywhere in Italy, the Japanese found in this a moment of national shame and came down hard on a high school teacher for expressing his love in ink on a wall.

A 19-year-old fashion student from Japan’s Gifu University was caught in another incident.  She offered 600 euros ($950 in 2008) to repair the damage.

“We accept the apologies (and) we accept the money exceptionally for the gesture’s great sense of civility,” said the Duomo’s chief curator Anna Mitrano, flanked by the university’s visiting rector, Yukitoshi Matsuda.

Except for Ms. Mitrano, Italians have expressed shock and amusement over Japan’s attitude. Perhaps a little more shame and pride and a little less official complacency and public cynicism would help bring Florence’s center back to its historic beauty.

Graffiti is known worldwide, but word itself has nothing to do with scrawls on walls. In Italy, the words sgraffito and sgraffiti come from the Italian word sgraffiare (”to scratch”), ultimately from the Greek γράφειν (gráphein), meaning “to write”.

Graffiti, the bane of all modern cities in the form of spray paint, in its original sense refers to marks scratched onto a surface with a tapered point. The graffito technique has been used since prehistoric times. Decades ago, my father showed me graffito animals, birds and people carved on the tufa cave walls in northern New Mexico. But in Florence, starting in the 1400s, it was a technique of wall design, where the top layer of pigment or colored plaster is scratched through to reveal an underlying layer.

Elaborate 16th century graffiti on Bianca Cappello's house

“The historian and artist Giorgio Vasari recorded the graffito technique step by step. First, one paints the wall of a palazzo with a layer of lime plaster, coloured with burnt herbs or other dark pigments. Once the first layer is dry, another is painted on, this time of white plaster, distributed uniformly. On top of this second layer are laid punched-out designs, or stencils, which are reproduced on the wall with powdered charcoal (referred to as tecnica dello spolvero in Italian). A tapered awl is then used to trace the resulting pattern on the wall, cutting through the layer of white plaster to reveal the darker, underlying layer. Thus, by using the same colours as a palazzo’s frescos, the graffito designs could be used to add shadow and depth to the overall decoration.” (FirenzeTurismo.it)

Allegorical graffiti on the façade of Palazzo Ramirez de Montalvo

My favorite examples of historic graffiti in Florence were created during the second half of the 16th century, when the graffito technique was used to design Mannerist allegories incorporating grotesque (meaning in the style of the “grotto”) designs and figures. These are still partially visible on the façade of the Palazzo Ramirez de Montalvo in Borgo degli Albizi and fully realized on the House of Bianca Cappello (grotesque sgraffito decoration by Bernardino Poccetti, 1566) on Via Maggio.

When using the term graffiti to mean defacing buildings, Michelangelo has the dubious pleasure of allegedly being one of the first famous graffiti artists – not with paint, but in the caveman version of scratching a design with a sharp point. On the corner of the Palazzo Vecchio, the one nearest to the Uffizi Gallery, any visitor to Florence can find a carving of a man’s face.

Did Micheangelo deface the front of the Palazzo Vecchio?

There is more than one version of the story, but the artistry is attributed only to Michelangelo. One version states that ever willing to take a dare, and supremely confident, Michelangelo turned his back, carving free-hand without looking, into the pietra serena of the city hall’s wall, he etched his own profile into the stone. Another variation has it that he carved blindly the likeness of a personal foe, so that Florentines would never forget the man’s face.

Sanctioned graffiti for OPEN YOUR EYES TO Comics DAY

Last week, a one-day comics festival, OPEN YOUR EYES TO Comics DAY, came to Florence. Via del Corso was decorated with four modern graffiti wall decorations – sanctioned by the mayor. These were not scratched into walls, but painted on to wallboard. They won’t last 400 years, but they are better than the scourge that defiles most of Florence’s walls.

To be continued …