MEDICI???
I can show you thousands of eloquent photos of the Medici and their world.
We can watch these one-time rulers of Florence wend their gallant way through fairy tale landscapes…
We can admire them as they disport on clouds, doing whatever it is that mythic dynasties do…
We can witness their performance in unremittingly splendid court ceremonies...
Then comes the tacky stuff and in Florence we have more than enough Medici kitsch to go around.
But who were these "Medici" really?
Does it even matter, three hundred years after their demise?
In Florence, however, the Medici are still in the mix.
And ultimately, it is this mix that matters most.
If you start peeling posters from a hoarding, you can find older ones beneath. In Florence, these might include the ghosts of Medici Months Past.
Sometimes, however, the Medici likenesses are absolutely recognizable, especially when corporate sponsors are paying and only the real thing will do.
In Florence it is often difficult to tell what is back-stage and what is the big show. For example, this stunning pile-up of historic architecture, including the tower of Palazzo Vecchio, rising over the Uffizi Gallery's rear exit.
Even in the most solidly constructed cities, pieces move around and things are not always what they seem.
Via de Medici, for example...
In more or less this area, formerly on the edge of Florence's central market, rose the first tentative palace of that aspiring family, superceded by other grander residences.
Then in the late Nineteenth Century, the ancient core of the city was aggressively redeveloped, leaving only an incidental byway with this imposing name.
Nighttime at another corner of the same street...
The Hotel Medici, with its eerie old-style neon sign...
...but only two stars.
Nearby and seemingly farther down the food-chain was the one-starred Pensione Maria Luisa de' Medici.
Now closed... As a female art collector, its Welsh proprietor Evelyn Morris felt a personal affinity with Maria Luisa (alternately Anna Maria Luisa), Last of the Medici.
The Florence we know today —the ultimate "Art City"— owes more to her than any of her Medici predecessors.
Last of that line, she designated the former Medici Capital as her chief heir, safeguarding its massive accumulation of paintings, sculptures, books, scientific instruments and other treasures.
Thus the Galleria degli Uffizi, the various museums in Palazzo Pitti and so on, through a very long list.
The Medici have been gone from Florence since 1743 —just short of three centuries, almost as long as they controlled the city.
So, what is there left to say?
After so many years on the ground, it is not easy for the Florentines to astonish me. But how can it be— in a city that confounds nostalgia with fetishism —that we find nothing online about La Medicea?
I would have expected a website at very least, possibly competing websites and maybe a support group for those still recovering from its departure some twenty-five years ago.
When I first came to Florence in the 1970s, locals were unanimous in steering me to La Medicea for linens and such on a grad student budget.
Why was it called La Medicea? I can't imagine that anyone thought to ask. They were in San Lorenzo, the family's home neighborhood. The name implied traditional quality, with the popular message of "good enough for the Medici and you too" thrown in.
La Medicea was a big, no-nonsense merceria —dry goods store —in the old style. Near the door, there was always a cluster of women in blue smocks. Being a foreign male, they took for granted that I was utterly incapable of making choices on my own.
La Medicea featured long-wearing, non-designer sheets, towels, blankets and the like. Also, underwear (male and female), pajamas and unfashionable sweaters guaranteed to last for generations. Plus “novità" (fancy goods)—flouncy curtains, doilies, antimacassars and tablecloths, not to mention brightly printed oil cloth by the meter.
There was a seasonal aspect as well. In the autumn came a massive display of school smocks and book bags in every size from primo elementare on up. Towards Christmas, festive items appeared (often distinctively Italian, before the days of massive Chinese imports). Then in the spring arrived beach towels and mosquito netting.
Everything about La Medicea made perfect sense in a Florence that was gradually but inexorably winding down. I am not surprised that the store closed, but I do wonder about the sign. It was mythic by any reckoning and I have seen die-hard Florentines raise holy hell over far less.
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