THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 8, 1994 TAG: 9410080031
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Larry Maddry
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
THE SUNLIGHT telescoped between puffy clouds, warming the skin, energizing the lizards that skittered from crack to crack in the gray stones of the castle walls, flicking their tongues at bugs.
I was vacationing in the Tuscan region of Italy in the garden of the medieval castle, dozing off from time to time with bare feet planted in curling blades of warmed grass.
The garden was a mere postage stamp of green situated about 2,000 feet above the small town of Monte San Savino in Eastern Tuscany.
Behind me, the crenelated tower of the Castello di Gargonza seemed to scrape at the low-hanging clouds. Adjacent to the 13th century castle was a small chapel whose bell - which marked the hours as it has for centuries - invaded sleep, its tolling smothered, eventually, in the forest of evergreens on a distant slope.
After days in Florence, a smorgasbord of Renaissance art, it was pleasant to be in a small patch of greenery on a hilltop, wakening to something as easily comprehended as the lizards. The reptiles, each no longer than the end of my little finger, were so slender they were not easily distinguishable when they paused in their explorations from the scraps of gray, dead vines clinging to the stones.
Between naps, I wondered about Tuscany and why it had become a hotbed of genius in the 1400s, producing immortal works by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Verocchio, Brunelleschi, Botticelli, and so many others.
Surely, the influence of environment was as important as the merchant princes whose patronage of the Rennaissance geniuses led to transcendent works of art. Then as now, Tuscany nourishes the soul of painters, poets and ordinary folk. Its rolling hills are so beautiful that a faithful painting of the pastoral landscape would strike the critic with no firsthand knowledge of the region as too contrived.
The sunlight seems too golden. The stucco dwellings with their red-tiled roofs seem too charming. Tall, stately, conical cypresses that often rival the heights of California redwoods resemble dark-green torches thrusting from the slopes where they are often planted as windbreaks. And everywhere one travels, beside villa or humble, dust-coated cottage, there seems to be an olive grove or a Chianti vineyard where wine with a floral taste and the color of dark rubies is bottled.
Lizards are very thorough creatures. I watched one for 15 minutes scampering in and out of every crack in a 10-foot section of wall. The head goes in first, then half the body. Then zip, he disappears.
The Tuscan geniuses have disappeared, too, although Puccini - whose operatic compositions are sweeter than the wine of saints - lived just up the road in Lucca during this century.
Today, the Italian genius reveals itself to food and drink. Nowhere in the world can one find as many great cooks as in Italy, and Tuscany seems to have the lion's share.
They say that Michelangelo created his statue of David from a chunk of marble rejected by other artists as unworkable. Italian chefs do the same. They take stale bread as hard as bricks, grill it, soak it in fine olive oil and garlic chips. The result is something called brushetta - and when it's tasted with one of the region's sublime Chiantis, the feet want to dance like one of Botticelli's wood nymphs. The same technique is applied to the hard dessert biscuits called biscotti. When the biscuit is hard enough to crack a tooth, the Italians soak it in vin santo (wine of the saints), which imparts a cloudlike softness to the bread and immerses it in a wonderful sweetness.
The Castello di Gargonza overlooks a valley, and on nightly strolls outside the castle walls, we paused now and then to admire the view from the hilltop. Houselights in the valley below shimmered like yellow sapphires in the distance as we looked down between breaks in the towering cypresses rimming the castle.
It is said that Dante stayed in the castle while he was exiled from Florence. But in my pidgin Italian, I have not been able to determine exactly where. It is painful to think of a genius with Dante's sensitivity slinking out of that city like one of the lizards on the castle wall. But it's comforting to know he had the pleasure of a Tuscan meal. And if he hiked, or even rode his horse or burro, along the twisting road to the hilltop - he surely slept like a log. by CNB