Tuscany Journal: Il Borro

For $40,000 per week you can rent Il Borro, a villa and grounds owned by the shoe magnate Ferruccio Ferragamo. It should be mentioned that the villa fits 40 people so it’s just another one of those expensive luxury vacation spots like say St. Bart's. This one take place on storied grounds with structures dating from medieval times and once occupied by Duke Amedeo, d'Aousta (he sold it in l993). It’s just a hop skip and a jump from the Ponte Buriano, one of the famous Settiponti  (Seven Bridges) which appears in the background of “The Mona Lisa." There on a June afternoon a statue of Da Vinci sits modestly overlooking the reservoir over which the bridge runs. It’s a magical but remarkably inauspicious spot and one which it’s hard to imagine provided the setting for one of the greatest and most complexly ambivalent works in the history of painting. Freud famously opined about "The Mona Lisa" and the enigma of her smile and here you can place yourself in the shoes of the artist. "The Mona Lisa" is the apex of the Renaissance in which the full humanity and complexity of the human form evolved dramatically from the pale, flat images of medieval times. 

N.B.: read Francis Levy's short story, "Pet Buddha"in Vol. 1 Brooklyn.