Annunciation in Volterra
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009Spending any amount of time in Italy is always a sure sign that something has turned out right. It doesn’t take long before the flow of life becomes clear, and clearly easy, with the simple pleasures of eating and drinking enhanced by the subtle sophistication of looking at great works of art. Volterra is far enough from the larger urban centers to maintain a very particular local charm, but near enough to the road to Rome that you can still feel that elegant connection to history. From the sumptuous hospitality of Volterra hotels, it’s evident that they’ve been in the business of enchanting guests for a very long time. Likewise, it would be difficult not to be enchanted here, and really rather pointless to try.
This is a perfectly splendid place to get away from it all, and to really immerse yourself in another way of life. The hardest part of being here is the inevitability of leaving, but that adds a kind of gracious weight to the lightness of the days. There are plenty of opportunities to take in magnificent food and fantastic art, of course, and everyone should see Singorelli’s Annunciation at least once in a lifetime. This great Italian master is said to have paved the way for Michelangelo, and his own accomplishments certainly stand on their own.
This great work is in the Pinacoteca Civica, and is dated to the mid fifteenth century. It’s a marvelous work of heavenly movement and urgency, and viewing it in person gives one the sense of the brilliant inner life of this great artist. His sense of humanism is evident in the heavenly and earthly forms, and this work is as delightful as his works on Dante are grim and meditative. Yet there is still an enormously meditative air about this work as well, suggesting that weight can enter into the lightest of moments when it is coupled with the momentum of time.
