a lot of peo­ple avoid firenze out of sea­son — it’s damp in win­ter, quite cold, often rainy. the nar­row streets with their over­hang­ing eaves drip­ping rain­wa­ter, take on a brood­ing, melan­choly demeanour, in very stark con­trast to the sweat­ing heat of sum­mer, ice cream guz­zling school trips, and the glit­ter­ing chiaroscuro of sun­light falling sharply between the walls of palazzi. this pic­ture was taken about ten years ago, when it was still per­mit­ted to take pho­tographs from within the uffizi gallery (or per­haps when i was still brave enough to flout rules about tak­ing pic­tures on pri­vate prop­erty). it’s a pop­u­lar view — one which clearly shows the pri­vate cor­ri­dor which gave access from the uffizi to the pitti palace over the river, allow­ing the medici, and other nobles to avoid the com­mon pop­u­lace. so — an objec­ti­fi­ca­tion of the emer­gent class divi­sions of the mid­dle ages — the dynamo of the renais­sance. pretty. the rul­ing class above, the shops of the traders perched over the arno, the com­mon herd on the streets below.

for the technically-minded, this is not a dig­i­tal image. it was taken from a 35mm film scan.

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