“Florentine Poems.” Four Poems Inspired by a Student’s Trip to Florence.
Poems by Brooke Wright
Brooke visited Florence, Italy through a faculty-led program in Summer 2022, courtesy of Queens University of Charlotte’s John Belk International Program (JBIP). This program focused on Florentine literature, but she found herself captivated by the art she learned about and was exposed to during her trip. These poems resulted from such interdisciplinary inspiration.
The Magnificent
“They would strike when Lorenzo and his brother were attending Mass at the cathedral, and the signal for assassination would be the raising of the Host by the Priest.”
- Paul Strathern
The sun breaks through a foggy glass window –
my neck still wet with fresh, flowing blood.
I look down to the crowd congregated below.
My family had never felt quite so low,
as we were betrayed by those we once loved,
while the sun broke through a foggy glass window.
Now these people are gathered for a show.
With my brother’s body lying in mud,
I gaze down to the crowd gathered below.
Wicked men must pay for their crimes, and so
the drip they started, I will make a flood.
The sun streaks through a foggy glass window
while the noise of the crowd reaches crescendo.
On this Easter Sunday, our hearts drummed
and I look down to the crowd amassed below.
This day immortalized with a fresco –
brought to life by a friend now feeling numbed.
The sun sets through the foggy glass window
and I look away from the crowd congregated below.
The Artist’s Vision
“Venus and the Virgin are two beautiful manifestations of the same divine love. This idea must have appealed to the artist, who had already developed a single type of idealized female beauty to transpose and adapt to secular and sacred contexts alike.”
- Ana Debenedetti
Where does an artist find inspiration? Find their muse
who will eventually make their way
into every painting? How did I
get so lucky as to find you – my Venus?
Now, I always look to
you to make my colors brighter - the blues
and greens and reds. Your beauty blew
me away when I first laid eyes on you. My muse,
Simonetta, you too
can see it, the way
I’ve made you everybody’s Venus,
and not just mine. Why would I
ever let my eye
wander to another when I was so blue
before finding you? I first made you Venus
in Primavera and saw how it amused
you. Is this how I can make my way
into your heart? Imagine: the two
of us together and what we could create to
show the world. With how I
make you shine on canvas and the way
you light up my world, a blue
sky has never looked better. No other muse
could compare to you when I created Venus
and Mars and The Birth of Venus
and how you stole everybody’s attention to
your beauty. If you left, it would bemuse
me to no end. All my colors would drain away; I
would turn the blues
into black with no way
to get them back. Please don’t walk away
and leave me, my Venus.
I need you to keep the blues blue
and the greens green. I need you to
keep my work alive, even if I
were forced to leave you, my muse.
Simonetta, the only Venus in my eyes,
you keep my waters blue, in your magical way.
I look to you, to forever remain my muse.
“Birth of Venus,” Sandro Botticelli. Tempera on canvas, 1485.
“Venus and Mars,” Sandro Botticelli. Tempura, 1483.
The Saint’s Purification
“An enormous pyre was erected in the Piazza del Signoria and it was surmounted by an image of Satan. Representatives of the different Florentine districts symbolically lit the pyre, obliterating the objects of vanity.”
- David M. Reis
They call our time a rebirth, but a rebirth of what? Not of God. Not of faith. But of sacrilege.
These people know nothing of devotion, so I must liberate them from their sacrilege.
They call this art when it glorifies pagan deities – Venus and Zephyr. But what of the Madonna?
Are her portraits no longer art? Botticelli paints nothing but nudity and mythological sacrilege,
but I can cleanse his work. I can cleanse all work that worships the human body instead of God.
Too long the Medici have held power over Florence spreading their ideals of sacrilege
to ignorant citizens. I will rid Florence of all Godlessness through the finest means
of purification: fire. All of Florence will burn its pagan texts and art and artifacts of sacrilege.
We will overthrow the Medici and their books, mirrors, sculptures, paintings, everything
that represents their vanity. They don’t care about God, they only care about sacrilege.
In the name of God, I will rectify, I will purify, the souls of the city of Florence. Eternally,
history will remember the name of Girolamo Savonarola, for exterminating sacrilege.
Piazza della Signoria
I take in the pale blue peeking between clouds the day I first
step into the frenzy. The dull roar around me has left less
of an impact than the centuries of history on the ground where I stand.
Years of wars and artists, of destruction and creation,
of fires and hangings and life and death. More history than I
can learn about in my short lifetime. More history than I can
dream to leave behind me. I stand in the square where the reckoning
of an Easter Day assassination took place, where the murderers were themselves
murdered for their crimes, the walls of buildings that once housed the frescoes
immortalizing those hanging bodies rising up around me.
Frescoes that were meant to last forever but were destroyed
along with the destruction of the one who commissioned them,
and the one who painted them. The same artist who showed the world
the woman he loved as the goddess Venus, even after her untimely death.
At least she got to live on in full color within his beautiful scenes of ocean
and forest. I stand on the spot where a tyrannical friar led thousands of people to burn
their possessions in the hopes of gaining entrance to heaven. The same spot
where he was later hung on a cross and burned by those precise people he once led.
Awe? Amazement? Disbelief? Shock? Too many words and not enough words
to describe the battle happening inside my own head. I had dreamed of being in this
place for months, years, and finally I’m here, but I’m eating pasta at a restaurant that
overlooks history instead immersing myself in the space that acts as a time capsule
of Florentine politics. Do the people here know that they should be staring in wonder
at the buildings around them? Staring at this place that has become a tourist attraction?
If I ever get to go back, I’ll do it differently. I’ll take my time walking around
the piazza, looking at every single building every single stone every single detail
that I might have missed the first time around, and I’ll say thank you
to the place that is sharing its secrets with me, and I will listen for the
echoes of the voices of the past, for the people whose stories I don’t yet know, for
the chance to tell those stories and make my own history here.
Evening View of “Piazza della Signoria,” Courtesy of VisitTuscany.Com.
Brooke Wright is Creative Writing major and History Minor at Queens University of Charlotte. She is graduating in December 2022, and planning to move to Salem, Massachusetts. She spends her free time reading and writing anything from historical research to poetry to short stories. Her favorite painting is Botticelli's Primavera.