Falling for Florence

Now, it's probably time to devour some culture, which is why you came. You'll go to the Galleria dell' Accademia, of course, to see the big naked white guy. About 18 feet high, David is the great cliche, the most famous statue in the world. But standing before it in its own skylighted gallery, you'll be overwhelmed at the scale of the thing, the nakedness, the drama in the stone, that here is David before battling Goliath. Made when Michelangelo was all of 29, David is young, the killer before the killing, but his stance and expression tell you he is far from innocent.

Seeing it in the flesh (and the enduring and seductive mystery of classical and Renaissance sculpture is that marble has become naked flesh) allows one of Italy's gifts, Humanism -- the belief that the divine is within us -- to shine.

If mystery is a component of all worthwhile art, then modern art's mystery is in its content -- but in Renaissance art it is found in technique. How exactly do blocks of stone take flight, or the folds of a garment have three dimensions, texture and motion in oil on canvas? It's no surprise that artists along with pharmacists in Florence were part of the speziali guild, not just because they ground pigments instead of herbs, but because they too were sophisticated magicians.

You'll experience the magic with every Donatello, Giotto or Gaddi you stand before, but to discover how these alchemists were formed, visit the charming neighborhood of Santa Croce and follow a narrow winding street past an alley lined cheek-by-exhaust-pipe with mopeds to a nondescript building where artists are taught the way they were centuries ago.

"When I was in art school I didn't want someone trying to teach me to be an artist," said Daniel Graves recently. "I wanted someone who'd teach me to draw. Tradition has been broken in the instruction of making art." Graves, an American who came to Florence in the early 1970s to learn the technique and trade of painting -- "About 30 of us migrated here. It was like something out of 'Close Encounters' " -- is the founder and director of the Florence Academy of Art, a school with 76 students and teachers from 25 different countries. Last year there were 100 applicants to fill 10 spots.

Recently he and fellow American Susan Tintori, secretary to the academy, sat in Graves's office and spoke of a movement of art that has come out of the school (and other ateliers) and been called the "New Realism." The movement had a recent major retrospective at the Panorama Museum in Bad Frankenhausen, Germany, which also published a handsome full-color 200-page catalogue. The Century Gallery in Alexandria showcased 60 of the works inspired by the Academy last year.

"We're cutting edge," Graves said, smiling, as he walked through the school with cubicles marked off in black cloth and teachers working with students on how to control, block and focus light. North light is the traditional light of the atelier, Graves explained. "Because it changes the least, you can work all day, which is why many 19th-century factories had north light."

The school's curriculum is intense, with long days. The first year is given over entirely to drawing still lifes, nudes from life, and classical casts, using charcoal and graphite. "You have to control charcoal, there are no accidents, so when you move to pastels there's no problem," Graves said. After a year (or sometimes two) of drawing, oils are taught, but only shades of gray, and the student doesn't receive a full palette of colors until Year Three at the earliest. There is also a full program in sculpture.

Tintori led the way into the small but very fine gallery of students' and teachers' works. "The staff here is teaching and instilling a sense of beauty in art which, when I was in school, was considered weird. Anything realistic was considered taboo, without 'imagination' or 'soul.' "

A visit to the gallery, with its black cloths, softly falling light and hushed intensity of the artists, will allow you a peek into something unchanged for 500 years, a glance into the Renaissance of Florence that will be as vivid as the masterpieces you will go to venerate.