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Updated: June 11, 2025
I shall never forget the expression with which a great connoisseur who possesses one of the finest private collections in the Val d'Arno in speaking of a famous colleague, declared, "Oh, X ! Why, X is merely a collector."
A woman in the crowd came forward with a shawl for Carmela. So the hours passed. October can be cold enough sometimes in the Val d'Arno when the snow falls on the Apennines, and the woods of Vallombrosa are sere, and Florence, the flower city, lies then at the mercy of the winds. Mamie Whittaker, who, in her own phrase, "hated to be blown about anyhow," had not been out all day.
He frequented the society of other young artists, with whom he often strolled into the woods, or rather groves, for which this portion of Etruria was always remarkable, sometimes traversing or descending the Val d'Arno, at others roaming about the ruins, or visiting the site of Pliny's Tuscan Villa.
These seven miles wave almost all more or less up hill, and when the high ground on which the park is situated has been reached, there is a magnificent view over the Val d'Arno, its thousand villas, and Florence, with its circle of surrounding hills. There was once a grand ducal residence there, which was famous in the later Medicean days for the multiplicity and ingenuity of its water-works.
Mean time here we are however in Arno's Vale; the full moon shining over Fiesole, which I see from my windows. Milton's verses every moment in one's mouth, and Galileo's house twenty yards from one's door, Whence her bright orb the Tuscan artist view'd, At evening from the top of Fesole; Or in Val d'Arno to descry new lands, Rivers or mountains on her spotty globe.
He opens the gate for us and courteously invites us in, telling us in broken French that we may pick what flowers we like. Presently I fall into discourse with him in broken Italian, telling him of my visit years ago to the cradle of his Order at Assisi, and to its most beautiful shrine at La Verna, high above the Val d'Arno. His old eyes soften into youthful brightness as he speaks of Italy.
He had called humbly upon my father when we first went to live at old-world Signa, years before, and he had asked his charity for the poor down in the Val d'Arno. "You will always have beggars around you, signore," I remembered he said. "We up at the monastery keep open house for the needy soup, bread, and other things to all who come from eight to ten o'clock in the morning.
Michael, from the corn market, Or San Michele, the commercial strength of Florence, on a question of free trade in corn. And note, for a little bye piece of botany, that in Val d'Arno lilies grow among the corn instead of poppies. The purple gladiolus glows through all its green fields in early spring. A question of free trade in corn, then, arose between Florence and Rome.
They often met from that time, and the gentle and high-born Florinda loved the young American artist as dearly as he did the loveliest girl of the sunny Val d'Arno.
Leonardo was born at Vinci, near Florence, in the Lower Val d'Arno, on the borders of the territory of Pistoia. His father, Piero da Vinci, was an advocate of Florence not rich, but in independent circumstances, and possessed of estates in land. The singular talents of his son induced Piero to give him, from an early age, the advantage of the best instructors.
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