The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies Villa I Tatti Via di Vincigliata 26, 50135 Florence, Italy Volume 22 E-mail:
[email protected] / Web: http://www.itatti.it—,m— Telephone: +39-055-603-251 / Fax: +39-055-603-383 Autumn 2002 t has been a month since Françoise and promises a lecture on the erotic ele- Iand I were driven up the tortuous First Impressions ment in religious art; each of the thirty- curves of the Via di Vincigliata, not for P seven Madonnas who look down on the first time, but for the first time as me as I wander through the house home. Memories of these warns me against the temp- thirty days, each at first so dis- tations that might arise tinct, are beginning to coalesce from Bette’s slides. Nicholas into one vast and variegated Eckstein will come from first impression. As always Sydney in the spring semester when one arrives in Italy there to preside over a symposium is the assault on the senses, but he is organizing on the more pronounced than ever, Brancacci Chapel for the first and on all five of them. On week of June. This will be an taste, of course, from the wine interdisciplinary experience, to and olive oil produced on the be sure, but I wonder what farm. On smell, from the could be more interdis- breezes that blow up in waves ciplinary than the I Tatti from the late-blooming roses lunches, especially if Salvatore and olea fragrans trees in the Camporeale, Eve Borsook, or garden, lately mixed with pun- Peggy Haines, our Senior gent smoke from autumn Incoming director Joseph Connors talking to Research Associates, or Allen burnings on the neighboring Shirley Hazzard Steegmuller and Fausto Calderai.