Florence (14 page)
Authors: David Leavitt
The most authoritative source on Florentine attitudes toward homosexuality is Michael Rocke’s
Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence
(Oxford University Press, 1996). H. Montgomery Hyde’s
The Other Love: An Historical and Contemporary Survey of Homosexuality in Britain
(Heinemann, 1970) is full of useful information on English homosexuals who fled to Florence, as well as on the Labouchère Amendment and its legal ramifications. Also valuable were Hyde’s
The Cleveland Street Scandal
(Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1976), Timothy d’Arch Smith’s
Love in Earnest
(Routledge and Keegan Paul, 1970), and Edward Prime-Stevenson’s
The Intersexes,
published under the pseudonym Xavier Mayne (reprinted by Arno, 1975).
The epigraph is taken from
The Memoirs of
John Addington Symonds,
edited by Phyllis Grosskurth (Hutchinson, 1984). I quote from Symonds’
The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti
(Modern Library, 1928) in the section on the moving of Michelangelo’s
David,
for which my other principal source was
The Place for David: The Accademia, Michelangelo, The Nineteenth Century,
edited by Franca Falletti (Sillabe, 1997). For the sections on Florence during World War II and on the flood of 1966, I relied on Paolo Paoletti’s
Firenze, guerra e alluvione
(Becocci, 1991) and on a number of Internet sites, most notably
www.qmfound.com/black service units in combat.htm
and
www.mega.it/allu/eng/rispts.htm
.
A novel about the mud angels is Robert Hellenga’s
The Sixteen Pleasures
(Soho, 1994).
I found photographs (by Massimo Listri) of the images projected by artists on to the façade of Santo Spirito in Mario Mariotti’s
Piazza S. Spirito
(Alinari, 1981).
Lastly, I would be remiss if I did not recommend Mary McCarthy’s
The Stones of Florence
(Harcourt Brace, 1959), one of the
few genuinely literary responses that the city has ever generated. The book is ill-tempered and opinionated – sometimes vexingly so; it never fails to delight me.
David Leavitt is the author of several novels
and short-story collections, most recently
Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing
and
The Marble Quilt.
With Mark Mitchell, he has
co-written two books about Italy,
Italian Pleasures
and
In Maremma.
He is a recipient of grants from
the Guggenheim Foundation and the National
Endowment for the Arts, and was recently named
a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library.
David Leavitt divides his time between Tuscany
and Gainesville, Florida, where he teaches at the
University of Florida.
The Marble Quilt
In Maremma: Life and a House in Southern Tuscany
(with Mark Mitchell)
Martin Bauman; or, A Sure Thing
The Page Turner
Arkansas
Italian Pleasures (with Mark Mitchell)
While England Sleeps
A Place I’ve Never Been
Equal Affections
The Lost Language of Cranes
Family Dancing
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, New Delhi, New York and Sydney
Copyright © 2002 by David Leavitt
Endpaper Map Copyright © 2002 by Jeff Fisher
First published in Great Britain in 2002
This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Boomsbury Publishing Plc
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London WC1B 3DP
www.bloomsbury.com
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
eISBN: 978-1-4088-4708-4
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