In the Tuscan glare

Pablo Picasso once said he dreams his paintings and then paints his dreams. Creation must have done the same when it set about to carve out Tuscany in Italy. Ray Bugeja is sure of that.

It takes just 10 minutes, albeit along a winding country road, to escape the maddening crowds and live in a world of your own. The only intruders are all the elements of nature and a variety of wildlife but then it is peace and quiet at their very best. The stars, thousands of them, shine bright at night and when the weather is not so kind, the rain and the wind still manage to provide symphony.

In short, it is absolute bliss.

You land at Rome’s Fiumicino airport and are then driven to Casale del Sole, where La Nuvola farmhouse is situated, over 600 metres above sea level. The 350-year-old place, covering an area of 300 tumoli of agricultural land, has been turned into hospitality accommodation consisting of seven bedrooms complete with en suite bathroom facilities. In the past it used to be run by three families who then sold it to a Swiss national who for 20 years used it as a summer house. Mariano, purchased it in 2000 and painstakingly changed it into the property it is today, careful however to retain the traditional character it had when still a farmhouse.

In 2003, he built a pool close to the property but even this modern-day facility does not impinge on the natural beauty of the surroundings where frogs, boars, deer and foxes abound. They keep their distance, bar the occasional harmless frog that ventures close to the property and a red fox Eleonora, who runs the place with Mariano, calls Bella.

Bella usually appears in the morning to share in the food Eleonora prepares every day for the two cats that patrol the grounds. She knows very little about Bella, except that it is a she because when the two first met Bella was evidently pregnant. Yet, Eleonora never saw the little ones.

At La Nuvola, it is a direct experience with nature; being away from it all. The two-kilometre country road through the woods and past a handful of farmhouses, two or three still rearing animals and cultivating crops, and as many having been converted into summer residences, ensures privacy, peace and quiet.

One morning, I had a long walk with a co-national man who has dedicated the best part of his life to studying and protecting nature. Every few steps he would stop, point his digital camera at some plant, tree, butterfly, insect or whatever else, click away and then brief me on the species he had just photographed. Occasionally he would stop and, evidently perturbed, would recount instances when Malta could have embarked on projects and took initiatives that would have both protected and enhanced its natural environment.

The natural beauty around me and this gentleman’s words took me back years, when I was still at school and had to remember by heart certain poems. One in particular came back to mind but I could not remember all the lines. I knew it went something like this: What is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare...

I looked it up the moment I got back home and found it was the poem Leisure written by Welsh-born William Henry Davies (1871-1940). Reading through and reflecting on it, I could see my Tuscan experience in its few verses.

The first four stanzas, or couplets, reminded me of the natural beauty with which Mother Nature has endowed Tuscany:

“What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?

“No time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep and cows.

“No time to see, when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

“No time to see, in broad daylight, streams full of stars, like skies at night.”

One of the 20 Italian regions, Tuscany, covering an area of 23,300 square kilometres, is located in the central, western part of the country, between Rome and Genoa. To its north and east the Apennine mountains, with the Apuan Alps to the northwest. On its left-hand side is the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Cypress trees, olive groves and grapevines make for a perfect landscape and it is as if nature constantly trims them and keeps them in line and in shape to make every glance a work of art. Small mediaeval towns, including some perched on hills, complete the picture, giving it a blend of colours so pleasing to the eye and relaxing. So awed I was with these natural sights I later realised I had failed to take a single shot with my small digital camera. I was relieved when I read on the internet what a gentleman suggested that “rather than take a photo of the modern landscape, you can gaze into a painting by Michelangelo, Donatello, Raphael or Piero della Francesca”.

There are more modern “pictures”, the work of contemporary artists, that capture the beauty of the Tuscan landscape and more, a lot more. I am referring to films shot there. Here are just a few: Under the Tuscan Sun; The Gladiator (the scene showing Maximus riding back home from the war along a cypress-lined path was shot in the countryside of Siena and the scenes where the warrior-turned-gladiator dreams of paradise were filmed in the Val d’Orcia, the valley that can be seen in many Tuscan postcards); A Room with a View; The English Patient and Life is Beautiful (set in Arezzo).

The last three couplets deal with beauty in an abstract way, though, admittedly, the beauty in which Tuscany is drowned is visible, tangible and felt wherever and however. The poet concludes that it would indeed be a pity if everyday travails do not allow us to enjoy the good things in life.

“No time to turn at beauty’s glance and watch her feet, how they can dance.

“No time to wait till her mouth can enrich that smile her eyes began.

“A poor life this is if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare.”

A lot can still give one a pretty good idea of the beauty of life in bygone eras but also the poverty and everyday challenges the region faced. Its inhabitants were many and varied: the wealthy, the poor, hermits, all with their stories to tell, some still recounted till this very day, though, I suspect a lot of colour, not to say fiction, must have been added along the years.

Take the Abbey of San Galgano and the nearby chapel dedicated to the saint, celebrating a hermit who had refused to go to war. Legend has it he was so determined he would not fight he thrust his sword in solid rock. Part of a sword stuck to a stone on the ground can be seen in the chapel, though how it got there remains unexplained.

The tough life some faced can also be seen through the many museums of mining and torture, the exhibits and narratives of which contrast sharply with the luxury and treasures enjoyed by the high society in the wealthy cities in the region.

The cities of Pisa, Siena, Arezzo, Pistoia, Lucca, and, especially, Florence had become wealthy because of textile manufacture, trade, banking and agriculture.

Florence was ruled by a small group of wealthy aristocrats, including the Medici family. Under the patronage of these wealthy families, the arts and literature flourished as nowhere else in Europe, bringing about the Renaissance, the rebirth after the Middle Ages.

Writers such as Dante, Petrarch and Macchiavelli and artists and engineers the likes of Botticelli, Brunelleschi, Alberti, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Michelangelo all left their mark on the city.

Eleonora and Mariano organise daily excursions from La Nuvola that allow their guests to savour the natural and artistic beauty of the region.

They will take you to Massa Marittima, Montieri, Florence, Siena, San Gimignano (where all the stars, celebrities and top brass who go there make it a point to have an ice cream from a world-renowned gelateria at Piazza Sisterna and have themselves photographed enjoying the ice cream), Volterra and Follonica.

At the end of it there can only be one conclusion: Tuscany is a work of art in every sense and, as Picasso used to say, art washes from the soul the dust of everyday life.

French sculptor Auguste Rodin put it this way: Art is contemplation. It is the pleasure of the mind that searches into nature and which there divines the spirit of which nature herself is animated.

This is certainly music to the ears of those who have been to Tuscany. And they will no doubt agree with Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who said: Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the harmonies, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another, to cause vibrations in the soul.

That, too, is Tuscany where you can stand and stare and live...

• The author visited Tuscany courtesy of YTC Travel. For more information go to www.ytctravel.org.