Spot the difference

Me <-> Lorenzo de Medici

The differences between me and Lorenzo de Medici are easy to spot. He had brown hair.I had black hair. My nose is straighter. His shoulders were broader. He knew how to joust. I can whistle. For all these differences, I had one of those revelations one so often has when wandering through the Metropolitan Museum of Art: we are all the same underneath.

I had arrived at the galleries displaying art of the Italian Renaissance via an exhibit of Cycladic figures. I had also seen myself in those antique figures of column-shaped women hewn from marble, arms folded beneath their small breasts. I have a small breast, too. (The other was hewn from me by a surgeon.) I also fold my arms like that in fear and in defiance.

But Lorenzo de Medici or, frankly, any of the Medicis? No. Nothing in that gallery of attracted my attention. I read that placard because although I do not suffer frrom graphomania, I find it hard to resist the printed word. What I read changed my view of myself, the Medicis, and — to be honest — everyone everywhere. Such an enormous change both in my world view and self-understanding deserves a long, well-wrought essay, but that would take me months to write. I don’t have months. But shouldn’t we grannies, busy though we are with our grands, be allowed to scribble what we can?

So excuse the block quotes, but I am in a bit of a rush. Here’s the placard that was so impactful (Sorry. I hate that word, but grannies in a hurry can’t be choosers.)

“For noble Italian families, the Renaissance home was a richly decorated space brimming with art. Objects celebrated marriages, served as portals to religious devotion, entertained through the telling off history and myth, and pictured ancestors and family memberes. People interacted with these objects, using some as instruments for meditation and prayer, and others for practical purposes —as with marriage chests (cassoni), wedding gifts that doubled as storage and seating. Increasingly popular were portraits of children, which suggests that parents doted on them as much as they do today.”

I startled a little at the suggetion that Lorenzo de Medici doted on his children as much as I do on mine, but I had already begun falling under that we-are-all-the-same-underneath spell. More, the idea that having a richly decorated space was an innovation of the Italian Renaissance made me pause. That’s the opposite of we-are-all-the-same-underneath. All of us are not the same underneath. Not everyone everywhere has always wanted a richly decorated space. I did. And so did Lorenzo de M. Reading the placard’s second paragraph aggravated the quesy feeling of commonality with a nasty banker.

“Alongside this ran a taste for the distant and unfamiliar in the form of imports supplied through thriving international trade. Products like ceramics, central to the social activity of dining, were status symbols, especially when they came from faraway places. While this kind of abundant variety was reserved for the wealthy, household inventories showed that nearly every home, even the most modest, had an image of the Madonna and Child hanging on its walls.”

I have always blushed easily. This paragraph made me blush. If I don’t consider my Wedgewood plates designed by the legendary Ravilious a status symbol, then why do I feel that frisson (another hurried granny word. apologies.), that little private zing, when I see them in my cupboard or set them on the table. Their provenance is a point of pride: a low shelf in the Oxfam shop in Oxford’s Summertown. And that’s not all. Every single object in my home was thus carefully acquired, thus serendipitously and secondhand. Thrift shops are just one more link in international trade.

I wonder why I blushed because none of this is exactly news to me. Maybe all the talk these days about late capitalism has gotten to me. I’m complicit in its evils exactly because my things gave me a shot of sparked joy. I supposed I need that long and thoughtful essay to get to the bottom of this shame I began to feel about my hitherto cherished possessions.

The placard quoted from a 1587 guide for brides. This passage offers advice on how to show guests her home:

“Guide them around the house and in particular show them some of your possessions either new or beautiful, but in such a way that it will be received as a sign of your politeness and domesticity, and not arrogance: something that you will do as if showing them your heart.”

The bride who needs this advice sounds enviable. It does not come naturally to her to show — show off — her possessions. It must seem bizarre that her possessions — her ceramics from far off — could be a sign of her politiness and domesticity. Obviously it is arrogance. The bride knows those possessions have nothing to do with her heart.

The last time I visited my granddaughters, we went shopping for a birthday gift for a friend of theirs. I wonder if this friend will still have this small puzzle of cats when she is 70, like me, and if, like me and Lorenzo de Medici, she will show this puzzle to guests as if she is showing them her heart.