SHANNON HENDERSON

It is nearly impossible to escape the great weight of important Renaissance art that seems to push at you from every angle in Florence, Italy. From the great sculptures under the open-air Loggia dei Lanzi to the towering power of the green and ivory cathedral at the Piazza del Duomo, it seems as though every inch of Florence is laden with the perfection of Renaissance religious art. I know my art history teachers would slap me on the wrist, but I must say: I am getting kind of tired of Renaissance art.

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Although Florence may not seem like the place to try and escape such a vastly important and pervasive period of art, what does it mean to travel and explore if not to find something new?

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This is what I hope to find as I make my way north along Via San Gallo. I peek into stores, galleries, and pastry shops, but with no luck in my quest. I contemplate giving in and even stop at a leather shop—one of the hundreds, maybe even thousands, that line the streets of Florence—but as I cross onto Via De ‘Ginori I notice a small gift store that seems so unlike every other I have passed.

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A self-portrait of Florentine artist Marco Burchi sits beside one of his many dancer soil-paintings in his studio gallery, La Bottega di Marco Burchi, in Florence, Italy, on Wednesday, June 7, 2017.

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The name ‘MARCO BURCHI’ runs across the open door frame, and a sign that reads “unique gifts for someone special” is posted next to a wonderfully peculiar piece of art that seems to paint itself as a stream of colored water stains the canvas stretched inside a large terra cotta bowl.

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A young couple is perusing the shelves and walls covered in various works of art, though all in a similar color palette of canvas, earthy charcoal and warm brown. The more I look about the more I notice the intricate detail to the design of the showcases.

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As I mill about the store, the young couple has decided on a decorative message in a bottle complete with paper hearts that rain from the bottle neck attached to wires and strings onto the handmade scroll and pressed flower petals below. The message writing and sealing along with the gift wrapping process takes longer than the decision by the young couple, but the final product, delicately stored inside a sturdy, fashionable box and carefully tied twine, was worth the wait for the young man and woman. Their happiness gleams.

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A tall, gray-haired yet agile and energetic man approaches and tells me to follow him to the back. He points out some paintings on a shelf and the work desk covered in muddy looking water, squeeze bottles and crumpled newspapers.“I do not use paint. I do not use color; I hate color! I use the soil, very special Florence soil. It is a secret; I will not tell you,” Marco Burchi says of his work. He smiles slyly and pulls one canvas from a nearby shelf and douses it in water. He rubs into the dark lines and shows me the durability of the “paint” that does not wash away once it has been set. He seems amused by his own personal genius.

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I ask if I can photograph him as he works, and—somehow through the thick language barrier—he asks me where I am from, and I write it down for him. He pulls out a canvas and begins to squeeze a thick dark brown liquid from one of the nearby bottles. After setting the soil-paint with hot air, he brushes the muddy water across the words and begins to blow the liquid in calculated directions, producing a watercolor-like effect.

 

“For you, yes?” Burchi says as he hands me the canvas, “Ciao, Ozark! From Florence. And I sign, see?”

He hands it off to me with a warm smile and a fatherly assuring grip on my upper arm. When I ask if I can talk to him about his art, he tells me that his English is no good and that I should talk to his wife who is watching the front of the store. Her English isn’t much better. Lots of hand gestures, exaggerated facial expressions and back-and-forth on Google Translate later, Grusy Greco and I have a conversation about Burchi’s art.

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Each creation is thought out and meant to elicit a kind of emotion. While each work is a personal reflection of Burchi, it is also something to be bought and shared with others, like the personalized message in a bottle of the young couple or the special canvas he made just for me. Burchi’s gifts are completely personal because they relate to the things in life that we can all have or hope to have: love, beauty, emotion and connection.

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Greco follows from a distance and observes as I explore the store again with new insight. With each step I notice something I hadn’t before, some kind of intention and attention to placement and flow of the space. As I move deeper into the space, the bright skylight that connects the storefront to the back studio clears my vision, literally forcing my eyes into a new kind of seeing.

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Experiences like these, getting lost in the details and sucked into feeling, are exactly what many seek from the art world. Although, of course, plenty of Renaissance art is famed for its secret messages and elicitation of emotion, the work is also massive and intends to evoke an awe of the powerful greatness of God and the Church. There is something special about simplicity – the intricate detail of an idea rather than the visual by which it is represented. Imperfection is relatable, something raw and down-to-earth—or made of earth – that we, as normal people, can feel a part of.

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In Italy, there is an amazing kind of understanding of identity that I feel has been lost in America. Sense of place, identity and belonging are all intertwined, and their importance is quite evident here. Through his use of Florentine soil, Burchi physically imprints a local identity into his work. It is something truly Florentine, truly Marco Burchi.