Rude To Be Nude
By Anabel Dean
Florence is flirting. Her pavements are moist with rain, misty wisps are tugging at her rooftops, and the Duomo is a beacon in sunlight. It is 6am.
My companion is awake, camera ready, lens focused.
“Take action and embrace soul,” she says as we stride from velvety Palazzo San Niccolò towards that heavenly staircase beneath Basilica of San Miniato al Monte.
Christine Spring has done this sort of thing before. She is a high-flying corporate director with a passion for photography promising a new kind of creative liberation. Her first book Liberating Self — A Soul’s Journey is a celebration of anonymous women photographed naked in landscapes and cities across four continents (including Saudi Arabia). Now she’s on a mission to complete a second edition in Paris and Florence and, impossibly, the Antarctic.
“Can I help,” I ask, in spite of the fact that we only met two days ago at The Art of Writing, a writer’s retreat held in Florence. I have relished her company amid exasperating crowds of tourists savouring an Italian picnic of palaces, churches, galleries and museums.
We have been seduced by the Renaissance and share an easy love of all that resides in the Uffizi Gallery. Bottoms and bosoms are unveiled all around us, frescoed on ceilings and pert on pedestals, so Christine’s suggestion to defrock on the banks of the Arno River seems, well, perfectly natural.
Without underwear, without makeup, I am to be her muse at one of Italy’s most popular tourist sites, posing without ego or self-judgement, exposing spine and depth of character and “beauty of soul”.
I’m normally committed to keeping my clothes on in public but I do, fleetingly, question my decision. It isn’t for clicks, or ego, or an ‘authentic life’ media stunt. This is art and that’s the naked truth of it. I am not an media influencer trying to gain notoriety by draping warm skin over cold stone as a fleshy mortal in a transcendent setting.
Ours is an expression of creativity in the cool of a quiet morning away from prying eyes. “Now?” I ask. The soft light of dawn is dissolving fast.
“Wait,” Christine cautions. “Not yet.” A car creeps past. “Alright. Go. Yes, go!”
Whoosh! In one fluid movement, I am unclad, without a stitch, starkers, baring all to birds in the trees, nothing left to imagination. A nun scurries past mouthing silent words in prayer. Eyes are averted. ‘This is art’, I want to cry out, ‘not sacrilege’. Skin freezes. Shutter clacks. “Yes,” Christine enthuses, “it’s all moody clouds today but soul beauty exists in every environment.”
Mons pubis must move to a higher peak. An empty tourist bus is parked in front of the Duomo lookout with driver sipping coffee while I channel Venus. A man on a motorbike speeds past and yells out Bella roba! (‘nice stuff’) but where is my robe? An English tourist staggers late home on twisted heels, stares with inebriated admiration. ‘Aww,” she stammers. “That’s cool.”
We move on and now there are two of us posing on the monastery steps beneath windows shuttered closed.
“Isn’t it good?” breathes Laura Barker, an American writer reclining beside me among the cigarette butts. Laura is a Botticelli angel, as pure as her writing is sweet, filled with a writer’s self-doubt, defining herself as an American ‘jibber-jabberer’ and divorced mother of four children. She is another among ten of us searching for answers on this writer’s retreat.
Getting your kit off in a World Heritage site is not without risk. Our private act of naked artistry is against the law in Italy and there are punishments for exhibitionists caught without clothing. It’s a fact that dawns slowly in the bright light of this day.
“I expected a call from the Carabinieri telling me that they had arrested two women for indecent exposure’,” says the author who conceived The Art of Writing, Lisa Clifford, over lunch. “Travelling cracks things open, people do things they wouldn’t do at home, and creatives can find themselves acting in unexpected ways before they’re ready to write the first chapter of their new lives.”
New lives? Perhaps. Back at the scene of the crime, Laura may have found what she was looking for, and I see it in her eyes. She’s aroused. Enlightened. Addicted.
“This is better than an aperitivo in the afternoon,” she coos.
“Same time tomorrow?” I suggest. She’s smiling like the Mona Lisa.