"De Chirico Santa Croce" by Justin Mallia, ,

On a clear autumn afternoon, I was sitting on a bench in Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. Indeed, it wasn’t the first time I had seen this square. I had just recovered from a long and painful intestinal illness and found myself in a morbid state of sensitivity. All of nature surrounding me, even the marble of the buildings and the fountains, seemed to me to be convalescing also … The autumn sun, lukewarm and without love, lit the statue and the facade of the church. I then had the strange impression that I was seeing everything for the first time…
Giorgio de Chirico’s 1912 description marked the inception of the scuola pittura metafisica. Under the current covid circumstances, the uncanny reflection of the vacated city formed in the puddles of the old, Florentine pavements evokes a renewed relevance and heightened sensibility in the relationship between human experience and architecture.