In the Mugello, north of Florence, the landscape rapidly changes. Geometric lines of vineyards defining natural slopes, and iconic terraced olive groves reshape into rugged woods and open fields. Villages often are not as appealing as those to the south. But the Mugello is Medici country—their villas remain—and they selected it for good reasons. Trading routes, yes, but also dramatic hills, bracing air, sweet rivers, hunting, and surely these blazing yellow poplars brushing their plumes against the sky.
On the way to Scarperia early this morning, we detour only fifteen kilometers to see the house we once rented for two weeks in Vicchio. Right down the road was the bridge where, so the story goes, Cimabue discovered Giotto, a shepherd boy drawing a sheep on the side of a stone. We find the bridge again. Nothing has changed in thirty years—the pretty little river Ensa still flows, as it must have when the artists met here. The house we rented only has a new coat of paint. The misty pastures are the same ones I walked in. Time warps, as it often does in Italy. My daughter might still be drying her hair in the upstairs bedroom. The boy might still be here, trying to render the bulk of a ram onto a stone with a sharp rock. Does the refrigerator still ice over like an igloo, giving a big shock when you try to pry open the door?
WHAT REMAINS OF travels when decades pass? “Remember, that’s where we picked string beans?” Ed slows in front of Villa Il Cedro.
“And we helped a farmer catch his pig.” A ridiculous image of Ed, arms out, in hot pursuit of a grunting pig flashes in my mind. “What would you have done if you’d caught it?”
We’re driving through the attractive and busy town of Borgo San Lorenzo, recalling with zest the rosticceria where rows of roasting chickens dripped fat onto potatoes below—forever after the paragon of crispy potatoes. We keep spotting shining kaki, persimmons, in bare black branches. Nothing says autunno more than these glowing orange lanterns in trees I never notice the rest of the year.
SCARPERIA. I’M COMING here to see Andrea Berti. He makes knives. Knives to covet. Handmade, balanced, honed to the nth. The town has been a center for knives, scissors, swords, and daggers since the 1500s. I met Andrea at a dinner in Cortona celebrating our local Chianina beef and our superb syrah. Famous chefs came from all over Italy. Andrea brought—what else?—knives. He said then, “Come to Scarperia.”
We drop our bags at the thirteen-room Locanda San Barnaba across the street from a park where bright golden leaves pave the wet ground. Walking through the old town walls, we follow the straight road into town. In the Middle Ages, this was the main trunk road to Bologna from Firenze. Scarperia grew up on either side after the site was declared a fortification, along with Terranuova Bracciolini, Firenzuola, Dicomano, and others, protecting Firenze against invaders.
We’ve planned the trip around the curtailed fall opening hours of Palazzo dei Vicari (1306) because we want to see its knife museum, Museo dei Ferri Taglienti. The palazzo—more fortress and castle than palace—was the seat of vicars who administered the district. The structure looms over the piazza. Stemmi, stone coats of arms, with a few ceramic ones from the della Robbia workshop, decorate the façade, each one left by a vicar after his tenure. On the right rises a tower with a huge bell. Before we go in, we stop at a bar for coffee and look across at Chiesa dei Santi Jacopo e Filippo, balancing the opposite side of the piazza, and at the corner the small oratorio where the Florentine vicars swore allegiance.
The bar is full of joking men taking a mid-morning break. One, old, in an over-large black suit and sweater, polished black shoes, and a hat, takes his beer across the street into the piazza and sits alone at an outdoor table. The sun hits the yellow-peach wall behind him with a burst of molten light, outlining him as if he were drawn on the wall. All the light stops at his black shape. He’s squinting. His ears are long. His face, shadowed by his hat, is impenetrable. He belongs to no one.
WE ENTER THE Palazzo dei Vicari as did the horses and carriages, into a courtyard, also covered in coats of arms. I imagine the clip-clop of hooves, the neighing. Someone in the office must unlock the museum. We’re pointed up the stairs where a large San Cristoforo fresco lords over the landing. Patron saint of travelers, Cristoforo is still my favorite, though he’s been knocked off the church’s saint list. He’s knee-deep in transparent water, the Baby riding his shoulders and holding out a ball. The world, of course. A tentacled sea creature is faintly visible beneath the river surface.
Though there have been renovations and earthquake repairs over the centuries, nothing is over-restored. I can feel the palpable atmosphere of the time, even the chilly air. Designed by the Florentine architect Brunelleschi, the intricate mechanism that once drove the tower clock is on display in the first room, next to a Madonna and Child, which looks familiar. Ah, the tag says school of Ghirlandaio. Looking closely, I see that graffiti has been scratched into some of the borders.
The cavernous room of government chambers is covered with painted heraldic blazons, swags, wreaths, and faux red draperies, which would create a festive atmosphere if it weren’t so dim. Ed sits down in the vicar’s chair and I quickly snap his picture as he stamps a papal decree. I hope surveillance isn’t always watched.
What I’d most like to do is open the glass cases and thumb through the handwritten parchment pages bound into thick books. Some on display are open to drawings of knives.
After seeing the knife collection at Palazzo dei Vicari, I doubt if I’ll ever be content with one of those packets of six Japanese kitchen knives with colorful plastic handles that I’ve bought at Sur La Table. As with chocolate, coffee, shoes, and anything else, once you know, you can’t go back. The artistry simply stuns us. The blades so accurate, the handles of bone, ivory, and horn exquisite. Agricultural tasks, sacrificial killing, murder, gelding, bread slicing—everything symbiotically fits its purpose.
We’re fascinated to see knives in reproductions of paintings by Duccio, Donatello, Ghirlandaio, Giotto, Caravaggio, Pontormo, Fra Angelico. In Caravaggio’s Sacrifice of Isaac, a strong hand grips a lethal knife used by shepherds to kill sheep. In Duccio’s Last Supper, broad-bladed knives lie on either side of the meat on a platter. Supper at Emmaus by Pontormo shows three graceful knives in use at the supper Jesus attended after his release from the empty tomb. (One of history’s oddest dinner parties.) All these appearances in art inspire local craftsmen. I see the Pontormo knife is reproduced by Andrea Berti.
AT THE HOTEL at lunch, Ed starts with three jumbo crostini—eggplant with garlic, grana padana cheese, and parsley; cannellini beans and lardo di Colonnato (herbed, thinly sliced dorsal fat of the pig); and the third with prosciutto, pecorino, and truffle-enhanced honey. I’m swooning over the vegetable sformato with Gorgonzola sauce. Then, I order hearty robollita, vegetable soup thickened with bread. Ed is happy with potato-filled tortelli con ragù. There’s new olive oil to dribble on top of the soup. I can’t finish it. We’ve found too many appealing choices on the menu.
Since we have a few minutes before meeting Andrea Berti, we walk across the park to Oratorio della Madonna dei Terremoti. The venerated Madonna is credited with protecting Scarperia from earthquakes. The sign outside says the painter is Filippo Lippi, a favorite of mine, but inside we find scaffolding and two white-jacketed men at work on restoration. “No, the sign’s wrong and everyone knows it. The work is by just someone. It was in a roadside shrine before it was moved here,” the burly one tells us. “Still worth saving.” Yes, she’s lovely and will be more so after her makeover.
WE GREET ANDREA at his retail store on the main street. Big-bearded, with black-rimmed glasses, he looks professorial but his smart cabled sweater with wooden buttons and the yellow knotted scarf show us that appearances matter. He drives us out to his laboratory where he introduces us to his wife and son at work in an office, then we tour the showroom. He picks up a serrated vegetable knife, just right to hold. A squared-off blade perfect for cutting gnocchi. The so aesthetically pleasing cheese set.
“I read there were five hundred knife makers in the Middle Ages. Why here?” Ed asks.
“No one knows. You need three things for making knives, a river for the grinding wheels, carbon, and iron. We have none of these.”
A man is fastening together the two sides of the handle to those ivory-looking knives you see in very upscale restaurants. He’s making holes and hammering. A woman is attaching handles onto cheese knives. Another is packaging. A calm workroom. They only produce twenty thousand knives a year. Obviously, they have to be expensive. This is craft raised to art.
Back at the shop, Andrea turns us over to his other son and we say good-bye. He has given me four sculptural steak knives. The young son is reading On the Road by Jack Kerouac. The photos of three generations of Berti knife makers look down from the wall above. “When are you getting your picture up there?” I tease.
“Probably never! You have to work hard in this family.”
We send more steak knives home for Peter, my daughter’s ever-grilling husband. Ed selects a cheese set for our friends Fulvio and Aurora, who are from Piemonte and know their cheeses. That perfect vegetable knife is for me, and me alone—don’t touch it!
“DID YOU LOVE this day?” Ed asks. We’re in the hotel restaurant for dinner.
“I did. And we’re going to love this wine—mostly sangiovese with a swig of cab.”
Ed picks up the bottle. “Dreolino Chianti Rufina Riserva. DOCG made over the hills in Rufina. That’s right outside Florence.”
“The Mugello area is so close to Florence. Wonder why it’s relatively undiscovered.”
The owner of the locanda is in the kitchen with his daughter, the wife out front running the show. We like staying in places that have a solid restaurant with simple rooms upstairs. It reminds us of Italy when we first traveled here.
“Are you ready to order?”
“Just bring us what’s good,” Ed says. That’s my boy!
First, a plate of lightly battered and fried vegetables. So crisp. “Is there anything better than onion rings?” Then she brings out their special fried rabbit and chicken with roast potatoes and chicory. “Lots of southern-fried tonight,” I observe.
“I’m not complaining.”
We haul ourselves up to bed and sleep with the window open. I can’t see in the dark but I know that a persimmon tree is right outside. When Ed is half-asleep, I say, “I should have bought the Pontormo knife. You know who should have that?”
“Yes. Alberto. I thought of that.” He’s our architect friend, who is also a painter and loves to cook. He would appreciate the knife and the connection to the painting.
“What’s wonderful, I guess, is that when you find something special, it reminds you of people you love.”
THE MUGELLO, EARLY. Hills shrouded in clouds, low slopes lapped in fog, and a distant opening of blue, promising a day of clarity. We pass a Medici villa under scaffolding, its noble stable decorated with painted flourishes, all soon to become a luxury hotel in this old landscape. A spiky-legged bird stalks the reeds along Lago di Bilancino. We wind down, skirting Florence, to the autostrada. Back to the velocity of the present. One day can seem like a week.