I'm dreaming of Italy, again. I can't help it. Sometimes la bella toscana just sneaks up and bites me in the focaccia.

I study Italian with a few fine friends in Mendocino. Julie makes coffee and sets out the panforte cake, and we tell each other stories. In halting Italian.

I bring my thumb-indexed Langensheidt Standard Italian Dictionary to these meetings. The big yellow book is impressive, sitting there amongst the panforte crumbs, but I need a microscope to read it.

If you want to feel really smart, try working your way through Italian Verbs for Dummies. Parlo, parle, parla; parliamo, parlete, parlono. I can do this. By the way, like many books in the For Dummies series, this one by Teresa L. Picarazzi, PhD, is quite well done, friendly, and easy to use.

There is another book I've always admired from afar and finally had a chance to peruse. It's titled Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture. From the gold flyleaf (which unfortunately shows every fingerprint) to the glorious full-page color photographs, this book could be the one you leave on the piano bench and turn a page a day.

Unlike some art books which set out to stun you with excess, Visions of Heaven quietly and competently displays what you miss when you don't gaze heavenward in churches and cathedrals.

Visions of Heaven records the photographic work of photographer David Stephenson, who first came to Italy on a grant from the Australian government. Earlier, he had made a name for himself with the Stars project, in which he used "extended, interrupted, or overlapping exposures to transform the starry night sky into a matrix of elegantly arcing lines."

"On a visit to Rome, (Stephenson) went to the Pantheon, where he was overwhelmed by the vast internal space and majestic dome of the ancient structure."

In the Introduction Keith Davis notes, "The same reflex -- finding ourselves by looking up -- is at the heart of our experience of sacred architecture."

Centuries earlier, the Florentine goldsmith and clock maker Filippo Brunelleschi traveled to Rome and discovered the Pantheon for himself. In the book Brunelleschi's Dome Ross King tells the story of Brunelleschi's vision for what still to this day is the largest dome in the world.

Brunelleschi's Dome is just plain fun to read. Who knew masonry and bricks could be so fascinating?

In the early 1400s "wheat fields, orchards and vineyards could be found inside (the walls of Florence)... the city also had a population of 50,000, roughly the same as London's, and the new cathedral was intended to reflect its importance as a large and powerful mercantile city."

When Filippo Brunelleschi arrived on the scene, the new cathedral had been under construction for more than a hundred years, but was far from finished. "For the past fifty years the south aisle of the unfinished cathedral had housed a thirty-foot-long scale model of the structure... The problem was that the model included an enormous dome -- a dome that, if built, would be the highest and widest vault ever raised.

"And for fifty years it had been obvious that no one in Florence -- or anywhere in Italy for that matter -- had any clear idea how to construct it."

Ross King's background as a novelist serves him well in this factual tale of renaissance striving.

The dome created in Florence is iconic as any building in the world. How did the Florentine bureaucracy find its way through layers of skepticism and competing interests to partner with this cranky genius?

In these non-renaissance days of war and terror it's good to be reminded that humans at their best can achieve great things.

Aired Sunday February 11, 2007 at 10:55 am and Wednesday February 14, 2007 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Your correspondent will be taking himself off to Florence next month for an intensive four weeks of Italian language study at Scuola Leonardo da Vinci, located a block and a half from the Duomo. I'll be living with a non-English speaking family, and all the studies will be in Italian only. When I come back I'll be able to order in Italian restaurants. If I discover any other use for Italian, I'll be sure to let you know. I have a reservation to walk through the Uffizi Gallery at 10 a.m. on the 10th of March. Oh joy!

I've been trying to track down the story that Brunelleschi was allowed to cut a small square hole in the Pantheon roof in order to study its construction. This story is not mentioned in Ross King's book. I've only seen it repeated by Rick Steves in Best of Europe 2006.

The little square hole (not the oculus at the top) is there. I've seen it. But how did it get there?

Standard Dictionary Italian Langenscheidt Publishers. Vinyl flexi-bound, thumb-indexed $19.95. ISBN 1585735043.

Italian Verbs for Dummies by Teresa L. Picarazzi, PhD. Wiley Publishing paperback $16.99. ISBN 0471773891. "The fun and easy way to tame irregular verbs and take the tension out of tenses." Sure.

Visions of Heaven: The Dome in European Architecture by David Stephenson. Princeton Architectural Press hardcover $60.00 ISBN 1568985495.

Brunelleschi's Dome: How a Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture by Ross King. Penguin paperback $14.00 ISBN 0142000159.

In June, 2007 Ross King will publish Machiavelli: Philosopher of Power in the Eminent Lives series from Harper Collins. Hardcover $21.95. ISBN 0060817178.

|  Words on Books Index  |  Home | Bookwinkles | Favorite Books | Local Books | Tony's Writings | Order Online | Email Us!  | Check out the programming on KZYX, Mendocino county's own public radio station.

Copyright © 2007. All materials posted here are copyright protected. Please do not copy or distribute without contacting Tony Miksak for written permission.