Giotto Di Bondone, “Mary Magdalene’s Voyage to Marseilles,” 1320s. LICENSED UNDER CC0 1.0.

For a number of weeks one spring, I spent every afternoon at the Basilica di San Francesco d’Assisi. It was what we then thought was the tail end of a plague, and I had come to Italy to visit a friend who had lived for many years a few kilometers above Assisi, in an old schoolhouse. This turned out not to be the visit I had imagined, nor, I am sure, the one she had, and after a few weeks, I went to Rome. But before that, every afternoon, I drove down into town—I had rented a car—past the long flank of Monte Subasio, with its temperate oxen, parked on the escarpment before the gates because the switchback of tiny streets flummoxed me, and walked down to the basilica. Everything was off-kilter, as if a great wave had passed over us, and now, if we were lucky to be alive, we found ourselves stranded on the banks of our own lives or paddling furiously toward where we imagined the shore might be. I had been to the basilica and to Assisi many times over the years to visit my friend, and so I knew my way on the small strade that opened and closed into a series of piazze, as if the town had exhaled and then drawn breath again. Because you could not come with me, I was aware of seeing with your eyes, which in any case had become a habit, and as the streets diverged and reconnected, I thought of our long drives through the old mill towns of New England, where the houses press up against a communal idea—the church, the post office, the firehouse—and imagined your voice saying Incredible! as you paused at a crumbling viaduct or a ruined steeple. My route passed through narrow cobbled capillaries lined with bright flowers; the cafés were open but almost empty. The last time I had been to Assisi was several winters before. It was freezing, and a few days after Christmas, the piazza and the tilted streets were deserted. A huge blown-up reproduction of Andrea del Sarto’s painting of the Madonna with angels was still projected on the outside wall of the Church of Santa Chiara, and the façade was bathed in unfathomable blue-and-red light, as if the story of the Christ Child was too large for the apse to contain, and the church was wearing the mystery on its skin. Read More