I was hoping you could take me back to the Uffizi so I can crawl up the walls.
I was researching something entirely different when I stumbled upon a painting I had seen in Florence in 2011. At least, that's what I thought – because the Uffizi Gallery didn't acquire Cecco Bravo's Armida (1650) until 2017. It might have been because Armida and her army of demons reminded me of that time. Maybe it's that esoteric potency some describe Florentine art as possessing. Regardless, I felt many things in the Uffizi in 2011, I just wish I could have felt them with the kind of unadulterated intensity I'm no longer ashamed to express.
A few months before I visited Florence, I experienced a trauma that I at first blamed on my naivety and – only up until very recently – explained away, citing my autistic misunderstanding of human intimacy. Neither of these things are true. I know that now. But what remains indisputable is that when I stepped into the Uffizi, everything about that experience I tried to suppress started clawing at me like wolves, like the leonine grotesques I saw in the Pitti Palace gardens. Like the spirit army surrounding Armida as she takes revenge on the Christian army.
From 'Armida by Cecco Bravo' - La Gallerie Degli Uffizi:
The protagonist is one of the most intense and moving figures in Jerusalem Delivered by Torquato Tasso: a beautiful Muslim princess, extremely gifted in the art of magic, is sent by her uncle to the Christian army, with the task of distracting the soldiers with her cunning and seduction. Falling hopelessly in love with the crusader, Rinaldo, Armida abducts him to take him to the Fortunate Isles, conjuring up a palace and enchanted gardens in order to keep him there. Carlo and Ubaldo, companions of Rinaldo, are able to enter the fairytale kingdom, where they find the young man and convince him to return to his army. The abandoned Armida falls into despair and fury. She climbs to the top of the mountain, calls to her all the spirits of hell and then leaves to join the Egyptian ranks in order to get revenge.
I summoned figmental allies as a child whenever I felt no one was on my side. I would go out to the garden where my dog was sleeping in the sun, wrap my arms around her and then feel a million feral spirits joining us. It was like Where the Wild Things Are, a group of misfits entwined in a pile of soft fur and claws strong enough to split flesh. My bestial army never asked why I was the way I was. I couldn't understand what was happening in my head until I was much older. And even now, this desire for both emotional brutality and all-consuming sentimentality can only be sated by art.
It's no surprise that Armida's painting is displayed in the same gallery wing as Caravaggio's Medusa. The wide-eyed, open-mouthed, decapitated head mounted on the shield of Thesus was not the monstrosity of legend but a victim of the whims of a selfish god. Medusa – a modern symbol for trauma survivors, tattooed on so much skin. Her face in Caravaggio's work epitomises not the hideous cry of a monster but that of a woman who has seen and felt too much.
A broke, disabled, demon-haunted writer can rarely afford holidays. I should count myself lucky. My month-long trip to Europe in 2011 was mostly paid for by the parents of my travelling companions, who hoped I would provide a gentle, non-threatening buffer to stop their two children from tearing each other to pieces. Seeing Caravaggio's portrait of Bacchus smiling down on them inside the Uffizi was intensely gratifying. Send in the Maenads. And when the God of wine and insanity turned his face to me, it was like he was encouraging me to let go of those who did not see my repressed, uncultivated craving to lie on the floor; to crawl around and stare at the art and wail. My companions saw me as an eccentric amusement, only palatable if I didn't ruin their fun – good company when a little wine-drunk, unbearable when expressing vulnerability. Bemusing in my awkwardness, my social ambivalence seemed contradictory to my intelligence. I would wander away from them at places like the Uffizi, unsure if getting lost was the most terrifying or wonderful concept in the world. I found myself alone in front of Botticelli's Spring. The flourishing pastoral tableau of figures from Greco-Roman mythology felt like a dream where everyone you have ever loved comes to see you at once, a fantasy where all the right people come to your funeral and only the best souls meet you in the afterlife. Everyone says 'hi'. And the experience can't be replicated. For a moment, it felt like I fell into some fugue state I didn't yet have a name for.
Stendhal Syndrome is a psychosomatic condition identified by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, named after French writer Stendhal's overwhelming response to the sublimity of the art he saw in the Uffizi. I first learned of the term from Dario Argento's 1996 film The Stendhal Syndrome, in which a detective (Asia Argento) visits Florence on the trail of a serial murderer and rapist. In the opening scene, she visits the Uffizi and enters a dizzying, hallucinatory state, experiencing the feeling of stepping into the paintings themselves. The killer she is tracking witnesses her pass out in the gallery, kidnaps, and brutally attacks her. He continues to haunt and possess her even after his death. Argento's film takes Magherini's concept and places it within the context of the inherent threat and danger associated with the sublime, how such overwhelming sensations can amplify one's vulnerability and the psychosocial effects of trauma.
Even Stendhal himself, despite the initial rapture he felt gazing at such works, describes a dread– feeling drained by the overwhelming sensory experience when staring at the Basilica of Santa Croce ceiling. In his travelogue, Rome, Naples and Florence in 1817, he writes:
Stendhal's 'attack of nerves' – the sensation of being close to a piece of art or media that overwhelms and excites to the point of sickness and delirium – is akin to the deep preoccupation the autistic individual experiences when engaging in their interests and hyper-fixations. During my visit to Florence, I believe my body refused to give in to Stendhal Syndrome completely. The mask was fixed firmly in place when all I wanted to do was flap my hands and squeal excitedly, then lie down on a bench and recover from the dizzying repercussion of such intense sensory seeking.
A piece of fiction, a single film frame, or a line in a song – I consume them repeatedly until the emotions inherent in those works cause something akin to a visceral physical response. It can physically hurt when I'm unable to engage with my interests for an extended period. Recently, I had a meltdown because I couldn't attend a cinema booking to see Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. I was distraught, even though I'd seen it once before. I wanted the rapture again and again. The final scene made me want to sob until I threw up, cut myself, bleed all over the cinema floor and manifest a demon lover.
Stendhal Syndrome's basic principles are much more common than you may think. It's Lisztomania, it's Beatlemania, it's contemporary fan culture. It's that guy in that YouTube video who has a religious experience while filming a double rainbow. It's a screaming crowd, a lonely soul with a fierce parasocial relationship with a public figure who will never know they exist. They continue to gaze at the explicit beauty and talent of these individuals, and their hearts start to palpitate, feeling what some may see as a shameful, irrational infatuation. Call the coroner. For the autistic, some of these states of comfort and pleasure can, for whatever reason, serve as an alternative to the love and intimacy they lack in their everyday lives.
Did I have a meltdown in the Uffizi? No. Because I wasn't allowed, and the worst part is, no one was stopping me except myself. I suppressed a panic attack lest I ruin a lovely, expensive trip. I felt dizzy and silently wept; the gallery wasn't even crowded, aside from the unbearably long queue to get inside; it was peaceful. I wanted to break down because of the beauty I often forgot or turned away from out of embarrassment and shame of being perceived. Yet, it was a reprieve from the anxiety-inducing travel, an aesthetic balm for the soul of a sensory seeker. Many autistics rarely experience this kind of joy outside their dark bedrooms. But sometimes, the drive to engage with our passions is so great that we must march on into the breach, crowds, staring faces, and the sound of traffic be damned. If I were to go back to Florence, I would lose myself completely. I envision myself sliding up and caressing the doorframes, stroking those blood-red walls, writhing around the floor to stretch out my aching back, screaming and crying and (perhaps) punching a male security guard. I would remember the pain I was carrying during the first trip and purge it.
My bedroom window urgently needed a makeshift curtain. I got a cheap fabric wall tapestry of Botticelli's Spring and thumb-tacked it to the window. I've been waking up every morning to the sun shining through that cheap fabric, and it has ruined my tableau of ethereal friends for me; it's cheap, it's tainted, and it reminds me of a night of extreme nausea when I'm sure I saw one of Venus' eyes slide down her cheek. I call it Primavera Piss, and it's going in the bin when I move house soon.
I desperately want to go back to the Uffizi. I want to visit Armida with someone I love and trust. I want to crawl up the walls and caress that ornate gold frame. I want to cut my finger on the edge. Then I could put my aversion to human touch aside, stare at the art for hours and have someone hold me in a way that doesn't make me flinch. I want all the dragons, snakes, and demons to curl their tendrils around us and keep us brave.
