Thanks to Renaissance art, Tuscany looks like everyone’s idea of Christmas. The sheep still huddle in groups on the open hillsides, and are guarded by Maremma dogs: big, shaggy, and black-and-white. They were bred to deter wolves but are not unfriendly to passing walkers once understood that they pose no threat.
We were staying at Arniano, an old farmhouse on a hill top with sublime views, 15 miles south of Siena. The days began misty, and the sun shone through later in the morning in slow stages to reveal first the prickly skyline of intermittent black cypresses, and then the valleys below and Monte Amiata in the distance.
It is still wild country: once a poor land of thin soil and clay cretes, but improved by Mussolini’s agricultural policies in the 1930s, and more recently by the Anglo-German funded CAP. To the east, La Foce – the villa redesigned for Iris Origo by Cecil Pinsent and Geoffrey Scott – is locus classicus of
20th-century improvement. We had lunch there, in the former canteen the Origos built for their workers in 1939.
Generally the villages are not picturesque – comprising scatters of traffic-buffetted old cottages, four-storey modern flats and haciendas bristling with Juliet balconies and electric gates – but the wider rural
landscape still looks like Pinturrichio or Giovanni di Paulo. In the afternoon the low dazzling light makes the contours and woods glow; especially delightful in historic towns where the setting sun catches the west fronts of churches, accentuating the sculptural details.
Winter is the best time to visit Italy. The light, the crisp air and the absence of tourists make it perfect for expeditions and walks. One can see it as the Victorians knew it. The Campo in Siena has green moss and grass growing through the untramped cobbles. The churches look splendid in Christmas array with massed crimson and white poinsettias around the altars, replacing the gladioli of summer.
Each church vies with the next for the most splendid crib. These are not antique as in the south of Italy, but are in the same spirit with the butcher, baker, and candlestick-maker arranged against model medieval-baroque townscapes. One of the points is to find the Holy Family amidst the crowds. These
presepi attract much enthusiasm and devotion from excited bambini.
The star this winter, however, was the Basilicata Crib – on display in Siena as part of its annual tours from the south to cathedrals in the north. It was designed by the artist Francesco Artese, and is made of stone, wood, iron, clay and polystyrene, with 120 painted terracotta figures by Vincenzo Velardi.
On Christmas Eve we went to the Fiaccole di Natale, a festival of blazing torches, at Abbadia San Salvatore. It has been a tradition for a thousand years, thought to derive from the bonfires to warm pilgrims to Rome on the Via Francigeno. It began with a Ruritanian ceremony in front of the palazzo comunale, complete with a brass band and drums, the mayor draped in a tricolore sash, a speech from the
President of Tuscany with his silver hair and Florentine suit.
The local priest, wearing and alb and a gold stole blessed a large flaming torch from which others were lit; then a procession formed and wended its way round to light the falò, great obelisks of piled wood, each about 20 feet high, all over the town. At the end of the evening sausages were grilled in the ashes and distributed free after Midnight Mass, and mulled wine served from booths in the piazzas.
I had planned to go to Mass at Sant’Antimo, the Romanesque monastery restored in 1870 and with chanted daily liturgy in Latin since 1979, but the French Cistercian monks have moved on from Tuscany to a larger abbey near Avignon and been replaced by Mexican nuns, which isn’t quite the same thing. So
we went to Monte Oliveto Maggiore, mother house of the Olivetan Benedictine Congregation, instead. The missa normativa concelebration was done well: partly in Latin and partly in Italian, with Gregorian chant and a good organ, and about 25 monks taking part.
There were seven candles on the high altar, and the abbot looked magnificent in a jewelled mitre, prelatical dalmatic and gold-and-white Roman chasuble with his arms on the orphrey. It was a demonstration of the persistence of Benedict XVI’s raising of liturgical norms, at least in Italy. Afterwards we looked at the superb frescos of the life of St Benedict in the cloisters: full of cats and dogs, deer, badgers and mortar-mixing details. They are among my favourite paintings; St Benedict’s beard gets longer and whiter as the series progresses.
One of the charms of Tuscany in winter is the centri storici. At Pienza the perfectly-planned Renaissance townscape was hung with swags of laurel, lemons and oranges straight out of a painting by Mantegna. Pienza is also home to a spectacular 14th-century opus anglicanum cope, which is one of the finest to survive. It was given by Pope Pius II, a son of the local Piccolomini family, whose brilliant and benevolent imprint on south Tuscany yet endures.
(Photo: Getty Images)