Hotel view of Santa Maria Novella

In late March I was in Florence once again, giving presentations at GE’s Oil and Gas University in conjunction with my colleagues at IFP. We stayed in a wonderful, old-world hotel at Santa Maria Novella, and it was really great to be back in this beautiful city once again. This year’s class had 25 young engineers from all around the world, representing 21 countries. And although I was prepared to give four lecture modules, the participants were so inquisitive and asked so many questions that I was only able to cover two.

I came to Florence well prepared on another front as well. Dr. Michael Willingham, a friend & colleague for thirty years now, has spent a considerable amount of time in Florence – and so he & his wife Linda passed along a listing of their favorite local restaurants. I was able to visit a number of them – e.g., the ZaZa Trattoria on Piazza del Mercato Centrale; the Osteria de’ Benci near Santa Croce, etc. – and it made for an especially appealing (i.e., gastronomical!) trip. Linda is now fluent in Italian, having spent time in language schools in the city – and I’m sure the waiters at these establishments would have much preferred to deal with her; they usually quickly decided that English was the safer choice after hearing my own initial forays into their language.

Fra Angelico’s Annunciation

The trip was special in another way as well – I was able to re-visit the Museo Nazionale di San Marco, to see the Fra Angelico frescoes once again. I remember first seeing Annunciation as a boy, several weeks after studying the work in an art history class. I was used to seeing great art hanging in picture frames in museums – but this was unexpectedly different, a fresco painted right onto a hallway wall, in a dormitory corridor near the top of some stairs. The fresco, painted in the early 1440s, is well known for its architectural and spatial perspective, and the sparseness of the scene for that period (leading many to suggest Angelico’s focus was the spiritual relationship between its two characters). The setting didn’t surprise me on this visit – and the fresco is still sublime!