DARK WATER: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces by Robert
Clark
Publisher Doubleday, October 2008
DARK WATER reminds us why Florence, with its ancient, corrupt, and
dangerous beauty, remains a cultural wellspring and the home of everyone who
loves beauty.
On November 4, 1966, seven centuries of art met the destructive force of the
Arno River when the river overran its banks, threatening the city that is
western civilization's greatest repository of culture. To set the stage,
Clark offers stories of some of Florence’s most fascinating past denizens,
beginning with Francis of Assisi, Dante, and painters of the Renaissance,
then continuing with Leonardo, Machiavelli, Vasari, and the expatriate
artists, writers, scholars, and bohemians who brought to the city their
ambition, talent, and folly.
After 1966, we meet contemporary figures—a Polish-American paint-er, a Life
magazine photographer, Communist activists, the poor of the Santa Croce
quarter, art curators and restorers, and, finally, the young people from all
over the world who saved thousands of artworks and millions of books when
the waters receded. Their idealism triumphed over the force of nature, but
also over incompetence and greed, to restore Florence as the city of art and
the capital of bella Toscana.
Robert Clark has written a miraculous book, a passionate inquiry into the
spirit that sustains the beauty of art and its more vexing sibling,
religion. Dark Water is a mystery story and a memoir, set in a city of
incomparable riches and dark fascinations. Clark’s masterwork of quest
literature deftly combines investigative journalism, meticulous history and,
best of all, a cast of indelible characters whose lives move through
Florence and its floods with novelistic power and suspense.
-- Patricia Hampl, author of The Florist’s Daughter, Blue
Arabesque
“Lovers of Florence / Firenze will fall into Dark Water head first. This
is an engrossing, layered, and intelligent voyage into the history of
artists' relationships to the capricious river Arno. Robert Clark deepens
our knowledge of this most poetic of cities, with an unstinting and loving
examination of the politics and love brought to bear on the flood of 1966
and the on-going reverberations that persist. A formidable accomplishment.”
-- Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun
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