INFORMATION HIGHWAY TO FLORENCE'S 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

Do you remember we used to call the Web, the World Wide Web, the 'Information Highway'? These are the signposts to the web essays on Florence's English Cemetery. Click on the URLs beneath the pictures to learn more:


Tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning
http://www.florin.ms/ebbflor1.html
http://www.florin.ms/ebbdeath.html


Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei
http://www.umilta.net/biblioteca.html


Arnolfo di Cambio's stemma for Florence from the Porta a'Pinti
http://www.florin.ms/prontintervento.html


Amalia Ciardi DuPrè, Beatrice and Dante


http://www.florin.ms/ceramic.html


http://www.florin.ms/landscape.html


http://www.florin.ms/cimitero.html

LA CITTA` E IL LIBRO III
ELOQUENZA SILENZIOSA:
VOCI DEL RICORDO INCISE NEL
CIMITERO 'DEGLI INGLESI',
CONVEGNO INTERNAZIONALE
3-5 GIUGNO 2004

THE CITY AND THE BOOK III
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE
'MARBLE SILENCE, WORDS ON STONE:
FLORENCE'S' ENGLISH CEMETERY',
GABINETTO VIEUSSEUX AND
'ENGLISH CEMETERY', FLORENCE
3-4 JUNE 2004
http://www.florin.ms/gimel.html


Odoardo Fantacchiotti
http://www.florin.ms/sculptors.html


Motivi egizi nel Cimitero 'degli Inglesi'/ Egyptian Motives in the English Cemetery
http://www.florin.ms/egyptian.html

We are now at 1317 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1970 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 3287 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

TITLE PAGES/ TOMB INSCRIPTIONS

The other day a fine book arrived from England, a study by Christopher Webb Smith of South Africa. Christopher Webb Smith was in the Bengal Civil Service, lived next in South Africa, and then came to Florence for an active retirement, carefully painting all the great works of art in the Pitti, a work which is now lost. But his South Africa volume survives, is published and is lovely.






This copy came smelling rather of English dampness so we took it out to his tomb as we usually do with our books reuniting them to their authors buried here, reading together title page and tomb inscription. And we decided to leave it sunning on his tomb for the next few hours. And all our visitors came saying - and marvelling - 'There's a book on a tomb!' So we explained to them our tradition.

Then I found on the web that Gozzini's, an antiquarian book shop just down via Ricasoli from San Marco, was selling a copy of Mary Somerville's work. So off I went on my bicycle to get it. The Italian translation published in 1861 had already been sold. So instead they gave me for the same price the English original. Now Mary Somerville, unable to attend university or gain a degree, taught herself algebra, discovered a planet, was a member of the Royal Society, taught Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron's daughter, mathematics, Ada in turn with Charles Babbage inventing the computer, as Ada suggested to him the use of Jacquard loom cards, IBM punch cards. Mary buried her husband William Somerville here, being buried herself in Naples with a magnificent tomb raised by her daughters, showing her full size. This is a children's version of her life on the web. We took Mary Somerville's book to her husband's grave, reading both title page and tomb inscription. Perhaps someday we can visit her tomb in Naples, with its fine realistic sculpture by the Calabrian Francesco Jerace of Mary as she had been in her nineties, still writing books used as texts by students at Cambridge University.



Browsing on the web looking for the image of Mary Somerville's tomb in Naples by the twenty-year-old sculptor, Francesco Jerace from Calabria whom Martha Somerville commissioned to do the work, I suddenly did a double take. For another sculpture by Jerace of his parents showed his mother as just like Anne Susanna Horner, buried here in a tomb with a portrait medallion, the same hand, the same veil, almost the same face. The Horner family is fascinating, Leonard Horner translating Pasquale Villari's book on Savonarola, his two daughters, Susan and Joanna writing a fine guidebook to Florence which we give on the florin website, and Susan also keeping a diary, now in the Harold Acton Library of Florence's British Institute. Excitedly I told my friend, Alyson Price, of the find. Then apologised. It wasn't possible. Jerace was only ten years old when Mrs Horner died. No problem, Alyson e-mailed back, for by the time the tomb was commissioned, likely by the Horner's friend, Martha Somerville, he had turned twenty!







And this is his sculpture representing his Calabria:



As we can see, Mrs Horner's tomb with its sculpture by Jerace is in great need of restoration. The pietra serena base has fallen apart and the marble it supports is at risk. We have now restored Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb, thanks in part to Tony Moulton Barrett, finding in our files that Moulton Barretts in the past have also seen to its cleaning. We have restored Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, thanks to the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, because of its design taken from the Marchese Torrigiani's copy of Champollion and Rosellini's book of their Expedition to Egypt and Nubia, the year following this Cemetery's founding, both aided by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. We have repaired Isaac Lumley's tomb, thanks to the kindness of Joanna Lumley. Jean Pierre Vieusseux's tomb has been restored by the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, and likewise Holman Hunt's tomb, sculpted by himself, for his wife Fanny. While Iris Fromm, a woman master stonemason, came from Bavaria and in two weeks repaired 28 of the most scandalously broken tombs. Now we await the restoring of Fanny and Theodosia Trollope's matching tombs with Thomas Adolphus Trollope's Latin inscriptions to his mother, his wife, and the tomb of cantankerous, marvellous Walter Savage Landor, as well as the tombs of the Checcucci family whose vandalized tombs and inscriptions we restore with the help of their family members, as far away as Australia.

In 2007 shall be the 180th anniversary of the 'English' Cemetery and I am plotting a ceremony where we bring their books to their tombs, EBB's, Isa Blagden's, Theodore Parker's and many more. Meanwhile someone has given 150 euro worth of daffodil bulbs, as a memorial to her aunt whose ashes have now gone from Florence to New Zealand. We shall be planting these this Sunday. Because I know of such daffodils planted 100 years ago in an English churchyard by the graves of two Anglican Sisters, which still propagate themselves as a marvellous carpet of gold each Spring. Our irises will need dividing and replanting in August as they too are propagating their kind. These the true purple Florentine lily that grow wild in these parts. Particularly I want a pomegranate by Elizabeth's tomb as both she and Robert wrote of them.

Talking of which our 'Egyptian Motives in the English Cemetery' event and ongoing (through May) exhibition in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale certainly taught us that tombs must have portraits and names for the 'Ba', the 'psyche', the Soul, to return. EBB's name in her family and by Robert was 'Ba'. We have now given her name by her tomb not merely the E.B.B. placed there. And Amalia Ciardi Duprè is sculpting two tondos, one of Elizabeth, the other of Robert, from the Gordigiani portraits, to go on the Gatehouse wall facing the tombs, so she shall also have her portrait here. Would some kind benefactor be willing to gift these to the 'English' Cemetery?

We are now at 1269 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1800 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 3069 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

SUCCESS

It was a perfect day. Masses of preparation, of course, rather overwhelmingly so, the making of many cucumber sandwiches, constant rehearsals. But worth it. Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina had built the bath for the lotus flowers and brought the papyrus beforehand.



Then, in the morning at the National Archeological Museum, we simply didn't have enough chairs because so many people came and I saw everyone scurrying to bring in every chair from every office, even tall stools. The American and British Consuls were there, and the Directors of the Laurentian Library and the Riccardian Library. I was nervous about my talk in Italian but it was praised. I discussed the Diary entry by Susan Horner where she tells of drawing the winged figure of the Divinity, the sun disk, out of Champollion's book, borrowed for the purpose from the Marchese Torrigiani, for Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb.


The Exhibition of the photographs of Egyptian motives on the tombs, especially this one, created by dottoressa Cristina Guidotti, is splendid and will be continuing for many months. This is the museum that has half the treasures from Champollion's and Rosellini's 1828 Expedition to Egypt and Nubia (the Louvre having the other half), and this great painting on their stairs

Rosellini and Champollion in Egypt, 1828, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Firenze

Then, in the afternoon, we had the reading from Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations from Apuleius - for which see http:://www.florin.ms/apuleius.html by Grazia Santoni and myself





where we dressed her as the Psyche in John Roddam Spencer Stanhope's painting of Psyche and Charon



Again, as Grazia and I stood beside the great column with its cross, given by Frederick William of Prussia, and which proclaims, 'Je suis la Vie et la Resurrection', we saw crowds of people coming up the hill, as if they would never end.

In the midst of the Cupid and Psyche story I explained how many of our tombs were related to the movement against slavery in the nineteenth century and also how many important American Consuls were buried here. This is what I said, gesturing to the tombs in question, as if the Cemetery were a great book in which we could read not just Florentine, but world, history shaped by these women and men:

"When Lord Leighton designed Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb he put on the lyre for the Greco-Roman world the two faces of the god Pan from the statue in the Giardino Torrigiani. The other two medallions give the Hebrew harp of David with a broken slave shackle on it for freedom from Egyptian and Babylonian bondage and the Christian harp with the cross, these representing Europe’s rich multiculturalism. But also the tragedy of nineteenth-century slavery, the serfs in Russia, the blacks in America. Elizabeth Barrett Moulton Barrett’s family for generations owned slaves in Jamaica. In this cemetery are the tombs of Fanny Trollope, English, and Richard Hildreth, American, who wrote the first anti-slavery novels, paving the way for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Beside the tomb of Richard Hildreth, American Consul in Trieste, is that of his fellow Unitarian, the great American preacher against slavery, Theodore Parker. Another American Consul has his large tomb here, the bibliophile James Lorimer Graham, who hosted Claire Clairmont, half sister of Mary Shelley, mother of Lord Byron’s child Allegra, and the subject of Henry James’ Aspern Papers. There are as well the tombs of Nadezhda, the black slave who came from Nubia to Florence at 14, being baptised in a Russian Orthodox family with the name ‘Hope’, and near her, that of a third American (and part Native American), Consul Hiram Powers, who sculpted ‘America’ and ‘The Last of Her Tribe’ and ‘The Greek Slave’, this last exhibited at the centre of the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851 and about whom Elizabeth had written this sonnet against slavery.

‘Hiram Power's "Greek Slave"’

They say Ideal Beauty cannot enter
The house of anguish. On the threshold stands
An alien Image with the shackled hands,
Called the Greek Slave: as if the sculptor meant her,
(That passionless perfection which he lent her,
Shadowed, not darkened, where the sill expands)
To, so, confront men’s crimes in different lands,
With man’s ideal sense. Pierce to the centre,
Art’s fiery finger! - and break up erelong
The serfdom of this world! Appeal, fair stone,
From God’s pure heights of beauty, against man’s wrong!
Catch up in thy divine face, not alone
East griefs but west, - and strike and shame the strong,
By thunders of white silence, overthrown!

The webpage on the 'English' Cemetery is titled 'Thunders of White Silence, from this poem and from this sculpture.

I should have mentioned that Frederick Douglass came straight from the railroad station in Florence to stand before Theodore Parker's grave, as well.

We thank so many people for this day: Paolo Bitossi, Paolo Coccheri, Assunta D'Aloi, Nora Dempsey, American Consul General, ExpoMeeting, Katherine Goldsmith, dott.ssa Cristina Guidotti, Edgar Kraft, Swiss Consul, Soprintendente Fulvia Lo Schiavo, Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Alison Pryce, Grazia Santoni, Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina, and Giuseppe Venturini, who is conserving Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb, and many others.

Do come and visit. Or at least virtually. For you can zoom in on the 'English Cemetery Florence' by simply typing in those words, then clicking on the place, in Google Earth. And consider contributing to the gardening, turning this back into the Paradise it once was. One person present wrote a cheque for 2000 euro with which we can begin this project, working with the Giardino Torrigiani which had supplied so many of the nineteenth-century plants that had been here. Am suggesting we begin with a pomegranate by Elizabeth's tomb, with roses on the wrought iron arches over the children's tombs (too many babies dying in the Victorian period), with myrtle on the tombs that had them, like the one that Mary Somerville had planted on her husband's grave, with lavender hedges. And meanwhile we are propagating the papyrus you see above. The Torrigiani people showed us how, placing the star frond face down in water so it sprouts roots.

We are now at 1244 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1700 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2944 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming. Just 66 to go for the 3000 we should like to present to UNESCO!

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE NATIONAL ARCHEOLOGICAL MUSEUM, THE ENGLISH CEMETERY AND EGYPTOLOGY

Dear Friends of Florence's English Cemetery,

First, let me invite you to zoom in on the 'English Cemetery Florence' by simply typing in those words, then clicking on the place, in Google Earth. Or use the Russian version which interestingly combines a more primitive form of Google Earth with the Wikipedia: http://www.wikimapia.org.

Second, let me invite you here this coming Saturday, 23 September. At 11:00 a.m., I shall be speaking at the National Archeological Museum near by, and then at 4:00 p.m., we shall be reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's translations of Apuleius' Cupid and Psyche in English and in Italian. If you cannot physically be present you can at least virtually be here at http://www.florin.ms/apuleius.html

For the Archeological Museum has chosen to celebrate us for European Heritage week in Florence and we are most grateful. Their Egyptologist, dott.ssa Guidotti, has selected the Egyptian motifs on our Gatehouse and on our tombs, creating of these an exhibition in the museum, called 'Hope in Life Beyond Death'. This because we were founded at the same time as the Grand Duke funded Jean-François Champollion and Ippolito Rosellini's Expedition to Egypt and Nubia - which started the Liberty craze with lotus and papyrus. Vieri Torrigiani will bring lotus and papyrus to decorate the Cemetery for the event and the Archeological Museum is at this moment restoring Arthur Hugh Clough's tomb for it, for the design on Clough's tomb was traced directly from Champollion's volume borrowed from the nineteenth-century Marchese Torrigiani for that purpose.

Rosellini and Champollion in Egypt, 1828, Museo Archeologico, Firenze

They have sent out three thousand invitations with their logo of the Etruscan Chimaera, and the Consuls will be present as well.

And for the story of Cupid and Psyche - It is to be found embedded in The Golden Ass, a marvellous Latin romance about a man changed into a donkey by magic, who cannot change back again to being human until he eats roses - a kind of Pinocchio story. Elizabeth Barrett Browning translated excerpts from its story within a story during Robert's courtship of her and because she had been asked for these verses to illustrate a now mostly lost series of sculpted gems of the subject that had been commissioned by the Prince Poniatowski. The Ashmolean Museum is currently studying all aspects of these gems, whether lost or found. The catalogue published on them had some of the earliest photography done in daguerrotype. And John Roddam Spencer Stanhope, the Pre-Raphaelite artist who sculpted his daughter's tomb next to Elizabeth's, also painted her as Psyche with Charon. Grazia, our actress reading Apuleius' story in Italian, will be dressed like her.

And now, as Terence's manuscripts end, 'FELICITER'.

This evening Vieri Torrigiani came with a great bath for the lotus (water lilies) and all of us were finding the stones to place around it, the grey green stones that had once been in the Ghibelline towers of pride, then torn down to build the Guelf walls of common defence built by Arnolfo di Cambio before Florence's defeat at the 1260 Battle of Montaperti, then rebuilt by Michelangelo against the Medici in the Renaissance. Saturday morning Vieri will be bringing the lotus and papyri. Assunta and I both of us, independently of each other, thought of him as Pan and the bath as Pan's river bank! Meanwhile we have been rehearsing and re-rehearsing our readings up by the great cross, beneath the words - in French - about being the Life and the Resurrection from John. All the programmes are now printed, and the handout, the tablecloths washed and ironed, the windows washed, but we have the cucumber sandwiches still to make.

We are now at 1218 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1419 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2633 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE TORRIGIANI GARDEN, THE ENGLISH CEMETERY

Do you remember as a child reading Kenneth Graham's The Wind in the Willows? The story in it of Mole's House, underground, with a dank garden, with white marble statues of Queen Victoria and pagan gods nestled amongst the greenery?

That was what this morning was like. People become members of our library by giving it a book. Instead, often, whole libraries are given. In one such collective gift I found a tattered photocopy of a Victorian guidebook to the Torrigiani Garden in Florence. Now Elizabeth Barrett Browning would visit that garden, and so would Frederic Leighton. Isa Blagden and Frederic Tennyson, the Poet Laureate's brother, actually stayed there. And it was there Elizabeth saw the statue of the pagan god Pan with his panpipes, amidst bamboo cane, that became the figure in one of her last poems, 'A Musical Instrument', and that Leighton engraved for its publication in The Cornhill Magazine. Greeks called this game played by poets and artists with each others' media, ecphrasis. Here we combine music, art, poetry.




And there I was, in a very ecphratic moment, reading to Dottor Vieri Torrigiani Malaspina, the first verse of her poem about his family's statue of Pan in their presence:

What was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out from the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of man
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.
. . .

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain, -
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

Great excitement. I went straight from the Garden, shown me by Doctor Torrigiani Malaspina, to the Museo Archeologico and to the Sovrintendenza Archeologica Toscana to tell them of this garden, filled with statues of Isis, sphinxes, an Egyptian tomb, and a hermitage where a plaque told us 'Mary Anne Chichester' had lived, who is buried here in a fine classical tomb. And realized while cycling down Florentine streets that the two profile faces on Lord Leighton's classical harp on EBB's tomb are the two sides of the god Pan's face in the Torrigiani garden, rather than of Tragedy and Comedy as I had formerly thought. For he had made that fine engraving for her poem that last year of her life, then designed her tomb. And hidden among the three harps, Greek, Hebrew, Christian, also the god Pan with one side of his face distorted, from playing panpipes, the other serene.




For more on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Lord Leighton see http://www.florin.ms/ebbdeath.html

The United Nations Society of Writers described their celebration of EBB: 'On Friday, 27 January 2006, UNSW held its 10th annual salon. 67 Poets and essayists from the United Nations Office in Geneva, some of them members of PEN International read their oeuvres in English, French, German, Spanish, Russian -- even Arabic, Vietnamese and Dutch. We celebrated the centennial of the birth of Samuel Beckett and the bicentennial of the birth of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose "Sonnets from the Portuguese" seduced not just her husband Robert Browning!'

And from Japan: 2006 年３月号 CDオープニング・ナレーション(track 1）Hello, everyone. To begin, as always, we'd like to thank you for purchasing this issue of CNN English Express. For our celebrity born in the month of March, we go a bit back in history to shed some light on the life of one of the English-speaking world's most celebrated poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Famed above all for penning the immortal lines, "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways," Elizabeth was born in England on March 6, 1806. So this year marks the bicentennial anniversary of her birth. She developed an interest in poetry as a young girl, and by the age of 12, she was already composing her first epic poem. But more about Elizabeth Barrett Browning in a little while. First, it's time for us to get started on this month's lesson.
shed light on: ～を照らす、～に光をあてる／celebrated: 有名な、著名な／poet: 詩人／（be）famed for: ～で有名である／above all: とりわけ、何よりも／pen: ～をペンで書く／immortal: 不朽の、不滅の／lines: 詩／thee: ≪古語≫ なんじを／count: ～を数える／mark: ～を祝う、記念する／bicentennial: 二百年記念の／anniversary: 記念日／develop an interest in: ～に興味を持つ／compose: （小説・詩などを）書く／epic poem: 叙事詩／in a little while: まもなく、すぐ


We are now at 1210 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1238 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2448 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

THE LAUREL WREATH ON THE TOMB

It was a wonderful day. The Comune officially laid the wreath on the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning which is no longer crumbling away and covered with dirt but instead, pristine, in its Carrara marble and lead. Over a hundred people came and if we had kept to the earlier date there would have been at least two hundred.

Now that we have restored our most famous tomb we must turn to our next most famous tombs, Arthur Hugh Clough, Walter Savage Landor and Fanny and Theodosia Trollope's, all of them part of the Anglo-Florentine circle about Elizabeth Barrett Browning. We shall start with Arthur Hugh Clough's in readiness for the event on September 23, when the Museo Archeologico and the Soprintendenza di Beni archeologici celebrate the influence of Champollion and Rosellini's 1828 Expedition to Egypt and Nubia's on the English Cemetery. Following the September event, we shall be planning another on the Savage Landors, for we shall be bringing the remains of several other family members to lie beside those of Walter Savage Landor. Henry Savage Landor, his grandson, born in Florence, was a traveller, a fine painter, and an inventor. We have permission from the Comune for the burial of ashes and remains, after over a century of the Cemetery being closed. And Franco Zeffirelli is saying we must get the Comune to turn this back into the garden it once was, where mothers could bring their children to play, with wild strawberries growing on the tombs, as he remembers it being.

This is my talk, in Italian, at the ceremony:

Discorso Cerimonia

E’ una grande gioia come Presidente dell’Aureo Anello Associazione, rivolgere il benvenuto a tutti voi a questo incontro che celebra il bicentenario della nascita di Elizabeth Barrett Browning.

Desidero esprimere la mia gratitudine al Comune di Firenze che, nell’ambito delle celebrazioni promosse dalla nostra associazione per ricordare questo bicentenario, ha voluto con questa cerimonia rendere omaggio all’illustre poetessa, quasi “poeta laureato”.

Oggi è anche un giorno significativo per la Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera che celebra il 180° anniversario della sua costituzione, 3 luglio 1826, e il 179° anniversario dell’acquisizione dal demanio granducale del terreno sul quale il cimitero sorge. Anche se inglesi, per loro desiderio, l’amatissimo figlio di Elizabeth Barrett e Robert Browning, riceveva il battesimo nella Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera; e in quella chiesa ella prendeva anche parte alle funzioni del loro culto.

Sono lieta anche di ricordare oggi il 6° anniversario della costituzione della Biblioteca e Bottega Fioretta Mazzei dell’Aureo Anello, di cui si diviene soci donando annualmente un libro.

Varcare il cancello di questo luogo è compiere un tuffo a ritroso nel tempo, ma i secoli passati come messaggeri di storia e di vita parlano al presente e al futuro.

Il Cimitero Porta a’ Pinti detto “degli Inglesi” sorgeva in prossimità della cinta muraria in corrispondenza dell’apertura della Porta a’ Pinti. Dante e Beatrice passavano per questa porta, sulla quale campeggiavano le insegne della Croce del Popolo e del Giglio di Firenze di Arnolfo di Cambio, che furono in seguito poste dal Poggi sul muro di cinta interno all’entrata nord del cimitero ai lati di una nicchia, ora in stato di degrado. Nei muri a secco del cimitero osserviamo le pietre di colore grigio-verde, quelle pietre che furono utilizzate prima per edificare le torri dei ghibellini, e dopo dai guelfi per la loro cinta muraria. Ha qui giustamente trovato sepoltura il grande medievista Robert Davidsohn. Nella nostra Biblioteca per due anni abbiamo condiviso un ciclo di letture e della Commedia e della Vita nuova.

Un cimitero monumentale ecumenico e internazionale, le cui iscrizioni sono in diverse lingue, greco, russo, romancio, danese, tedesco, francese, inglese, italiano, e in diversi alfabeti, alfabeto ebraico, alfabeto cirillico, fractura, e alfabeto latino. Attivo fino al 1877, luogo di sepoltura per le illustri personalità che presero parte alla vita culturale della Firenze ottocentesca, è un archivio della memoria, della storia della città e d’Italia.

In occasione della sepoltura qui del coreografo russo Evgen Polyakov, il Comune di Firenze concedeva nel 1996 l’autorizzazione ad accogliere urne cinerarie, senza escludere ora alcuna confessione religiosa.

“L’Isola dei morti” è ora un luogo in stato di abbandono, anche se suggestivo: molti monumenti sono a rischio di crollo, ed il percorso di visita è limitato ai viali; è pericoloso infatti camminare fra le tombe. La futura costituzione di una Fondazione ha l’intento di raccogliere fondi per il recupero paesaggistico della collinetta unitamente al suo consolidamento, e per la conservazione dei monumenti. Ciascuno può partecipare a questo progetto: firmando la petizione, divenendo socio della Biblioteca e degli Amici del Cimitero, facendo donazioni per i libri e gli CD dell’Aureo Anello, adottando una tomba, o anche scegliendo questo luogo come ultima dimora terrena.

Alberto Casciani della Meridiana Restauri e la sua assistente Anna Simi hanno eseguito il restauro del sarcofago di Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Nella conferenza che terrò mercoledì pomeriggio 5 luglio, ore 18.00, all’Harold Acton Library illustrerò i disegni preparatori realizzati per il sarcofago da Lord Leighton, allievo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze e poi Presidente della Royal Academy of Art. I disegni attestano chiaramente i cambiamenti tra l'idea iniziale di Leighton che voleva celebrare Elizabeth Barrett Browning e la scultura finita di Francesco Giovannozzo dove ella è quasi anonima.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning nacque il 6 marzo 1806 in Inghilterra e trovò sepoltura nel cimitero “degli Inglesi” il 1° luglio 1861. Quel giorno a rendere l’ultimo saluto alla poetessa, oltre al marito Robert Browning e al figlioletto, chiamato affettuosamente Pen, erano presenti Francesco Dall’Ongaro, che tradusse in italiano la sua poesia patriottica, il futuro Lord Lytton, che diverrà Vicerè dell’India, Isa Blagden, Kate Field, i Trollope, i Powers, gli Story; mancava Walter Savage Landor, forse fu dimenticato di mandare una carrozza per lui.

Una seconda corona d’alloro è stata posta stamattina sulla facciata di Casa Guidi, l’amata dimora dei Browning in via Maggio, dove due lapidi già ricordano la poetessa, una con i versi di Niccolò Tommaseo:

Qui scrisse e morì
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Che in cuore di donna conciliava
Scienza di dotto e spirito di poeta
E fece del suo verso Aureo Anello
Fra Italia e Inghilterra.
Pone questa lapide
Firenze grata
1861

l’altra, apposta per deliberazione del Comune nel 1916, con le parole tratte dal suo poema politico Casa Guidi Windows (Le finestre di Casa Guidi):

Ho udito ier sera un fanciullino che cantava
Passando sotto le finestre di Casa Guidi lungo la chiesa
‘O bella libertà, O bella!’

Il Comune di Firenze deponendo una corona d’alloro sulla tomba di Elizabeth rende omaggio alla più illustre degli anglo-fiorentini, la donna e la poetessa, che nel suo ardore di libertà attraverso la poesia, fu paladina audace nella denuncia di ogni forma di schiavitù. Scrisse per le donne, contro lo sfruttamento dei bambini, contro l’oppressione dei popoli, condividendo le aspirazioni di libertà e giustizia dell’Italia risorgimentale. Amò profondamente Dante, Petrarca e Boccaccio, Apuleio, Eschilo e Omero, la Bibbia in greco ed ebraico.

Molti hanno espresso il loro rammarico di non poter essere oggi qui presenti, tra loro, Carlo Principe di Galles, il Poeta laureato Andrew Motion, il Cardinale Ennio Antonelli, il Vescovo ausiliare Claudio Maniago, il Vescovo suffraganeo Anglicano David Hamid, il Presidente della International Emily Dickinson Society Gudrun Grabher, la poetessa Bruna Dell’Agnese, traduttrice di Elizabeth Barrett Browning in italiano, e altri. Ringrazio di cuore della loro presenza: Michael Meredith, Bibliotecario dell’Eton College, Presidente della Browning Society e membro del Consiglio direttivo degli Amici di Casa Guidi, Bruno Santi Soprintendente per il Patrimonio storico artistico ed etnoantropologico, Deborah Dunne in rappresentanza del Console britannico, Tom Marks per il museo Keats Shelley House e il Cimitero Acattolico di Roma e Franca Gollini della Brontë Society italiana. Un benvenuto a tutti voi.

We are now at 1182 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1119 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2301 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

Sincerely,
Julia Bolton Holloway
Aureo Anello Association for the Library and Cemetery
Piazzale Donatello, 38
50132 FIRENZE, ITALY

FLORENTINE LAURELS FOR ENGLAND'S ALMOST POET LAUREATE

On Monday 3 July 2006 the City of Florence will give two laurel wreaths, one to put on the Barrett Brownings' Casa Guidi in via Maggio, the other that they will formally lay on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's newly and beautifully restored tomb by Lord Leighton here in this Swiss-owned so-called 'English' Cemetery.



We invite you to come to the 'English' Cemetery for this ceremony at 6:00 p.m. In this way we pay honour to the great poetess, remembering her in the 200th year of her birth.

Then, on 5 July, at the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute on Lungarno Giucciardini, 9, we shall be reading Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows from 3:00 p.m. to 5: p.m., followed by a visit to Casa Guidi in Via Maggio, Piazza San Felice, where it was written;



then, at 6:00 p.m., a lecture by myself on 'An Old Yellow Book: The Documents in the Case, The Death and Burial of Elizabeth Barrett Browning'. Again, all are welcome.

We invite you to adopt a tomb, research it, seek funds for its restoration, create a garden for it. We seek lavender, rosemary, oleanders, myrtles, irises, daffodils and roses to plant on the tombs. We invite you to share in our gardening, dead-heading the roses, making pot-pourri, having time for contemplation amongst the tombs and the books of this cemetery, this library.

We are now at 1165 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 1004 signatures in-house from our visitors, for a total of 2169 signatures. We have decided to keep them coming.

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the restoration of the 'English' Cemetery you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used for the CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

THE OLD YELLOW BOOK/ THE RING AND THE BOOK

Today has been dedicated to book-binding. I had earlier bought on the web a facsimile of the 'Old Yellow Book', in a shabby cheap cover, the collection of legal documents concerning a murder Robert Browning had bought in the Piazza San Lorenzo and broguht home to Casa Guidi, flinging it up in the air and catching it again by the great mirror, Elizabeth begging that he not obsess with it. It would become the quarry from which he created his magnum opus, The Ring and the Book.



He describes it as bound in old yellow vellum. Today, dashing across Florence on my bicycle, I bought fake vellum, pergamene falsa. But my maestro Enrico Giannini felt we should either use leather or true vellum. And he brought out two pieces. We were just able to cut the cover out of the smaller piece, observing all the rules. Leather is glued, vellum is more often sewn or only its edges glued. We did the latter. A tourist guide and two tourists came so we interrupted our work to marble paper for them. They examined an old ornate 1966 Flood-ruined book. And Enrico told them his price for restoring it is high and that he offered to its owner to teach him how to do it himself. Indeed, studying under Enrico Giannini is a great asset for all book lovers, librarians, restorers.



In the photograph you can see The Old Yellow Book and the 'Clasped Hands', Robert and Elizabeth's Marriage Certificate with Elizabeth Wilson's signature as witness, Elizabeth's portrait frontispiece to Aurora Leigh and Robert's portrait frontispiece painted by their son Pen, where Robert holds The Old Yellow Book in his hands.



Then back home to finish gluing the end papers and the covers on both The Old Yellow Book and my much-loved Sarum Breviary or Hours of Prayer, tiny with thin India paper, gold leaf edged rubricated pages to which I attached blue and green ribbon bookmarks, and green headbands and our blue marbled paper, a breviary that had been once an Anglican bishop's, who had taken it with him to India and to Africa and who gave it when I was librarian of my Anglican convent in Sussex, and that I use when travelling as the Roman one is large and heavy.

Have also been scouting Casa Guidi for the Comune, the city government of Florence, which will give two laurel wreaths 1 July, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's burial date, one to Casa Guidi where she lived, wrote, gave birth, and breathed her last, the other for her tomb here in the 'English' Cemetery. The Comune needed to know if there were a hook. I found a lamppost beneath which it can hang beside the door of Pino Marletta, Antiquario, and he consents and asks me for copies of EBB's books, and showed me his marvelous tools and supplies for restoring seventeenth through nineteenth century Italian furniture. I love crossing over to Oltrarno, 'across the Arno', where the artigiani, the skilled craftspeople have their botteghe, their workshops, and where one can see them carefully applying gold leaf, true not false gold leaf they buy in little handsewn booklets from the mesticherie, the hardware, ironmonger shops. And where I buy it too for painting halos to Madonnas and for the tooled letters on books I bind. One can take book-binding courses from Enrico Giannini - and also spend time looking in shop windows and learning by seeing how to gold leaf and bind books and so much else.

Profound thanks to all the 2000 and more of you who signed the petition to UNESCO. We are forming the Foundation and shall soon be able to request funds for the Cemetery's much-needed restoration from organizations and persons. And almost more than money what we love are people, descendants, who send us information and portraits of their ancestors buried here. This came three days ago and she is seventy, an American, and very lovely.
^*§ ELIZA (CALLAHAN) DOANE/ AMERICA/ Doane (Greene) nata Callahan/ Elisa/ Giovanni/ America/ Firenze/ 10 Novembre/ 1859/ Anni 70/ 686/ Elisa Greene Doane, l'Amerique, Boston, rentiere, fille de Capitain John Callahan, veuve de John Doane/ GL23777/1 N° 274, Death 10/11, Burial 14/11, Rev O'Neill/ SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF MRS ELIZA DOANE WHO WAS BORN/ IN BOSTON USA DEPARTED THIS LIFE/ NOVEMBER 10 1859 AT THE VILLA CAPPONI/ AGED 70/ BLESSED ARE THE PURE IN HEART/ FOR THEY SHALL SEE GOD/ . . . MATTHEW . . . / THIS TABLET IS PLACED BY HER LOVING CHILDREN/ B14N



Eliza Doane circa 1858

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association towards saving the 'English' Cemetery in Florence you can by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

BOOKS AND THE ENGLISH CEMETERY, EGYPTOLOGY AND THE 'ENGLISH' CEMETERY

Thank you everybody! We are now at 2042 signatures on our petition, in house, 1001, and web, 1041, to present to UNESCO, asking 'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site'.

This Cemetery more and more becomes a living place. I was walking up its path with Assunta, realizing this as we went to check for the tombs of a Welsh couple, complete with bees and butterflies, amidst the tall purple flowering irises, for which see below. Then as we walked into the Cemetery a second time today to bring a just-arrived book to its tomb, a pleasing ritual we practice. In this case Henry Edward Napier, R.N.'s Florentine History from the Earliest Authentic Records to the Accession of Ferdinand the Third, Grand Duke of Tuscany, the first volume of six. We have now done this for so many of our tombs, Isa Blagden's Poems to her tomb, Fanny Trollope's numerous books to hers, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Aurora Leigh complete with portrait to hers, Arthur Hugh Clough's books to his, Walter Savage Landor's Imaginary Conversations to his, Mary Young's study of Aonio Paleario, Theodore Parker's biography, books on Hiram Powers' sculpture and on that of Joel Hart to theirs. We read the books' title pages and the tomb inscriptions out aloud, combining our library and this Cemetery. We are profoundly grateful to all the donors of these books, many of them fine first editions, which you can see exhibited here when you visit us. (By the way, if anyone has a spare copy of Dearest Isa, the letters of Robert Browning to Isa Blagden, we should be most grateful.)



The tombs by these irises which are Florence's famous lilies after which she is named 'Florentia', are by the tombs of the historian Robert Davidsohn and that of the Trollope's faithful maid, Elizabeth Shinner.

A further book is Ippolito Rosellini's on the Expedition to Egypt and Nubia he made with Jean-François Champollion. We have now met twice with Florence's Archeological Museum, in particular with their Egyptian expert, and will hold in September 'Il loto e il giglio nel Cimitero degli Inglesi'. This because of the importance of the 'English' Cemetery as charting the Victorian obsession with Egyptology in Florence. Champollion and Rosellini made their Expedition, funded by Napoleon and the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, to Nubia and Egypt in 1828. Our Nadezhda's tomb states that this black Nubian woman came to Florence in 1827, when she would have been 14. So we decided to do a study of the Egyptian motifs in this cemetery inspired by Rosellini's book on Champollion's discoveries. And we should begin with the two columns on either side of the arch of the Gatehouse. These are closed lotus or blue lily flowers. Egyptians believed that the new life would be the open lily and portrayed capitals like them. Our two capitals instead signify death, closure. Arnold Boecklin's painting 'The Island of the Dead' evokes their symmetry.
As we enter we see many tombs, especially of the Rosellini period, filled with such motifs as winged globes or sand-glasses or the ourobouros or the bee, symbols for life's brevity, eternity, royalty, as well as butterflies for the soul from Apuleius' Golden Ass. In particular, the tomb of Arthur Hugh Clough, at his wife and sister's requests, includes the winged globe, taken from Champollion's book, borrowed for this purpose by Susan Horner from Count Torrigiani. We have tombs shaped like Egyptian obelisks, tombs shaped like Egyptian pyramids.
I found myself saying to Assunta amongst our purple blooming irises, which are Florence's lily, that this is one of the nodal places of this world, that we need, like the Aborigines and the Chinese, to honour the ancestors to have good lives ourselves, and remarking how intense this place is with meaning, with meanings, a world treasure.
Tomorrow am speaking on this cemetery at the UNESCO/ASCE (Association for Significant Cemeteries in Europe) in Modena. Will give them the-by-then 2000 signatures of our petition. Not one but two thousand thanks! And we shall have our Fondazione Cimitero Porta a' Pinti detto 'degli Inglesi' within a month.



If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association for the Elizabeth Barrett Browning tomb restoration you can do so by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':

MARCH 25, FLORENCE'S NEW YEAR

We are now at 971 signatures on the web at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site', and with 981 signatures in-house from our visitors, a total of 1952 signatures. Keep them coming!

I urge you to look at the discussion between Robyn Williams and Dr Jim Leavesley of Margaret River, Australia, on Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tuberculosis of the spine and lungs. http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1582151.htm



Today, March 25, Florence celebrates its New Year, Dante and others believing that date is the date of the Creation of the World, the Annunciation to Mary and the Crucifixion of Christ, Dante using it for that reason for the dating of his Commedia. So today we gathered in Elizabeth Barrett Browning's favourite Florentine church, the Basilica of the Santissima Annunziata in the square of that name beside the Ospedale degli Innocenti with its Della Robbia babies in swaddling bands, with the great silken lilied banner of the Comune, and their trumpeters blowing fanfares, all garbed in Michelangelo's red and white Renaissance garb. Incense, the pontifical Mass, mothers holding their daughters, fathers carrying their sons, all Florence was there. and at its Fair in the Piazza where one can buy local pottery and the 'brigidini' sweets once made by the Brigittine nuns at the Paradiso convent before it was suppressed. I write about the Santissima Annunziata and EBB at http://www.florin.ms/ebbflor2.html. There are two celebrated Marian images at the Santissima, the first of Mary with the Angel at the Annunciation, begun by a monk, finished by an angel, all enshrined in silver,



the second of the Madonna Addolorata which Elizabeth uses so powerfully in Aurora Leigh and which I give here in a watercolour by the young English artist, Jamie Rotherham, who for a time was painting in the same cloister as had Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Sarto.



The day before I telephoned Florence's top stone restorer to begin the process of restoring Elizabeth Barrett Browning's tomb, a fitting way to begin Florence's New Year! He is at this time restoring Pen's villa La Torre in Antella. Now we must raise the funds for him to conserve the tombs of her circle of friends also in this 'English' Cemetery in the heart of Florence within sight of the Duomo's great dome, Walter Savage Landor, Fanny and Theodosia Trollope, Arthur Hugh Clough, Isa Blagden, Hiram Powers. We hear that the Friends of Casa Guidi at the same time are having the tombs of Pen and Sarianne Browning in the newer Swiss Cemetery at the Allori outside of Florence restored as well. We shall also be raising the funds, from individuals and from organizations, to restore this eroding hill and to landscape it as it had been in the nineteenth century, with roses, myrtle, lavender, Florence's purple irises that are her lily, and wild strawberries - which can also be given in kind. Imagine driving from England by way of Provence and buying their lavender plants, the very deep fragrant purple ones, for this piazzale in Florence. Recall, too, that in having one's ashes buried here, which is allowed now to all, will enable the 'English' Cemetery's restoration and continuation, as well as that of its Library on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her circle.

Also, before we cycled off to the Santissima, Romano Romoli telephoned me from the Casa dei Tessuti in via dei Pecori by the Duomo and Giotto's Bell Tower. Would I bring over images and books of Elizabeth Barrett Browning for his window, just as I had earlier brought over books from this library on Brunetto Latino and Dante Alighieri. Thus we are turning shops into Florentine museums - since the Florentine museums have turned into shops! Let me invite you into his shop for it is a marvel, gorgeous stuffs, a seven-hundred year old wooden loom from Siena for weaving silk and gold cloth and so much else and where you can really hear the Tuscan Italian that Dante and Elizabeth knew, http://www.florin.ms/casatessuti.html. Which we have now done with our 'Clasped Hands' by Amalia Ciardi Duprè and our handbound limited edition of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnets and Ballad. And my apologies for having Romano Romoli's stockinged feet in the picture:



This is excellent preparation, right in the heart of the city, for our Florentine celebration of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 200th Anniversary that we shall hold on July 5 with a visit to Casa Guidi, a lecture at the Harold Acton Library of the British Institute, overlooking the Arno (which Elizabeth describes as a silver arrow shooting its way through the city),



and a visit to the English Cemetery. She so belongs to this city, linking with a golden ring her language and theirs, English and Italian.


EBB, Michele Gordigiani, 1858


The following associations and individuals are on the Honour Committee of the Emergency Appeal for the restoration of the Swiss-owned 'Cimitero Porta a' Pinti', known as the 'English' Cemetery in Florence:

Sir James Ackroyd, England
Alliance of Literary Societies, England
Amici dei Musei Fiorentini, Florence
Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University, America
Anthony Astbury, The Greville Press, England
Association for Gravestone Studies, America
Association for Significant Cemeteries in Europe (ASCE)
Jeffrey Begeal, America
Clive Britton, Florence
The Brontë Society, England
The Browning Society, England
Dame Fiona Caldicott, Somerville College, Oxford, England
Carolyn Carpenter, America
Diane Lutz Chaplin, Florence
Timothy Chaplin, Florence
Chiesa Evangelica Riformata Svizzera, Florence
Amalia Ciardi Dupré, Florence
Luciana Cuppo Csaki
Leonardo Domenici, Sindaco, Comune di Firenze, Florence
Dame Judi Dench, England
Juliana Dresvina, England/Russia
The English-Speaking Union, America
Ente Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze, Florence
Joan Freed, Canada
Gabinetto Vieusseux ‘Centro Romantico’, Florence
Bernardo Francesco Gianni, O.S.B. Oliv., Florence
Horace W. Gibson, Florence
The Hawthorne Society, America
Philip Henderson, Lucca
Maire Herbert, Ireland
Robert Heylmun, Florence
Historic Gardens Foundation, England
Julia Bolton Holloway, Florence
Peter Auldjo Jamieson, England
Gerardo Kraft, Florence
The Landor Society, England
Denis Looney, America
Moira Macfarlane, British Consul General, Florence
Lapo Mazzei, Firenze
Michael Meredith, Eton College, England
Tony Moulton Barrett, England
Sir Derek Morris, Provost, Oriel College, England
Priscilla Morss Bayard, Florence
Henry Moss-Blundell
Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, England
PatrimonioSOS, Italy
Pre-Raphaelite Society, England
Giuliano and Virginia Prezzolini, Florence
Giannozzo Pucci, Florence
Luigi di Quintana Bellini Trinchi Principe di Cagnano, Rome
Regione Toscana, Florence
Robert J. Robertson, America
Romano Romoli, Florence
Jack Sewell, England
Tom Sewell, England
Salvatore Siano, 'Nello Carrara', CNR, Florence
Simone Siliani, Assessore alla Cultura, Comune di Firenze, Florence
St Mark's English Church, Florence
Carlo Steinhauslin, Florence
Sir Roy Strong, England
Mikhail Talalay, Russian Academy of Science, Naples
Aeronwy Thomas, England
Dylan Thomas Society of Great Britain
The Trollope Society, America
The Trollope Society, England
UNESCO World Heritage Site
Victoria Discussion List, Worldwide
The Victorian Society, England
Waterloo Committee, Patron, Duke of Wellington, England
Anthony and Diana Webb, England
Donald Williamson, America
Mary Williamson, America
Timothy Wilson, Ashmolean Museum, England
Sir Franco Zeffirelli, Italy
Mariella Zoppi, Assessore alla Cultura, Regione Toscana, Florence

Because the Swiss owners consider closing and abandoning the 'English' Cemetery in Florence if it cannot become economically viable, to save this library and archive of history written in marble in which we all share we have created a petition at http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/471134975,
'That the Swiss-owned, so-called 'English' Cemetery in Florence be kept open, be restored and be declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site' / 'Che il Cimitero 'degli Inglesi' a Firenze di proprietà Svizzera possa ancora essere visitabile, sia restaurato e sia dichiarato dall'UNESCO Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Umanità'

If you wish to donate to the Aureo Anello Association towards saving the 'English' Cemetery in Florence you can by a cheque made out to 'Aureo Anello' and posted to 'English' Cemetery, Piazzale Donatello 38, 50132 Florence, Italy; or through the Pay Pal 'Donate' button below, which can also be used to purchase CDs, hand-bound limited edition books and sculptures of Elizabeth and Robert's 'Clasped Hands':