It must be in the air now that summer is nearly here and Florence is already packed with tourists and the temperatures are in the mid-80's (which is precisely why our tours go in the fall and spring!). I'd just been thinking about the Stendhal Syndrome when my friend Martha sent me a NY Times article about it, and suddenly I was seeing pieces about this curious phenomenon all over.
The Stendhal Syndrome is an overwhelming response to art in Florence, first recorded by the great French author, Henri Beyle (1783-1842), whose pen name was Stendhal. Even on the road when traveling to Florence for the first time, he experienced such strong emotional and physical turmoil in anticipation that he felt himself unable to form lucid thoughts. Contemplating the works of art in the museums of Florence, he got so worked up, or as he wrote, "transported into a state of extreme agitation and even ecstasy," that he sometimes feared he would lose consciousness.
Many other famous visitors, like the poet Rainier Maria Rilke who visited in 1898, reported similar experiences and wrote of being moved to tears or of finding it difficult to breathe while surrounded by the art treasures in Florence. But this syndrome is not restricted to the sensitive souls of the Romantic period.
The psychologist Graziella Magherini, who first named this syndrome, observed similar "symptoms" in the 1980's among visitors to the city. She studied over 100 cases between 1978 and 1986 of people who suffered temporarily from "excessive emotional response" to art. In the most extreme cases the response ranged from panic to euphoria, to depression and occasionally hallucinations.
The trigger for this is apparently not just the sheer mass of paintings, sculpture, and gorgeous architecture so densely packed in Florence. According to Dr. Magherini's patients, it is truly only the greatest, "most overpowering" masterpieces that push some over the edge, leaving most of the affected dizzy, disoriented and confused.
An article in this month's Firenze Spettacolo lists Michelangelo's David, Botticelli's La Primavera and 
Birth of Venus, Giotto's frescoes in Santa Croce, and Piero della Francesco's potraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino as among the top ten works of art that seem to cause the Stendhal Syndrome. It also reports that the victims are generally single, middle-aged people travelling on their own, and adds that no Italians have ever been affected!
Fortunately, the reaction is always temporary and recovery swift and total.
Since we'll be seeing these magnificent works of art together and can share our responses, members of our tours should be quite immune. We will be free to enjoy the museums at our leisure as well as the shopping, food, and other delights during the sunny cool days of October.
