“Death is radically resistant to the order of representation.  Representations of death are misrepresentations, or rather representations of an absence.”
-Simon Critchley

I got my first international phone call after our third day of class.  I don’t remember much about the conversation, but I do remember this: “I, um, don’t know how to tell you this, but Marshall stopped breathing in his sleep last night and the paramedics couldn’t resuscitate him.”

Marshall had been one of my best friends since my freshman year of high school.  Selfishly, my first thought was of myself.  Did this mean I wouldn’t be there for his funeral?  Of course it did.  I watched day and night from my laptop as my friends congregated to share memories, post pictures, and raise money to help Marshall’s family.

I saw that the mechanics of mourning were strangely similar to that of a particularly somber retirement party at the office.  The photos and stories people shared did not talk about death per se.  They were about defining themselves in relation to Marshall, struggling to define how he would be remembered.  They were monuments.

Through all this, I was getting to explore some of the best cultural sites Tuscany had to offer, most in Florence.  If Florence is nothing else, it is a monument, crafted by the finest artists and wealthiest rulers.  “Memento mori,” each work of art, building and street corner echoed.  I had been enamored with the concept of memento mori since our visit to the Museo Archeologico.  It was the beginning of our school week and I was mere hours from hearing about Marshall.  The little larva convivialis grinning out at me reminded me of many of my risk-taking friends back home as it encouraged, “Drink and be merry!”  I thought the skeleton looked cool and flippantly thought of the ways I could incorporate it into my final project.

Death seemed the obvious answer.  After all, Florence was full of paintings, sculptures and poems about the dead.  While I don’t mean to draw crude parallels between these great works of art and Marshall’s memorial Facebook messages, it occurred to me that they both share a motivation.  “We all die, but how will you be remembered?” seemed to be the unspoken question they posed.  Monuments, whatever form they take, construct narratives, whether they be true or false.  The giant statues of wealthy rulers, explorers, and artists that populate Florence lent themselves to the idea that Florence was a center for the cosmopolitan, the daring, the intellectual, the creator.  While that certainly wouldn’t describe all inhabitants of Florence past and present, that is ultimately how we conceive of Florence.

In this exhibit I attempt to explore the relationship between memento mori and monument as it pertains to Florence and its surrounding areas within Tuscany.  I started to see over time how momento mori was configured by Christianity to encourage piety.  This convergence results in the first monument: The Crucifix.  I call The Crucifix the first monument because it is such a prominent testament to the sacrifices of Christ. While memento mori is just a general reminder of death, scenes of the crucifixion are both a reminder of death and a reminder of a person. While these scenes are not specific to Florence or Italy by any means, they were important enough that the first room of the Uffizi our class ever saw was the Crucifixion room from their 13th century collection.

The lessons imparted by scenes of the crucifixion are seen to be questioned and reaffirmed during the Plague, as in Buffalmacco’s piece.  It struck me as significant that, even though the Plague may have been a time of great instability, the images preserved and presented to me by Tuscany reaffirmed Christian piety and spirituality.  These images reinforce the omnipresence of Christianity and the Church in the Tuscan identity.

The Crucifix also begins an obsession with documentation, the effects of which can be seen during the Renaissance, as scientific exploration clashes with Christian doctrine over the dissection of corpses.  Examining death and monument through the lens of Renaissance exploration resulted in the fascinating, if not incredibly disturbing, discovery of the anatomical Venus.  There seemed to be a particular interest in female anatomy.  The convergence of art and science allowed scientists to explore the female body in new ways.  As a 21st century woman, I could not help but feel that this was a kind of misogynistic invasion of my privacy, especially given how beautiful these dolls were.  It seemed too indulgent of male fantasies and reminded me of the silent and exaggerated sex dolls popular with some men today. But I was also aware that modern medicine relied heavily on such invasions.  The contradiction  was enticing enough that I knew I wanted to feature one of these dolls in my project.

These dolls also brought up the idea of the body as a site of contradictions.  It is holy, yet common and expendable.  I didn’t know what to make of these mixed messages.  I saw this struggle in almost everything I saw in Florence from the conflicts over how to present Christ’s body on the crucifix, to the fetishization of bodies and resting places.  I, and many of my classmates, were often horrified at the seemingly frequent practice of moving dead bodies or stealing parts of dead bodies.  But that’s also what made our site visits so interesting.  Despite our horror, we were part of this fetishization of the body.  Sometimes the body becomes the monument, as we will see in the likes of Saint Catherine.  But sometimes the body is a political tool, as Michelangelo’s seems to have been. I found myself struggling at sites like these, because it seemed we had sacrificed the humanity of these people for testaments to things we think they stood for.

This internal struggle is what ultimately helped me to craft my project.  When we talk about monuments, we usually say that they are a celebration of the life of someone.  However, when I use the word monument in this exhibit, I am talking about the celebration of something outside that person.  It’s a celebration of how we perceive someone or want to be perceived. In this way, monuments change a fundamental idea of momento mori.  Memento mori assumes you cease to exist in the mortal world after death, but monuments ensure a secondary life in the mortal world. In Tuscany, this means that great people will be remembered in grand, and sometimes even gross, ways.  On the internet, the gestures will be smaller, but no less a manipulation of narration.

In exploring the different ways death has been celebrated, this exhibit also becomes a monument.  To scientific discovery, to artistic excellence, to Tuscan curiosities, and of course, to my friend Marshall.