Customer Reviews

Dark Water: Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In addition to skillfully selecting especially interesting and informative events and facts, Robert Clark writes beautifully! This book is a particularly enjoyable read and much more than a history of the 1966 flood. Dark Water reads like a combination of history, novel, adventure, and an essay of profound personal reflection. The subtitle, Flood and Redemption in the City of Masterpieces, is apt.

This book is about much more than the 1966 disaster. In part, it even includes a look at Florence during WWII connecting the disparate artistic sensibilities of Mussolini, Hitler, and legendary art historians Bernard Berenson, and Frederick Hartt. To a greater extent, it relates a compelling, moment by moment, description of the flood with an emphasis on human interest--honestly, you'll feel like you're there. It introduces some of the complex issues of art restoration in ways that would make even my dog care about the subject. Finally, Dark Water is a very personal reflection. Clark introduces characters--the Arno itself becomes a living presence--who experience the flood firsthand, and he then weaves the common threads of their lives up to the present. He manages all of this by relating experiences; he is never didactic or pedantic.

I was so impressed by Dark Waters I went looking up all the reviews I could find to see if my opinion was shared. All the reviews are glowing, but none of them does the book justice (and my comments here are certainly inadequate). I would have been satisfied simply reading the facts and stories Clark relates. However, this was so much of joy to read that I found myself stopping and rereading portions just to savor his prose and his insight--for example, "But the art in an artwork might not be located precisely where you thought it was. Perhaps it was just as much in the damage and decay as it was in the intact original. Perhaps it was in the gaps--in contemplating and tending those insults and injuries--that we find ourselves, by compassion; by bandaging, however imperfectly, those wounds. Art may be a species of faith, the assurance of things hoped for. It contains nothing so much as our wish that we persist."

You will enjoy this.

When I was nine years old I saw pictures in the old Life magazine of a terrible flood that had just devastated an Italian city I had never heard of: Florence. Although I knew nothing of the masterpieces that had been damaged or destroyed, I realized that the world had suffered a great loss. Eight years later, as a teenager making my first trip to Europe, I visited Florence and saw the massive recovery and restoration efforts still underway. Florence meant more to me then, as I had just studied the Renaissance, and in the years since I have come to realize how important that rather small Italian city has been to the world's artistic, literary and spiritual development. Robert Clark's Dark Water is an excellent history of the city of Florence through the centuries, culminating with the 1966 flood and the subsequent recovery.

If Clark had only focused on 1966 and afterwards, this would still be an important work, but Dark Water is still more valuable because Clark has produced a fine history of the city, beginning with Dante, proceeding through the Renaissance, and on through to the present. He provides many excellent short biographies of the creative spirits associated with Florence, ranging from Leonardo and Michelangelo through to David Lees and Bernard Berenson. His accounts of Florence's participation in and witnessing of hundreds of years of history are also fascinating, particularly his coverage of the World War II period and the efforts made to preserve the city's treasures in the middle of massive conflict. His description of the 1966 flood and its aftermath is a gripping almost minute by minute account, and again features many hitherto unknown heroes of the recovery effort.

It would have been nice to have illustrations of the many artworks mentioned in this work and portraits of the many heroes and heroines who figure in Florence's history, and the book badly needs an index as well, but these are minor flaws, particularly when one considers Clark's fine writing style and his ability to create an engrossing narrative.

I think readers will mostly be split on this book, depending on your interests. Are you most interested in the history of some of the major artworks of Florence or most interested in the flood as an event in a dramatic setting?

What I was hoping and expecting from this book is a telling of the history of the flood and especially the art restoration that followed, with the thousands of volunteers from around the world. While the book does cover this, it doesn't get to the 1966 flood until about 120 pages into the book. Until then, the book briefly talks about the Arno here and there starting around the 1300s but mostly talks about art and artists in Florence over the centuries leading up to the flood. While it did give perhaps some useful background to some of the artworks that were the focus of the restoration after the flood, it rambled and meandered through the decades and centuries to the point that you begin to wonder if the book has been completely misrepresented.

I also found the writing style of the book to often be a bit too rich and melodramatic as if the author were trying a bit too hard to show that he could write in a creative way. Sometimes I felt that reading the book was a bit like listening to a person at a party telling an interesting story but in a self-indulgent way and where you wished they'd be a bit more focused and get on with it.

That said, I definitely found the sections dealing with WWII interesting as well as those sections actually about the flood and aftermath once he got to it. So my recommendation is that this should be an interesting book for you if you are generically interested in renaissance art and Florence and where the plot line of the flood just adds spice to the story. But if your interests are somewhat reversed and you are more interested in the drama of the flood and the unique response the world provided, and less interested in the 600 years of art in Florence prior to the flood, then I would agree with the other reviewer who recommends you consider skipping large chunks of the first 120 or so pages.

... for anyone with even the most passing interest in Florence and Italian art and art history. The book is sweeping in its multiple levels comprising: a history of Florence; biographies of some key people in her history including as recently as Bernard Berenson; a dramatic account of the flood in which the Arno becomes an alive, humanoid beast; reflections on "Florence" as romanticized by art lovers and "Firenze" as lived in day-by-day by its savvy cynical citizens; descriptions and ruminations about art restoration; a paean to the legions of young "mud angels" (angeli del fango) who descended on the city to help in the cleanup; enshrinement for history of other unsung heroes - and victims - and much more, not least the author's lucid, poetic prose. I don't give the book a fifth star for two reasons. As others have noted, it cries for more illustrations, and maps, for example of the Arno's whole course. And organizationally the book does jump around somewhat. But it is so rich that it is, again, a must-read. By instilling a new awe and reverence in the reader for that city's storied history - as well as for the irrepressible Florentines - it makes Florence "yours."

Reviewers note: I served in the U.S. Navy in Italy in 1965-67 and had the opportunity to visit Florence multiple times including for New Year's 1967 a few weeks after the flood. Even then the aftermath-situation was dramatic especially in the low-lying Santa Croce quarter. Piazza della Signoria was by then pretty cleaned up and the Palazzo Vecchio's windows were illuminated top to bottom with candles. At the stroke of midnight Il Duomo's big bell boomed and echoed from Giotto's Campanile down the quiet streets. Florence lived on. An unforgettable experience.

I found this book to be a great history of the city of Florence and why its art matters so much to human civilization. Robert Clark does a great job in setting the table by giving a great back story on why Florence rose to such importance in the art world and also about its tempestuous relationship with the Arno river. He does a great job explaining why the flood mattered so much and why its damage really shook the art world to its core. His coverage of restoration of the art was very compelling.

I only demure from giving it a higher rating because the human angle of the flood was played out in a very confusing format and it was hard to follow who was doing what and why. Clark focused on the art and even that was hard to follow to someone who is not as well versed in the world of art as he is. Overall though it is an interesting read and well worth your time.

Excellent reading. Fascinating history leading up to the flood of 1966. My only problem with the book was the lack of images. With all the discussion of Cimabue's Crocifisso and Vasari's Last Supper, neither was pictured. And there were very few images of the flood or its aftermath. Photographer David Lees did lots of work for LIFE Magazine on this story, and he figures prominently in the book, but there are only a couple of his pictures in it. Still, a great read.

So I have this 'great gap of time' on my hands in Portland ME one Saturday afternoon because I missed the 3 pm train back south and the wonks at Amtrak think its reasonable to offer the next departure at 8 pm. I step into Longfellow's Bookstore and shuffle through the art books and discovered Dark Water. Am I lucky or what? Like the author (with only a year's difference in age), Life Magazine fired more memories and concerns in my young adolescent life than National Geographic--and that's saying a lot. Saving the Temple of Abu Simbel (sp?) from Lake Nasser and the Aswan Dam. Saving Olana, Frederic Church's home on the Hudson. And, right before its disappearance from my mother's mailbox forever (life ceased publication soon after the Flood), the 1966 Flood in Florence. It's hard for me to be objective about this book. My concerns then and now are the author's concerns. I cared about art. About what's savable from the past. I worried about why such ephemera take on such an overwhelming role in our "spiritual" lives. And ultimately, I puzzled over beauty, how something so powerful can not exist one moment and the next, at the end of some old Italian nobody's paintbrush, can ignite and burn through the centuries. Clark is a superb writer. Knows how to tell a story. Digs for the facts (it's cool to know the nitty-gritty of the Flood's history on its 40th anniversary). Sweeps through the historical background to give his thesis a solid foundation. All that might be expected. But the personal details that surround the story of the flood and the discussion of art, values, and redemption by beauty aren't. They lift this book from an academic history to a valuable catalyst for meditation. I don't know who else Robert Clark wrote this book for but I'm certain he wrote it for me.

This book is fascinating to all who enjoy art, and want to learn more about the art world of Florence Italy, and how floods over many years have affected it. The author narrates the book through the eyes of people who experienced the floods and others who were affected by them. I found it both interesting and educational.

I purchased the book from an affiliate of Amazon and was very pleased with the speed of delivery and the condition of the book.

Clark possesses an intimate knowledge of Florence and the Florentine and does a masterful job of describing the "sadness" of the losses of the masterpieces and the frustration of the restorers of them and the city itself.Ralph Alfieri

While this author gives a particlarly impressive account of the flood in Venice (1966) he does an absolutely fabulous job of exploring past floods, and then brings into perspective the creation of many of Venice's most influencial and memorable pieces of artwork.
Clark explores each moment of this flood (while skillfully dropping in comparisons to previous floods) and the devistating impact the water had upon the works of art, and then the second half of the book carries the reader through the restoration, and preservation of those pieces.
All in all, the authors facts are historically correct (an extensive bibliography documents each reference), he has a very talented way of presenting the story so that the reader is carried smoothly from event to event, never forgetting the past.
Much praise for Robert Clark.