When visiting Italy in 2009, there were so many beautiful and incredible sights; it seemed that everywhere I turned was something else to wonder over. But one thing in particular moved me to the point of tears; Primavera by Botticelli. I had just finished studying an art history paper on the Italian Renaissance, and to be given the opportunity to see such an intricately detailed painting in real-life was overwhelming. I still remember standing in front of the painting for what must have been at least twenty minutes; just looking at each delicately painted flower, each perfect brush-mark. I was overcome with a strange sense of enchantment, and I don't know if it was purely obsession and wonder, or a touch of Stendhal Syndrome; a condition I did not read about until after I had returned home.
Stendhal was a French writer who adopted a German name and lived in Italy. The condition of 'Stendhal Syndrome' was named after him by Dr. Graziella Magherini, an Italian psychiatrist in 1979. Stendhal had visited Florence in 1817, and had described his first experience of the city in his book Naples and Florence: A Journey from Milan to Reggio:
'I was ecstatic with the idea that I was in Florence, close to the masters whose tombs I had seen. Deep in the contemplation of sublime beauty, I reached the point where we experience heavenly sensations. As I emerged from the porch of Santa Croce, I was seized with a fierce palpitation of the heart (that same symptom which, in Berlin, is referred to as an attack of the nerves); the well-spring of life was dried up within me, and I walked in constant fear of falling to the ground.'
Magherini realized many others felt the hastened heart-beat, nausea, dizziness, fainting, and sometimes even hallucinations, when overwhelmed by the intensity of Florence and its art, especially that of the Uffizi. The term describes a psychosomatic illness when one experiences beautiful or vast amounts of art in one place. Before the term had been coined, there had already been many descriptions and writings that revealed visitors to the city from the early 19th Century onward had experienced the same symptoms.
Magherini had worked at Santa Maria Nuova hospital in Florence for almost twenty years when she noticed a certain group of her patients shared particular pathological sensations. Many tourists who had come to the visually and culturally rich city had been overcome by strange and sudden psychosomatic episodes, triggered by their viewing of art; particularly that of the Renaissance. Dr. Graziella Magherini is interviewed by Maria Barnas, an artist and writer, in the August/September 2008 edition of Metropolism Magazine, and the following quotes come from this interview.
'Maria Barnas: How can the serene art of the Renaissance be a catalyst for the Stendhal Syndrome?
Graziella Magherini: Renaissance art is anything but serene. It just seems that way, with its beautiful forms. Florentine and Italian Renaissance art is incredible. Beneath these splendid forms are extremely powerful nuclei of communication, which can cause conflicts and disturbances in the psyche of the sensitive observer. This is why Renaissance art is so striking. It is often a detail that does it, as in Botticelli’s Spring or The Birth of Venus. Have you noticed the wind, the motion of the sea? These details allow you to understand how many disturbing elements underlie this beautiful form.
Maria Barnas: Can contemporary art have the same effect?
Graziella Magherini: An important aspect of the degree to which people can become confused by looking at art is a feeling of being completely overwhelmed. The Stendhal Syndrome occurs most frequently in Florence, because we have the greatest concentration of Renaissance art in the world. People seldom see just a single work, but overload themselves with hundreds of masterpieces in a short period. Renaissance art appeals to everyone, even those who know little about it. This is very different for modern, conceptual art. There are very few people who understand the message, because they do not know the code. Once they understand the code, a disturbance could theoretically occur and the message might be capable of striking something deep in the observer, but I have not yet seen it happen.’
In her book La sindrome di Stendhal, Magherini recounts many stories of patients who had succumbed to the illness, and writes extensively on the effects of artwork on the psyche.
'Kamil, whose last name I won’t mention, is the most memorable. We still keep in touch occasionally. He was from Prague, a student at the art academy. He had spent many days in Florence and each day, the emotions he experienced accumulated, seeing as he was very sensitive. He had visited Santa Croce, the Duomo and, of course, the Uffizi. On one of his last days in Florence, he visited the Chiesa del Carmine, with the Masaccio frescoes. He began to feel uncomfortable, was afraid he would faint. He felt like he was suffocating. He had to leave the church and lay down on the church steps. He was able to collect himself only when he managed to imagine himself at home, in his bed in Prague.
All these new emotions had made him lose his sense of identity. It was as if he were falling apart. When he came to me, he was no longer able to speak. It took months of careful therapy before he was again able to formulate his first new sentences. Stendhal had described a similar experience. When he became unwell at the Sibile di Volterrano, he too had to get away from the church. He went to Piazza Santa Croce and lay down on a bench. He managed to recover when he got a book of poems by Ugo Foscolo from his pocket and read what the poet had written about his own emotions at the church of Santa Croce.'
According to the doctor, when one feels a particular personal connection to art, in the case of Stendhal Syndrome patients, there is witnessed an overwhelming sense of the sublime. Through the research into individual cases, Magherini established there to be a relationship between art and repressed experiences of the viewer, which came to the fore when witnessing the art. This causes the viewer to feel distressed and shocked; resulting in the symptoms.
'There is a recently defined law governing the transformation of strong, uncontrollable emotion into symbols, or thought. When people are able to perform these transformations, they feel better, they can ‘free’ themselves. Psychoanalysts call this ‘mentalization’. To have a thought, it is necessary to begin from an emotion. Through this transformation in the mind, a strong emotion is turned into a symbol. Symbols are the building blocks of thought. Symbols are placed together, a thought is formed and thinking begins. This is what children do. A child’s emotional experiences are transformed, and he is able to think and speak. We have new thoughts all through life and can always make these transformations of feelings and strong perceptions. Affection, love and hate are transformed into symbols. A collection of symbols becomes a thought and a collection of thoughts can lead to reasoning, ultimately to philosophy and mathematics. However there is a hidden danger in this process, which should be a continuum. Sometimes emotions do not complete this transformation to surface as an idea, a thought. I have found from working with my patients that art can play a key role in this. A work of art may be able to pick up these past emotions and become their symbolic container.'
I discovered the concept of Stendhal Syndrome a few years ago, just after I had visited Florence, but have only just come across this interview ten minutes ago, and find it fascinating that Magherini mentions Botticelli's Primavera in particular. It seems like I was not alone in what I felt when viewing that painting. Psychology, and especially the psychology of art, is so interesting. I wish I had more papers left to do for my degree; as well as continuing to learn Italian, I would love the opportunity to take some psychology and philosophy papers. There are just so many exciting things to be learnt.
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