I think this is the tree in the Chianti near Siena, close to Castella Brolio, where I stopped on one of many 160+ km rides during the summer of 2000 and called Sloan on a now-vintage cell phone, on loan from my friends and hosts Laura Martini and Silvia Martini.
Sloan was at Oxford at the time, immersed in dissertation research and enduring cold rain and bland food, while I enjoyed several weeks of cycling and exploring nooks of the Chianti and its sunlit paths, and multi-course meals prepared by Mrs. Lucy Martini.
Sloan would join me later, flying into Firenze and us traveling straight to a mountaintop villa for the weekend (auspiciously during which my dad would have heart surgery, back in the states). The tree - it's iconoclastic for other reasons, but it's also the one under which one of the two culminating scenes of Stealing Beauty was filmed. If I didn't already love Bertolucci films, I did after that summer...
Sloan would join me later, flying into Firenze and us traveling straight to a mountaintop villa for the weekend (auspiciously during which my dad would have heart surgery, back in the states). The tree - it's iconoclastic for other reasons, but it's also the one under which one of the two culminating scenes of Stealing Beauty was filmed. If I didn't already love Bertolucci films, I did after that summer...
