Shona in Florence
Shona was my great friend, my work partner, and a source of support and love to my family, too. We'd been spending the year in Florence, at the Villa I Tatti, working on projects that intersected in several ways. Over the years of our friendship, we talked about the possibility of coming here, but neither of us ever managed we'd actually manage it, let alone in the same year!
I'll have so many memories of her, and I'll have other chances to share those, here and elsewhere, but today I was thinking about how she and my ten-year-old daughter would walk together through the Uffizi, looking rather irreverently at renditions of the Madonna and Christ child. They'd stop in front of a Botticelli, or a Filippo Lippi, or (maybe worst) Lucas Cranach, and critique the artists' renderings of baby heads, baby legs, and baby eyes. I will NEVER be able to go to the Uffizi again without hearing them giggling about the "creepy babies."
Roisin Cossar