The concentration of human-created beauty might be no greater than in Florence, where works by the greatest artists of the Italian Renaissance overflow. Across the centuries, travelers have made their way to immerse themselves in the visual spectacle that abounds. So overpowering was the sense of beauty to the French author Marie-Henri Beyle (d. 1842), better known as Stendhal, that he became physically stricken by it. He once wrote: “I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence . . . Absorbed in contemplation of sublime beauty . . . I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations . . . I had palpitations of the heart . . . Life was drained from me. I walked with fear of falling.” In fact, so many visitors to Florence experience similar symptoms that in 1979 the Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini created the term “Stendhal’s Syndrome” as a label for the physical afflictions experienced when individuals become overwhelmed by great beauty. Although not considered an official disorder by the modern medical community, the symptoms do line up with those occurring in a Tranient ischemic attack (a brief neurological disfunction caused by a problem with blood flow to the brain that does not cause tissue damage). Turns out, Stendhal really knew how to suffer. Besides the “celestial sensations” caused by his passion for beauty, he engaged in a lot of sexual passions as well, eventually contracting and dying from syphilis at age 59.
Source(s): First image taken from “Italy Magazine,” June 2019. Second image is Stendhal, by Olof Johan Sodermark, 1840.
