Tuesday, March 25, 2008

What a setting!



Well, my talk was nothing special -- although it was an excellent audience of hospital presidents, medical directors, and clinical risk managers from two or three dozen regionally run public hospitals in Tuscany. Officially, this wasn't a business trip: I had taken some vacation time and volunteered to help teach a city planning class for some MIT students here in Florence. But, it turns out that our ED has been involved for several years in training emergency room physicians here, and they nabbed me to do a lecture. It was the usual topic, "Managing change in hospitals to improve quality and safety of patient care."

But the setting was a former Medici villa, now called Villa La Quiete, which has been handed down over the centuries to the local university. And after the talk, they gave a private tour of some of the back rooms for me and a couple lucky MIT students and their instructor. Hiding away was a Botticelli entitled, "Incoronazione della Vergine e Sante", from about 1500. I took the pictures above (don't worry, no flash!) to give you a sense of some of the images in the painting. It took your breath away to be this close to such a masterpiece.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

A Botticelli? Just hanging around? WOW! Amazing... thanks for the photo!

Michael D. Miller, MD said...

Thanks for sharing. Also, I seem to recall a long ago study (of not great sophistication), which found that clinicians with greater artistic ability were better diagnosticians. I believe they theorized that it had to do with their ability to integrate disparate pieces of information, i.e. see the big picture - sorry about the pun.

Toni Brayer, MD said...

Just lovely. Thanks for the visual treat.

Anonymous said...

Yes, Dr. Val, just hanging around. Amazing!

Anonymous said...

Floretine art just around your corner in Boston (The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum): Sandro Botticellis The Madonna of the Eucharist

Anonymous said...

For sure!

Anonymous said...

So sorry we were out of town when you visited here but glad you got some "behind the scenes" peaks. I would have loved to give you and the students a tour of "my Florence." Thanks for your support of the program Paul!