Recent Summer: Piero della Francesca and a dramatic mound

In 15th Century Italy, from Florence to Rome, from Mantua to Prato, Renaissance artists would change forever the way we see the world. Their dizzying accomplishments in architecture, painting, and sculpture remain the epitome of cultured innovation, touching science and mathematics, and for a rare moment putting the artist in a unique position of influence. Their successor today is perhaps more likely to be an AI software engineer than a draughtsman. Like today’s engineer, the Renaissance artist relied on patronage, but with the right resources had the opportunity to do things that were entirely new. Simultaneously in Scotland, a new game was changing the way gentleman enjoyed their leisure. Whilst it is as unlikely that the artists of the Quattrocento knew anything of Golf (gowf) as it is that the people of eastern Scotland had any knowledge of the advances in single-point perspective, it is worth noting that while in Italy the flourishing of culture was supported by the church, further north James II of Scotland issued an edict to curtail golf as a feckless pursuit that distracted from military training. That golf attracts stigma is, it turns out, as old as golf itself.

Golf today is, increasingly, about the destination. A golf holiday is a very, very good holiday. A few days in your favoured playing company on new courses and in new places can be an escape and an adventure, but its expansion and explosion in recent decades does raise questions about its environmental impact (just look at Belek from a satellite view on google maps…) and the capacity to distort accessibility for the local golfer, who once wondered along to their local club for an evening 18 but now finds the car park clogged with coaches and Americans (sorry) hard at work on five hour fourballs with caddies in tow.

I am not sure I’m alone in sometimes feeling a pang of guilt at playing golf away from home, the decadence and expense still feels a little extravagant to someone who grew up playing Kilspindie for a fiver as a junior member’s guest. I don’t feel the same way about travelling abroad to see a painting. But whatever the reason, which probably have more to do with my own preoccupations than any essential truth about golf or art, it is rare that I get to combine the two. So it was a delight to find myself this summer in Umbria and Tuscany, looking at Piero della Francesco’s The Legend of the True Cross (c. 1452-1466) in Arezzo one morning and teeing it up at Antognolla the next. Piero’s masterpiece, the cycle of frescoes for the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo depicts the Golden Legend, the story of the wood from the Garden of Eden becoming the cross upon which Jesus was crucified. It is a miracle of compositional balance and dynamism, each scene has its own energy without departing too far from the unity of the full scheme. I had been here once before, aged 17, at an impressionable time and had always wanted to come back. There’s an odd comfort in knowing that a painting (in particular a fresco) cannot move - no matter where in the world we are, it is always there. And while (like a golf course) there will have been some maintenance and restoration, I am acutely aware that I am enjoying something that has been seen by many eyes for more than 500 years.

A vision of Eden does often feel like the ambition of the lushest golf courses, think the manicured beauty of Augusta or the delicate wildness of Pinehurst No. 2, and Antognolla is resplendent in its simultaneous presentation of an archetypal Italian landscape and golfing playground. Restored and remodelled by Robert Trent Jones Jr. in 2018 the course is now playable all year round and a modern drainage and water capture system recycles run off to boost its eco credentials and ensure incredible conditioning even in the furnace of the Umbrian summer. The ‘signature’ 8th is a mad left-to-right dogleg (more horseshoe) par 5, which wraps around a precipitous ravine and requires a sequence of inventive and accurate shots to get you up and on to the raised putting surface. Like many holes here it’s feast or famine and a wayward strike will punish you and your card. There is a lot of fun to be had here and if your wallet can extend to a room at the new Six Senses resort (opening 2026), which adjoins the 12th Century Castello di Antognolla that perches on the hill above the course, there is luxury too.

Somewhat surprisingly these two days of art and golf keep making me think of the 4th hole of the Old Course. It is one of my favourite holes anywhere. It is probably not the first hole people think of when they think about the Old Course. But it is quietly brilliant down the simplest of things, which is its dramatic mound before the green.