1. Amore (Cont.)

For Italians, amore sustains life itself. There is no such thing as a halfhearted love. One succumbs completely to Cupid's lure, and life without the loved one present results in unbearable loneliness.

In music, in art, in poetry, and in mythology and folktales, Italians have always been in love with love. The Greeks called her Aphrodite, but the Romans gave us Venus, the goddess of love, whom we can visualize as the Renaissance artist Botticelli painted her, emerging from a seashell in all of her naked splendor, the epitome of feminine beauty. The painting, Birth of Venus, which hangs in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, takes your breath away as you pass it because you know that in Italy, you too will fall under the goddess's spell.

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