Today we hoped to piece together a few places we had not hit yet, picking up some art we wanted to see, but most nearly all the sites did not open until 10:00, unlike weekdays when they open at 8:15 am. We like the time between 7:30 am and 10:30 am when the air is cool and the crowds have not amassed yet. We figure we can see more between 8:15 am and noon, than we can in the afternoon when the crush of people makes everything happen a little bit slower.
Sally wanted to visit the Mercato, a Pike Place style fruit, vegetable and meat market about 3 blocks from our B&B. It was open at 7:00 am, so we headed there first. We wandered through the street vendors setting up their booths for the day. These hard working souls wheel their mobile stores in from wherever they store them at night, open up the canopies and take hundreds of leather purses, belts, wallets and jackets out of the built in drawers and artfully hang them to catch the passing tourist's eye. They line both sides of the street for blocks, forming a gauntlet one must walk down when going from one spot in the city to another.
Sally had described the market as "open air" so I was navigating towards what I thought was a piazza with vendors, much like Campo di Fiori in Rome. I was confused when I found a big building where there should have been a piazza, but we quickly realized the building housed the market. We squeezed between two of the vendors setting up and climbed the stairs to enter the indoor open market. Inside, we found aisles and aisles of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and meats, whole chickens and sides of beef. We cruised the aisles admiring the artful displays. I bought an apple to munch on. We exited the opposite side of the building we entered, then headed for the Bapistry on the west end of the Duomo. It was open at 8:15 am this morning, and we wanted to get a look inside this octagonal building.
Our tickets we had secured yesterday using or "Firenze Cards" got us through the turnstyle at the north doors, the original Ghiberti creations, and into the building. Two words would describe it, ornate and filthy. The octagonal ceiling was a beautiful mosaic telling the Christian stories and the elements of a church there, but the walls and everything inside had a layer of dirt that even I, one who usually can't see dirt, noticed. I don't want to present it as a uninviting space, it just was noticeable that the walls had not been cleaned for a few hundred years and the soot from a couple million candles was clinging to the white and green marble walls.
We only stayed a few minutes, then exited and headed for the Branacci Chapel to see the frescoes of Masaccio and Masolino. The church didn't open the Branacci Chapel on the side until 10:00 am, so we had about an hour to walk south across the Arno and find the church. We stopped for an apple pastry in a shop along the way. We arrived at the church a few minutes after nine having enjoyed the walk down the usually crowded streets that were quiet this Saturday morning. While waiting for the chapel to open we entered the church nave and quietly strolled its length. Except for a priest seated at a table next to altar up front, we were the only ones there.
I went out to sit outside the entrance door to the chapel on the right side of the church, in the morning sun. Sally stayed inside to avoid the heat. There was an Italian man of about 50 sitting on the steps outside the chapel entrance door. The two of us made up the line to get inside. Over the next 20 minutes I witnessed a family reunion of sorts. A woman showed up with her two kids and the man greeted them with kisses and much fanfare, discussing something in Italian. I heard "domani" and "importante " a number of times, so I figured something big was happening in their lives tomorrow. I watched this scene repeat itself with 3 more moms with kids, some including dad as I waited for the doors to open at 10:00am. Sally joined me about 9:55 am and together we entered the chapel when the doors opened right on time.
This was one of those instances where the Italian Renaissance Art class we took made the difference between staring at three walls of paintings that had no meaning to understanding the significance of their history. In short, Masolino was the master, Masaccio the apprentice. Perspective in painting was just being discovered and in this case the apprentice was better at it than the "master". Masolino was given the commission to do the paintings and needed help finishing them on time and asked Masaccio to help. They each took panels of the biblical scenes to paint, and as the work progresses it turned out the apprentice had a better handle on perspective than the master. The panels are a lesson in the emergence of 3D perspective in painting. Masaccio was friends with Brunelleschi and Donatello and they helped him learn the techniques to create 3D scenes. It was amazing to see. Each painting, as it was created over time, became better at representing a realistic 3D world. One panel was painted by Filipino Lippi as well.
We finished up at the Branacci Chapel a little after 11:00 am and headed for the Church of Santa Maria Novella, just a block or two from our B&B and right behind the train station. We knew there was some art inside, but until we began touring it, we did not realize the extent of it. Here was another Masaccio 3D fresco, "The Trinity" expertly rendered on the wall of the nave, a Giotto painting of the Crucifixion, Ghirlandaio frescos of Mary and John the Baptisit, Filippino Lippi, Brunelleschi, Orcagna Brothers and Vasari. It took as an hour and a half to visit them all in this massive church.
It was now 1:00 pm and lunch was on our minds. We enjoy the Kabab sandwiches, usually splitting one. It makes for a cheap meal, about 2 euro each and we get some protein from the chicken. We walked past one on our way to another one I was navigating to using Google Maps. We are finding restaurant owners in Florence frown on splitting a meal. Universally they have given us the stink eye when we order "uno per due".
We wandered back to the B&B, only a block away, and rested for a few minutes before walking over to the Duomo to see it from the inside. Being Saturday, the line to get in was nearly as long as the cathedral itself. We bypassed this snake of humanity and headed for the Duomo Museum, also on our list for the day and located right behind the cathedral. There was no line. We breezed right in.
Here was one one of the major items on our hit parade of things to see, the actual Bronze doors of Ghiberti (the ones currently on the Bapistry are copies) . We spent a while admiring both sets of doors, the original set and the second set. We took pictures, trying to capture a bit of this moment to take home. Somehow, taking a picture makes the experience of seeing something more substantial, more real, as if it didn't really occur unless you view it through a lenses and push a button. I wonder is some psychologist somewhere has done a study on this phenomenon.
We saw Donatello's wood carving of Mary Magdalene and Michelangelo's Pieta plus the choir boxes made by Donatello and Luca Della Robbia. We saw lots of other stuff that we are sure was impressive and important, but by this time, after four days, we were suffering "Museum Fatigue" and all the art wonders of the world were blurring together, like the view out a train window when another train passes in the opposite direction, an incomprehensible blur. Time to call it a day.
Sally remembered seeing the oldest renaissance building in existence from our lecture series and found it in the guide book. We were both in the mood for a walk rather than standing. We headed in it's direction. We found the building, the "hospital of the innocents" fronted with a large piazza with two fountains and a statue away from the throngs of site seers. We enjoyed sitting on its steps in the shade and reading about its history.
Back to the B&B room for a short rest. While laying around, I worked on my blog and Sally read the guidebook. She found a reference to a crucifix that Michelangelo had carved in 1494 at the age of eighteen as a thank you for the prior of the church who let him sneak into the morgue and dissect bodies to learn about their anatomy. The crucifix is hanging in the church Santo Spirito just south of the Arno. Off we went, hoping it would be open and we could see it.
It is about a mile across town to Santo Spirito. We were pleasantly surprised to find a wonderful piazza fronting the church. The doors of the church were closed, but a group of people were outside one of the doors. We walked up and Sally asked if we could see the inside of the church.
As has been our experience with every Italian we talk with, they are polite, kind and super helpful. They go far beyond the requirements of politeness, always offering assistance. This group of three women and one man were waiting to perform in a choir concert in the church. The man was the choir director of one of the groups singing. Last night we met the director of the choir singing outside the Signoria. Sally got her picture with him, smiling and laughing about meeting two choir directors in two days. One of the women thought the entrance to the chapel where the crucifix hangs was just around the corner. She lead us over there, talked to the man in the booth and interpreted what she had learned.
We paid our three euro each and entered the cloister. We followed the map we were given to a first open room, sat for a minute looking at a crucifix and realized it was not the correct one. We checked the map and moved to the correct chapel. Did I mention that there was no one there. Not just a few people. No one. We stood in the chapel admiring this 515 year old wood sculpture all by ourselves. I snapped a picture as we entered the the room, and then a docent entered and told us no photographs. I put my phone in my pocket, happy to have sanctified the experience by pushing a shutter release. We stayed for 20 minutes or so. We enjoyed sharing the solitude with Michelangelo's crucifix.
It was now 9:00 pm. We checked out the restaurants and found one that served a monster plate of mussels. We made a mental note to return next night for dinner out.
We walked back through the well lit streets of Florence, awash with crowds of people. We stopped in a few shops, Sally, fascinated by the new style of shoes with gold and silver highlights window shopped back to the B&B.
What an amazing day! Our 14th in Italy.
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