When Sally and I first decided to chase Joel to Italy for his wedding and to extend the trip to 7 weeks, I knew I wanted to know a lot about Italy before I went. My first trip to Europe in 2009 was an eye opener, but I had done no research before going. Much of what I saw had no context. Knowing the background of an art object, a church, a monument or a town gives meaning to it when you experience it when traveling. I also knew I wanted to have some ability to speak the language of the country we were visiting. Luckily, Joel and Hailey gave us plenty of lead time to prepare.
The Italian Renaissance Art 36 part lecture series that I gave to Sally 3 years ago gave us an in depth lesson on the progression of art through the renaissance and should prove useful today as we visit the Uffizi Museum, the Bargelo and the Sante Croce Church. Reading books about the Popes ("Absolute Monarchy") and the Medici ("The Medici") and others has me excited to see the places and art they talk about. Today, we are off to begin seeing the things we have been studying.
The Uffizi opened at 8:15 am this morning. We were up at 6:30 am, had a breakfast of strawberries and yogurt, packed some bread and cheese for lunch and headed for the Uffizi gallery. We retraced our steps of last night to the entrance, our "Firenze" cards in hand. We arrived just as the doors opened, passed through security and walked the stairs to the top floor to begin our journey through art history.
It was amazing to see that which we had been studying. We started with pre-renaissance alter pieces that show no perspective and worked our way into Filippo Lippi followed by Botticelli, watching the emergence of depth, perspective, realism and humanism in the art. Michelangelo and Raphael entered the mix as the renaissance reached full bloom.
It is amazing how tiring it can be to stand and stroll through a museum! By the time we worked our way past the end of the building overlooking the Arno River and down to the only Michelangelo free standing painting in existence (the only one he ever did), we were feeling it. We still had two floors to go! We worked our way down the to Raphael exhibits, then Leonardo and we were done, both with things we wanted to see and energy. It drains both mentally and physically.
It took us three and a half hours to get through the museum, but what an amazing experience to see that which we had been studying.
It was noon and time for lunch. Next on our list was the Bargelo Museum, known for its sculptures, but first it was twelve and time for lunch. We found a Kabob place near the church of Santa Croce for lunch and split a sandwich.
Santa Croce was Michelangelo's church as he was growing up, and there is a lot of art and history associated with this church. We decided to tour it before we headed to the Bargelo. Also on our schedule was the Palazzi Vecchio, all in the same corner of town.
In Santa Croce are the tombs of Galileo, Dante, Machiavelli and Michelangelo along with hundreds of other lesser known souls. We made sure we visited the four we knew, and we walked on top of scores of others as we strolled the church nave. We also found frescoes done by Giotto in the Bardi Chapel within the church. Outside the church is the Brunelleschi Chapel, a geometrically perfect chapel, constructed using perfect squares, cubes and circles.
After paying our respects to the Santa Croce, we headed for the Bargelo. Where Santa Croce was down on our priority list, the Bargelo was way up at the top. Inside, I knew we would see Michelangelo's Bacchus, Madonna and Child with Young Saint John, and bust of Brutus along with two of Donetello's Davids, especially the bronze one, the first free standing male nude since Roman times, over 1000 years.
We were prepared to read Rick Steves guidebook tour of the museum because we did not find an audio version in the podcast store. As we walked in and were getting prepared to mount the stairs to the second floor where we knew Donatello's David was, we met an English lady who was using an audio tour of Rick Steves that we had not found. Her iPhone had just died and she was disappointed. I was carrying an extra battery and quickly plugged her in and began recharging. We stood and talked for the next 10-15 minutes while it charged, comparing notes and sharing experiences. Her husband soon arrived and joined the conversation. Eventually, we unplugged and went our separate ways. She only had 15% charge, but she thought it enough to complete his tour.
We walked up the stairs of this old police station, turned right, and entered a room full of statues. There at the far end we spotted Donatello's David, the feminine looking boy poised with his foot on Goliath's head, sword in hand looking like he was ready to enter a gay bar. Amazingly, no ropes, no plexiglas, no barriers of any kind. You could walk right up to him on his pedestal and inspect every detail of the bronze statue. We circled and admired this 550 year old statue that had seen so much, financed by Cosimo De Medici, displayed in his interior courtyard and then handed down through history. He inspired Michelangelo who worked as an apprentice in that courtyard and walked past the statue every day. Here I was staring at the exact same statue. I wanted to touch the bronze and feel the details of Donatello's work, but that is the one thing you are not to do. Docents throughout the room descend like hyenas if you do, as I witnessed with another guest. I forgot to mention, none of the other museum goers were taking notice of David. We had him all to ourselves.
While climbing the stairs and approaching David, I quickly downloaded the audio tour of the Bargello. When we had spent enough time swooning over David, we plugged in and returned to the entry courtyard to begin our tour.
First place we went was into the first door on the right and there was Michelangelo's Baccus, a life size male nude, drunk on wine and tipsy, with a imp wrapped around one leg munching on grapes. This was his first full sized sculpture, completed when he was 21. Again, no barriers. You get up close, nose hovering near the marble and see the drill marks, the chisel marks, everything. And there, on the wall behind the Bacchus was his Madonna and Child. And next to that was the bust of Brutus.
Our audio tour took us back up the steps and explained more about David, and then led us to the door panels created by Ghiberti and Brunelleschi as they competed for the contract to make the doors for the Bapistry adjacent to the Duomo. Here they were, the panels each had created, on their own, to win the contract. Ghiberti won, and did such an amazing job that he was commissioned to do another set for the north doors. He spent most of his life creating these two sets of bronze door, both amazing.
How cool is it to see that panels, now 515 years old, that were the birth of the renaissance? No barriers between me and them. I could reach out and touch them as they hung on the wall. Amazing!!
If we were tired after the Uffizi, now we were dragging, although excited with all the cool stuff we had seen. We worked our way back across the town to our B&B and collapsed in bed for a nap. We drug ourselves out of bed and decided to ride bus 12 to the Michelangelo Piazza on the hill south of town to see the sunset over the city. I had seen the bus stop across the street from the train station when we entered town. It was only 2 blocks away. We walked the distance and began sizing up busses.
I stuck my head in a bus that had just pulled up, yet had no number on its reader on the front. I asked if he was bus 12. He looked at me a minute, sizing me up, then said in broken English, "You want to go the Piazza Michelangelo?" I said "Si!". He said, "Come in. I will take you directly there." Then he announced to the other 10 passengers on the bus that he was going directly to Piazza Michelangelo and if they did not want to go they needed to get off!! It took about 30 seconds for the astonished riders to realize he was serious and they exited through the open doors. Now it was just Sally and I on the bus. He pulled out into traffic and roared up the road, dodging in and out of traffic as if he were driving a Ferrari, not a 50' long bus. True to his word, we went directly to the piazza, and quickly. His foot was either pedal to the metal or on the brake. Nothing in between. We laughed and giggled at this preposterous situation as we careened through the streets of Florence, missing pedestrians and cars, parked or moving by fractions of an inch. In the time I thought we would spend waiting for a bus, we were at the piazza. I wished him "Gratzie Mille", a thousand thanks as we left the bus. He smiled and zoomed away. Wow!! That was unexpected and cool!!
We joined the throngs of hundreds in the piazza waiting for the sunset and chatted with some kids from Toronto on a 14 day run through Europe. We snapped our shutters with everyone else as the sun set, then walked the mile and a half back to our B&B across town.
What a day!! We saw tons of art today, but more importantly, we understood its context, its history; why it is important in the development of the human condition. What a day.
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