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Published: March 31st 2008
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A fake David out the front of Palazza Vecchio
Where the original David originally stood until he lost an arm in a riot when a bench was thrown from one of the windows overhead. So here we are, home of the Renaissance - Firenze, Italia.
We made our way from Sorrento to Naples, leaving our ability to buy tickets and board the train we intended on catching on time in the hands of the travel gods. They were kind and we made it with moments to spare. Damn, we’re getting good at this travelling thing (touch wood!).
So anyway, art lovers will know all about Florentine art and the Renaissance but as we had no idea about any of it before we started this trip here is the low down. The “Renaissance” means re-birth. Rome had fallen and Europe had been in a kind of Dark Ages for almost a thousand years. Even throughout this period however, Florence still thrived as a trade centre along the Arno River. This meant that while everyone else got poorer, Florentines got richer. With this new found wealth people started to look not to the church for direction but to themselves. The Renaissance placed a new found importance on the individual, creating a fresh secular view of life. This also opened the gates for Capitalism and the “cultural explosion” that has given us the works of Michelangelo,
The Rape of the Sabines
by Giambologna, in the courtyard of Piazza della Signoria. In this context "rape" means kidnapping. This tells of a story that happened in early Roman history where the Romans tried to negotiate with the Sabines to marry their women (they obviously had a low female population) but the Sabines refused as they didn't want to loose their bloodlines. So the Romans decided to kidnap the women instead. The amazing part of this statue is not the story behind it however but that it was carved out of one piece of marble. The detail is incredible. Da Vinci, Donatello and Botticelli (among loads of others of course!). During the Renaissance, bling was in which is why artists took on spectacularly elaborate (and expensive) projects (think St Peter’s, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo’s David and Botticelli’s Venus’). The Uffizi Gallery in Florence has the biggest (and best in our opinion) collection of Italian Renaissance art.
The Uffizi Gallery and Accademia (Uffizi as mentioned and Accademia is where the statue of David lives) are both reservation only museums and book up sometimes 2 months in advance. We’d been trying to call the reservations line for a week and a half and only had 2 days before we were due to arrive in Florence and finally asked our hostel if they were able to get us tickets. The staff at that hostel where amazing and within an hour we had a reservation for both museums.
The Uffizi Gallery is, as we’ve mentioned, jam packed full of amazing works of art. We had a really good audio guide which helped us make sense of all the art that we were seeing. The Renaissance art is full of colour and life and makes a break from the traditional biblical stories. The
Mary Magdalene by Donatello
in the Duomo Museum Florence. This statue is carved from wood and is incredible and a little scary at first. Apparently Donatello carved this towards the end of the Renaissance when under the "spell" of Savonrola. Savonrola was a mad preacher who thought the bling bling of the Renaissance was evil and when the economy started to fail he seized the trust of the people and everything turned a bit darker....google for more. highlight for us was the Botticelli room, in particular the famous “Birth of Venus” and “Allegory of Spring”. Unfortunately we couldn’t take photos inside the museum but if you Google (or Wikipedia) the artists and artworks you should get a decent picture and explanation. Hence this blog is going to be a bit shorter than others although we’ve tried to give detailed captions for the photos we’ve posted.
Perhaps the biggest drawcard of Florence’s museums is Michelangelo’s statue of David at Accademia. Now Michelangelo was a jack of all trades, he was head architect and built the massive dome at St Peter’s, he also painted the amazing Sistine Chapel (and mostly by himself) but he claims that sculpture is the only true form of art and all the other “dabbling” is mediocre compared to creating something magnificent out of a block of marble with your bare hands. This sounds ludicrous when you think of the amazing paintings and buildings this man has created however when you see David in the flesh so to speak you realise that this was Michelangelo’s true calling without a doubt. David stands at 17 ft tall and Michelangelo worked on him for about 4
Another Donatello - Habbakuk
otherwise known as Pumpkin Head years. Again we couldn’t get photos but Google him and you’ll get some goodies. The detail on this statue (and on such a large scale) is incredible. You can almost see the blood pumping through his veins as he contemplates taking down this giant with his slingshot. There is still a debate going on as to whether this statue captures David contemplating taking down Goliath or after he has succeeded. After seeing him up close, we think it is definitely the former. Apparently the block of marble that David was sculpted from was rejected by other artists as being too skinny to work with....but in a fit of Renaissance confidence Michelangelo of course rose to the challenge and succeeded. David remains intact and in great condition except for a few “sore” points - e.g. his toes where some madman attacked him (with what we don’t know) a couple of years ago.
This museum was built just for David and he stands under a light and airy Renaissance dome. The hallway that leads up to him is bordered by unfinished statues by Michelangelo that are called “the prisoners”. These are also amazing even though unfinished as they literally look like
Another Michaelangelo Pieta
Remember the Pieta by MIchaelangelo in St Peter's Church. This is a later work. This one was destined for Michaelangelo's tomb but he never finished it. You can still see the chisel marks and Jesus is missing a leg where Michaelangelo hacked it off in a fit of frustruation. Nostradamus (guy with the hoody at the back) is a self portrait of Michaelangelo. they’re prisoners in the stone. They’re all in various stages incompletion and the effect they have as bodies stuck in marble leads you to the theory that perhaps this is what Michelangelo intended, perhaps he never meant for them to be finished works?
Another big highlight of Florence, in fact Italy in general was this little restaurant, or “trattoria” that we found. Being lovers of all things edible we’ve been excited to taste the food Italian is famous for. We’ve had great pizzas but as we mentioned last blog - we had toooooooo much. We were yet to find fantastic Italian food (other than pizza) that was remotely affordable. We’d given up hope but then our wonderful hostel staff recommended this family run trattoria. We decided to give it a go and for 26 euro we both drank and ate ourselves sick .... all on traditional Italian food. We congratulated each other on how much Italian we’d learnt when we managed to almost completely decipher the menu written only in Italian. We had the best pasta we’ve ever tasted and meatballs to rival Cherryl’s rissoles....but no stress, the rissoles still hold the cup! We decided after the first night
Two more fake Davids
(bottom to top) Clothed and unclothed.....muscle and marble....:) that it was too good not to return so went back again. They have a different menu every night, as it is a small restaurant and a lot of the things take a while to prepare. All we can say is, finally good ol' Italian food and molto bene!
After a few days in Florence we headed further north to Milan for the night before flying out to Barcelona. Milan is a bit low on the spectacular sights and we couldn’t get tickets to see Da Vinci’s Last Supper so decided half a day would suffice and just spent it at the massive Cathedral (yep another one!) We rode the elevator to the top which was the best thing about the whole cathedral. You actually got to walk on the roof amongst the gothic spires and statues. This church is apparently the second biggest in Italy (second to, of course, St Peter’s). This place is enormous and can hold around 40 000 worshippers. In the square of the Duomo is a schmancy shopping mall - Galleria Vittorio Emanuele. It has a big glass dome and is built in the shape of a cross. We stopped by McDonalds (all we
Satue of Michelangelo in Uffizi Courtyard
This small courtyard is lined with the Masters of the Renaissance. In this one, he looks like his about to burp. could afford to eat in there) and did some serious people watching trying to figure out who were tourists and who were locals. All in all Milan was pretty boring but it saved us a lot on airfares to fly out of Milan than Florence so......
That sums up the Italy part of our trip. We can’t believe how quickly this is trip is going and because we know we’re going home at the end of it we don’t want to miss out anything but it is frustrating when you have to leave a place before you’re ready to. However if we stayed as long as we wanted in every place we wouldn’t be home until at least Christmas so we keep ourselves moving. We guess it leaves somewhere to explore next time...
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