Florence Part 1

We are in Florence; the last time we were here was some thirty years ago.  Florence is, of course, a tourist mecca, and because so much of its treasures are in the compact center, it becomes more of an international zone than true Italian city.  We are renting an apartment outside the immediate center, access the river in the Oltrarno district, where some of the character of the city is more in evidence.   The city itself is not charming; indeed much of the heavy dark stone architecture and narrow streets can be oppressive at times.  But we are here for the art, and there is nothing really like it for the incredible concentration of churches and museums of the Renaissance period and earlier.  Yesterday we saw the Medici Chapel, the San Lorenzo church, and the Santa Maria Novella church among our wanderings.  The Medici chapel is in two highly contrasting rooms.  The large chapel is decorated to the hilt with every possible rare marble and stone; conspicuous consumption at its finest.  The colors and patterns of the stones are a visual feast.   The second chapel, by contrast is the austere and small one in grey and white, designed by Michelangelo and featuring several of his most enticing sculptures; a welcome antidote to the visual excesses of the first.  (All of this art was, of course,  made possible through extraordinary wealth of the Medicis, who were part of the invention of modern banking.  Hedge fund types, if you will.)

In color:

And in monochrome, the Michelangelo version.