Santa Croce is another Italian Gothic cathedral, noted for its frescoes.
I don't have a lot of words to describe all this, so here are some pictures:
These frescoes would appear to be simulating the decorative stones that we see in other churches. Or else they are purely abstract art?
We also visited the Palazzo Pitti, which might more aptly be called the Palazzo Medici, since that is what it was. (This would be later, in the post Renaissance years.) It functions both as a museum of paintings and other things as well as a museum of how the palace looked. The palace is decorated to the extreme; every square inch is ornamented excessively, almost to the point of nausea. But it certainly reminds you of how wealthy the Medici were.
As a museum, the paintings are hung the way the Medici hung them, with no particular chronological order, and with paintings covering every square inch of the walls. It doesn't do the paintings a lot of good, but it does make you think about how the Medici viewed them. Even the frames can be distracting at times, like in this wonderful Raphael painting, intimate and sensitive, surrounded by a gilt monstrosity of a frame:
And there are all the other ornamental objects, including these kinds of tables made out of stones:
In short, Florence is an amazing city for viewing art made in Italy. The experience of the mass tourist industry which has evolved around that art is something that must be put up with in order to see that art. The next time I come, I'm coming in January!
Miscellaneous photographs:
I'm always looking for something colorful in the streets, especially amid the heavy and dark stones of Florence:
Spoons amuck?
I didn't realize they had an office in Florence, and that they were working with Mr. Machiavelli. What a team!
