Day Trips from Bologna - Florence

Perusing the very efficient Trenitalia website, I discovered that the train from Bologna to Florence takes about 35 minutes.   That's about as much time as I allow for taking the subway in New York from the Upper West Side to Brooklyn.  So while Vera went to Milan for the day to see her friend Bissy, I went to Florence for a day trip.  What was even more astonishing about the fast train to Florence was that virtually the entire trip was in a tunnel under the Appenine mountains.  One can't help comparing the Italian train system to the American one, where they can't even build an above ground rail line.

Florence, like Venice, is overwhelmed with tourists, so I skipped the Uffizi, etc.

One of my reasons for going to Florence, though, was to visit the San Marco Museum, which we had missed on our last trip.  The museum, a former monastery, is famous for its collection of works by Fra Angelico, especially the frescoes that he painted on the walls of the individual monks cells.   These proved to be truly remarkable.   The frescoes are what I like to call site-specific art; Angelico painted a fresco in each cell.  The cells are on the second floor of the monastery, small chambers that served as living quarters for the monks.  To see these frescoes in a row of small rooms, more or less as they were in the 15th century, is very different from seeing them on the walls of an art museum.   Angelico's colors are vivid and somehow very special to my eyes; they don't really come across in photos the same way.  The museum also houses a number of other magnificent works by Far Angelico.  I also like the smaller paintings which surrounded the bigger ones; they are quite fantastical:

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Some of the frescoes in the monk's cells, though the photographs don't do justice to the colors.

Detail from the famous Annuciation, which hangs at the top of the stairs as you enter the floor with the monk's cells.




The Medici Chapel was supposed to be closed, but for some reason it was open, and free, and relatively empty.   Like the Medici, I have a weakness for colored stones.

                        

Detail:

Detail:

And Michaelangelo:

And postcard river views; the Arno was completely still:

After the trip, I was inspired to watch Rosselini's "Age of the Medici" series, and read Christopher Hibbert's highly entertaining "House of Medici" which chronicles the rise and fall of the family.  Mostly a wretched lot they were; but they did manage to patronize and collect a number of great artists in the midst of their various depravities.