Florence Part 4

Last, but not least, we visited two other main attractions in Florence.

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!

Stoned in Florence

Today, among other things, we went to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, which was originally a workshop established by the Medici for creating inlaid stone work (like that in the Medici Chapels).  It is now a Museum devoted to the craft of creating images with stones.  The craftsmanship on display is astonishing, with tiny little fragments of different colored stones being used to create very realistic images.  Even Vera, who generally doesn't like anything "natural", was amazed.

This image, for example was creating only with stones:

Here is another, a landscape, with a lapis lazuli sky.

Here, a more primitive example:

In other cases, artists would take an existing stone as a kind of background and paint a few figures on them:

Upstairs, there was a display of the kinds of stones used; the Medici were obtaining precious stones from all over the world, although Italy itself is a major source for the stones.

Needless to say, there was virtually no one else there.   Who needs the Uffizi?

Lucca

We took a day trip to the town of Lucca.   While Lucca doesn't have the same overload of artistic treasures as Florence, it is a town which has its relatively intact medieval walls and something resembling its original streetscapes.  We enjoyed wandering around the town, and there were three wonderful old churches, all dating back to the 13th century.  One of the churches was even partially constructed with stones from a Roman amphitheater (Lucca was a Roman town, as well, and still features the original Roman street layout.)
Here is one church, with a peculiarly asymmetric facade:

Inside, a very decorative ceiling

And a tomb which spoke to me:

Another church:

And one with a mosaic facade:

We also wandered into the garden of a palazzo, where I got entranced by some bamboo.

Finally, on our return, I was able to admire the beautiful 1930's architecture of the train station, one of the few (only?) modern things in Florence.

Florence Part 3

We visited the Brancacci Chapel and the Uffizi museum.   The Brancacci Chapel, about 100 meters from our apartment, features frescoes done by Masaccio and others in the early 15th century.  It is truly amazing to see these frescoes in the place where the have been for the last 600 years or so!   The most famous part of the frescoes is the expulsion of Adam and Eve.

And a general view of the chapel:

We also went to the Uffizi Gallery.   While we saw some wonderful paintings there, especially the medieval ones, the experience in general was a nightmare.  Hordes of tour groups filled some of the rooms, completely blocking access to some paintings.   The Botticelli room was totally filled with selfie-stick wielding mobs; we didn't even venture in.    Given that more and more people in the world want to see these very famous images, you have to ask how can a museum deal with this trend.  (Call it the Mona Lisa syndrome.)  I have no good answers, but I do find it a very strange phenomenon.   The Uffizi is in the process of renovation and reorganization, so perhaps some of these problems can be alleviated.  And I suppose if you time your visit well, you can avoid some of the crowds.  

There was this angelic keyboard player:

And  I really love the color of the robes:

In general, I found the most satisfying experiences in Florence were in churches, where you see both the architecture and the paintings and frescoes as they were conceived.

Speaking of which, we visited the Duomo and the Baptistry, two of the other famous churches in Florence.  I love the gothic colored stones of the exterior, so different from the Northern Gothic.

and Giotto's campanile:

The interior is less decorated:

The Baptistry, next door, has an amazing ceiling of mosaics:

With some Bosch-like details:

I start to understand what the Stendhal Syndrome is all about...

From Wikipedia:

When he visited the Basilica of Santa Croce, where Niccolò Machiavelli, Michelangelo and Galileo Galilei are buried, he saw Giotto's frescoes for the first time and was overcome with emotion. He wrote:

I was in a sort of ecstasy, from the idea of being in Florence, close to the great men whose tombs I had seen. Absorbed in the contemplation of sublime beauty... I reached the point where one encounters celestial sensations... Everything spoke so vividly to my soul. Ah, if I could only forget. I had palpitations of the heart, what in Berlin they call 'nerves.' Life was drained from me. I walked with the fear of falling.^[2]

Although psychiatrists have long debated whether it really exists, its effects on some sufferers are serious enough for them to require treatment in hospital and even antidepressants.^[3] The staff at Florence's Santa Maria Nuova hospital are accustomed to dealing with tourists suffering from dizzy spells and disorientation after admiring the statue of David, the masterpieces of the Uffizi Gallery and other treasures of the Tuscan city.^[4]

Even though there are many descriptions of people becoming dizzy and fainting while taking in Florentine art, especially at the aforementioned Uffizi in Florence, dating from the early 19th century on, the syndrome was only named in 1979, when it was described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, who observed and described more than 100 similar cases among tourists and visitors in Florence. There is no scientific evidence to define the Stendhal syndrome as a specific psychiatric disorder; on the other hand there is evidence that the same cerebral areas involved in emotional reactions are activated during the exposure to artworks.^[5]

Florence, Food

But enough about art, you really just want to know about the food.  Well, actually, it's not that easy to eat really well in Florence, because of the high percentage of foreigners.   Example:  I saw a sign outside a restaurant:  "Slow Food - Hamburgers - Cheeseburgers - Hot Dogs".  Talk about covering all your bases.   But still, it is the beginning of mushroom season in Florence, and I had the most delicious grilled Porcini mushrooms I have ever had.  And lots of Chianti.   When I was younger, Italian wine was Chianti, and it came in those straw wrapped bottles, which you turned into candle holders, and the wax would drip down on them.   It was the height of an imagined "Greenwich Village" (or hippie?) type of coolness.  Since that period, I have assiduously avoided any wine that came in straw bottles, and Chianti has suffered the consequences.   Except now, in Florence, I have discovered I really like it.

I also had a delicious salad with thinly slice raw artichokes, parmesan cheese, and a bit of summer truffles...    

Florence Part 2

Next the Medici chapels is the San Lorenzo church.  Interestingly, they never got around to doing the facade, so the front looks like this:

Inside, it is more of the modest and severe Renaissance architecture (except for the painted dome):

But the altar doesn't stint on the decorative stones:

There are also a number of auxiliary chapels, with beautiful designs:

We also visited the Church of Santa Maria Novella.   This church has a more Italian Gothic style, with ornamentation inside and out:

Light from stained glass windows:

A side chapel with frescoes:

Part of the frescoes:

The ceiling of another part:

Frescoes on a part of the church off the cloisters:

There is something very moving about seeing all this art in the context for which it was actually created; it's very different than seeing art in a museum on gallery walls.

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.