I was disappointed that we weren't going to really ever see Florence how the Florentines see it (if that is even possible), but then I realized that we live far away from the core tourists. Our apartment is to the north of Florence, east of the train station. We have our windows open all the time (it's hot) and we get to hear Florentines in their apartments living. What we hear is often loud discussion, some American music, some (what sounds like) Ukulele, a lot of techno/club music, some low-pitched woman singing, and the sounds of clanking and general living. While this is little substitute, it is cool to hear.
Our first day in Florence was spent trying to get to know the place. We walked around the city, marveling at its more homey feel (many said they could see themselves living here). Then, we walked into Florence's Duomo (Cathedral). It's the third largest Church in the world and was the dome that beat the Pantheon's as the world's largest after almost 1,500 years where it held the title for almost another 500 years. It remains the world's largest brick dome (while the Pantheon remains the world's largest cement dome). It's construction is very interesting. The main body of the church stood for over 30 years before work started on the dome, because no one knew how to build it. Luckily, Filippo Brunelleschi found a way after studying the Pantheon (there is a lot of interesting stuff to know about Brunelleschi, including his rival Ghiberti (who made the Gates of Paradise -- the most famous doors in the world -- that are on the Duomo's baptistry) and Cosimo de' Medici (the main family member of the most powerful man in Italy that started the Renaissance, he is also the main subject of my study here in Florence in how to build a new republic) so ask if you want to know more!).
Anyway, after more walking around Florence, we decided to head back to the apartment. And then it happened. Pauly D from the Jersey Shore with a team of cameras and others came down the alley and passed us. Jersey Shore was in Florence with us.
The first week in Florence was ridiculously busy. Professor Petrie was double-loading our days with 3 hour classes plus a lecture or excursion every day. We also happen to live the farthest away from our classroom at Accent, so we averaged about 2 hours walking just to and from these events. On Tuesday, our first day of classes, we met the person that would define our interest in Florence: Rocky Ruggiero (you can see him in this History Channel documentary here!). His first lecture to us was titled "The History of Florence" but it was much more about the art history of Florence. Interestingly, art and history go hand-in-hand in Florence where you can see who rules and what kind of rule is happening depending on what contracts are being made to artists. We learned about just how many famous people came from Florence: Dante, Boccaccio, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Niccolò Machiavelli (the author of our class book, The Florentine Histories), Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Donatello, Galileo. We also learned a lot about Florence's medieval roots as it emerged into the Renaissance powerhouse it became.
Rocky Ruggiero met us the next morning for a tour of the Medici Chapel called San Lorenzo, a patron saint of the family. I wrote a short response essay on this place, so here it is:
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The class tour to the Medici Chapel has been, so far, the most interesting tour during my trip to Italy. The chapel consists of the Sagrestia Nuova (the New Sacristy) and the Cappella dei Principi (Chapel of the Princes). These are both attached to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, where Cosimo de’ Medici is buried in the center under large amounts of porphyry, a substance that only occurred once on the planet, in Egypt, and no loner exists in nature.
In the context of MC 390 and our reading of Machiavelli’s Florentine Histories, the tour of the Medici Chapel was paramount to our understanding. In class, it has been expressed that Machiavelli placed the most importance on his fourth and fifth books in his Florentine Histories [note: this turned out to not be true]. These books speak directly about the events surrounding Cosimo’s rise and the Medici rule as the de facto rulers of Florence during the Italian Renaissance. This would suggest Cosimo’s importance to Machiavelli’s main themes of unification of faction and even the stability of republics. Cosimo’s importance to Florence would have been lost for us without this tour.
The first thing we entered on our tour was the Chapel of the Princes. Inside were walls covered in multi-colored marble, including entire pillars of porphyry. Along the walls rested sarcophagi, elevated above the people, as if suggesting the dead’s superiority over the living. These dead, however, were the Medici’s dead, and consisted of many superior Grand Dukes of Tuscany. Sculpted above each sarcophagi was the Medici coat of arms: a shield with five red balls, a blue ball on top, and a crown enwreathing the top of the shield. These men were royalty.
The Florentine Histories shows that this was not always true. Giovanni, the father of Cosimo, lacked the ambition of his son and prided himself on making decisions that pleased the people. Professor Ruggiero described Giovanni as under attack from the old wealth of Florence when they would say “who do you think you are?” Giovanni thus had to be very careful with his wealth. This was demonstrated in the New and Old Sacristies that we visited next.
The New Sacristy was Michelangelo’s first attempt at architecture. His work was apparently bold and unprecedented for the time. Professor Ruggiero urged the class to start with the floor plan, which consisted of two spaces with a 4:1 ratio. The larger space was reserved for Michelangelo’s art and sculptures and the smaller for the Medici family to worship. In the larger space, Michelangelo created four statues to represent the four times of day: day, night, dawn, and dusk. While day was a huge, awake man looking over his shoulder, night was forward, looking downward, and had odd cones pointedly representing the breasts of a woman. Dawn and dusk also had similar opposites both with each other and the day and night statues. Behind and above these statues rested more sarcophagi, again elevated, but this time with statues representing dead persons. Along the wall opposite the smaller room for service were two men with the Virgin Mary between them. The men beside her were looking at her directly. The statues of the dead Medici may also have been looking at Mary, but this is unclear, as one statue is so obviously looking at a door where a human would enter. If this were true, Michelangelo would have been creating a room more in line with Baroque-period design, where balance is traded for theatricality and performance. Sadly, Michelangelo never finished this room and it was finished by a close friend of his. It is unclear whether that friend completed the room correctly or not.
The Old Sacristy was a simple room designed by Brunelleschi. He was the first to portray the openness of Roman architecture indoors with white walls acting as space, rather than the ornate Gothic style. This style continued into the Basilica of San Lorenzo, where, in the center of the simplicity, a giant circle of porphyry lay where Cosimo’s grave is. Understanding Cosimo as the center of this Medici infrastructure is paramount to understanding Machiavelli’s work with Cosimo in his Florentine Histories.
----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- ----- After this, we had class, and after that, our Professor wanted to eat out with David, Dylan, Joe, and me. The place we wanted to go opened at 7, and it was only 5. So, he offered to open his apartment's garden for some wine and conversation. I could tell he was trying to get to know each of us individually beyond the classroom. We finished talking at about 7:40 and finally went to go eat. The place we went is the best I've had yet in Italy, and it was cheap. I ordered a plate of spinach and cheese ravioli with octopus for 10 euro. It was fantastic. We stayed, ate, and talked until 11:00. We spent 6 hours with our professor after a 3 hour class. We had a blast.
On Thursday, we toured the Uffizi Art Gallery, which was actually an office building built by the Medici where the top floor was designed to display their art collection. The entire thing is now a museum that sections off its work by period and artist. It is one of the best collections of Renaissance art in the world, and is probably the best museum I have been to on this trip. We had a new tour guide, an Australian girl, who did a good job describing the changes in art throughout the period. We began the tour outside the Palazzo Vecchio, the city center where Michelangelo's David sat until it was replaced later on with a copy. As we waited, the entire cast from Jersey Shore were in the square getting a tour outside the Palazzo Vecchio. Their tour guide was wearing a top hat and a blazer and was pretty animated while talking. The rest of the cast stood traditionally with crossed arms and bored looks. It was pretty funny.
Inside the Uffizi we began with the medieval times and saw the transformation of how man expresses himself, his surrounding nature, and heaven above. We often think that artists from the past couldn't pain well, so that is why a lot of it looks weird. This, however, is not always the case, as artists searched for a way to express heavenly figures. In their attempts, they made exaggerated features that made characters like the Virgin Mary with Baby that look very odd. They were, however, heavenly figures that extended beyond human mortality. As the human condition began to increase, however, humans and heavenly figures began to show more and more similarities. Once the Renaissance hit with Da Vinci, he painted the first angel with actual bird feathers in his Annunciation.
Soon, it was not necessary to paint about religion at all, and normal humans could be the focus. One famous example is Francesca's Duke Federico da Montefeltro and Duchess Battista Sforza of Urbino. This painting had two sides to it, a front (as seen below), and a back which had a zoomed out image of these two people riding toward each other in carriages. This was one of my favorite pieces because of that.
Wikipedia: Here is only a small selection from the world-class collection of paintings:
- Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi)
- Sandro Botticelli (Primavera, The Birth of Venus, The Adoration of the Magi and others)
- Giotto (The Ognissanti Madonna, Badia Polyptych)
- Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino)
- Michelangelo (The Doni Tondo)
- Raphael (Madonna of the Goldfinch, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de' Medici and Luigi de' Rossi)
- Cimabue (Maestà)
- Duccio (Maestà)
- Simone Martini (The Annunciation)
- Paolo Uccello (The Battle of San Romano)
- Piero della Francesca (Diptych of Duke Federico da Montefeltro and Duchess Battista Sforza of Urbino)
- Fra Filippo Lippi (Madonna with Child and Two Angels, Incoronation of the Virgin)
- Andrea del Verrocchio (The Baptism of Christ)
- Hugo van der Goes (The Portinari Triptych)
- Piero di Cosimo (Perseus Freeing Andromeda)
- Albrecht Dürer (The Adoration of the Magi)
- Parmigianino (The Madonna of the Long Neck)
- Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa)
- Artemisia Gentileschi (Judith and Holofernes)
- Rembrandt Van Rijn (Selfportrait as a Young Man, Selfportrait as an Old Man, Portrait of an Old Man)
The collection also contains some ancient sculptures, such as the Arrotino and the Two Wrestlers.
On Friday, we went to Santa Croce where tombs (and fake tombs) to some of Florence's most beloved citizens reside. Some include Machiavelli, Dante, Michelangelo, and Galileo. This was pretty neat to see. Saturday we rested, visited with friends, and went to the Duomo for mass. Then, we had another dinner out with our professor. On Sunday, however, things pick up: I lock myself in my room. The door handle fell off and the door slammed shut because of the wind while I was in the rest room. We were supposed to be meeting some friends for a Latin/music mass, when it happened. It took about 30 minutes, buy Dylan finally got me out after holding an ironing board out the window next to my room so I could put the door handle on it. Then, it was as simple as putting the handle back and turning the knob. Pretty funny stuff.After that, we make it to the Duomo, but decide to climb the tower next to it. Several hundred stairs later, we see the entirety of Florence surrounded by mountains. We are in a bowl. No wonder it's so hot here...
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