Finally! A little time to catch up with the blog without feeling I should either be going to sleep or going to see a site!
Given that the weather report for our time in Florence had called for cold and rain most of the time, we were very fortunate. Temperatures were in the 60s and 70s and we had sunshine the whole time. Florence was full of tourists, but not yet overrun. The only unbearable line would have been to get into the Uffizi (if I hadn’t had reservations) – by 8:30 a.m. (fifteen minutes after opening) it looked to be about 45 minutes; when I left at 11:30 it was about twice as long.
Ah! The Uffizi! I hadn’t remembered/realized it was that compact (two long corridors of rooms, all on one floor) nor had I remembered the density of masterpieces. The very first room had a huge Duccio altarpiece of the Virgin Enthroned. It must have been at least five feet by six. The Duccio at the Met is about the size of a piece of writing paper. And I couldn’t help thinking that if the Met’s Duccio was $60 million, the picture at the Uffizi, which is 30 times as large, would be … $1.8 billion ????
The crowds weren’t terrible, as I was one of the first dozen or so people in the museum, so I was able to enjoy the art without too much distraction. Fra Angelico … Leonardo … Michelangelo … Botticelli … Raphael … Titian … you name a famous Italian artist, and there he his. (They do also quite a bit of lending .. there were a number of blank spaces on the walls, including a few for paintings which I saw a few weeks ago in Boston at their Titian/Tintoretto/Veronese show. They’ve also got some wonderful pictures from non-Italian artists. I was shocked to see six … six! Memling portraits, some of which I’m sure had been at the Frick a few years ago in their Memling show.
Had a nice cappuccino at the rooftop café overlooking the Palazzo Vecchio, then finished up with their three Caravaggios: Bacchus (with that come-hither bare shoulder and the tazza of red wine offered to the viewer), Sacrifice of Issac and the Medusa. The last is a great example of what books can never show: in illustrations it looks like a round flat painting; in real life it’s a convex shield, complete with attachments on the back to hold it.
Out of the Uffizi and on to the Bargello (the real one this time). Incredible sculpture, and a special exhibition dedicated to the restoration of Donatello’s “David,” the first large-scale nude sculpture since antiquity. (You know, the slightly effeminate one, with David wearing the gardener’s hat.) It turns out that during the restoration they took a perfect mold of the sculpture and cast a replica, which they spot-gilded to match what they had found of remainders of gilding on the original. They also display it much higher than the original, at what they say is the height at which it was meant to be seen. So fascinating to see the two – original and replica – near one another and be able walk back and forth and compare them.
Downstairs was a dense two-room show packed with … Bernini portrait sculptures! It seems that everything that’s not at the Galleria Borghese is now in Florence. “Speaking likenesses” they call them, since Bernini claimed that the way to make a portrait sculpture come alive was to catch the subject just as he (or she) was about to speak, or had just finished.
(Just need to pause here for a minute to say we’re zipping through the Tuscan countryside and it is GORGEOUS.)
A little lunch at a very reasonable café – fresh tagliatelle with zucchini and shrimp, a Greek salad and a double espresso for only 10 euros.
I then had to make a decision. Train was at 3:33 and it was 2:00. Try for San Marco, where I might – or might not – be able to get in to see the Fra Angelicos, or go to the church of Santa Croce. I chose the church, and it wasn’t a mistake. A huge open space, with monuments (I think they’re the tombs, but post-date the deaths by a long time) of Michelangelo, Dante and Galileo. Several small chapels with beautiful, fragmentary frescos by Giotto, and two (or was it three) cloisters, one more peaceful than the next.
Jumped into a cab and had him take me to the “Farmacia” of Santa Maria Novella, which is fragrance heaven, which I had visited briefly yesterday. You walk in the doors and it’s paradise. Dark, cool and smelling of the most incredible mix of old-time scents. Yesterday I had bought pomegranate bath salts which were heaven (you know how Harold likes to soak in his bath) but had passed on the incense. Today I dashed in, got a packet of “Terra” (earth) incense and then scooted back to the hotel for my bags, hopped into another cab and caught this train.
Louise and the kids had gone off on their own to Pisa for a few hours, and were then headed back to Rome, where we’ll catch up in an hour or so. I spoke to Louise briefly while she was still on the train. Unfortunately she hadn’t known she needed to validate her ticket before she got on the train (we didn’t have to do it going to Florence because we had reserved tickets) so she was charged a penalty of 40 euros – twice what she had paid for all three tickets. (Now we’ve both had our train errors … mine was to get on the wrong train from Brussels to Paris two years ago, a 50 euro lesson!).
I feel slightly guilty. One of the very first dialogues I had when I was studying Italian through the LearnItalian.com podcasts was about that very thing – Massimo and Jane had warned all of us to validate the ticket at the station or face a still penalty!
It will be a little bit of a dash to get back to the apartment from the station and clean up for our big evening – drinks and dinner at the American Academy!
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