San Lorenzo, 2013

We got a late start Friday and saw but one sight, the church of San Lorenzo, which was the Medicis' parish church. Actually it's three sights, although all under the same roof (so to speak; actually there are perhaps a dozen different buildings), but you pay three different admissions, one for the church, one for the tombs (New Sacristy), and one for the Medici libraries. We did all this in 2011: http://roadeveron.blogspot.it/2011/06/medici-tombs-palazzo-medici-riccardi.html, and http://roadeveron.blogspot.it/2011/06/return-to-san-lorenzo.html. But Vicki is a big Michaelangelo fan and the church has several items of note, so we went back again. There is a pretty strictly enforced no fotos policy--actually, more guards per square foot, I'd imagine, than the Uffizi. But I was undeterred this time.

In the Michaelangelo-designed and -decorated New Sacristy: Night and Day or was it
Day and Night? "Night and Day, you are the one, only you 'neath the moon or under
the sun..."

Dawn and Dusk

Madonna and Child 

Inside the great pietra serena church, designed by Brunelleschi even as he was
doing the Duomo; passion for geometry, balance, classicism, distaste for Gothic,
then in its flamboyant stage

Donatello panels, originally for the altar, now adorning this and an adjacent pulpit

In a side room off the Brunelleschi-designed and Donatello- adorned Old Sacristy...
this curious view of the heavens...a view from Florence on July 4, 1442...matched
by a nearly identical structure in the Brunelleschi-designed and Donatello-adorned
sacristy at Santa Croce...same date, which no one yet has figured out...

As is well known, San Lorenzo never got a facade, despite Lorenzo's (the Magnificent,
not the saint) desire to have one and Michaelangelo's design; Lorenzo died and
Michaelangelo got put onto other tasks...

We'd been in Florence four days already and could stand it no more...we had to have
our bifstecca fiorentino; here it is, or what's left of the original kilogram of delight,
from our favorite of favorites, the Antico Ristoro de Cambi