Ground zero for Renaissance art and art history buffs, along with the Arena (Scrovegni) Chapel in Padua. We visited the Brancacci Chapel in 2011, 2013, and 2017. But this was a most special visit, for reasons explained below. The best pix, for reasons explained below, are in the preceding years.
In the age of COVID revenge tourism, everything requires a reservation, a timed entry. Vicki had dutifully made ours for April 30th, 11AM. She thought. When we were in line, however, it was noticed our reservations were for May 30th. Alas! But an understanding and charitable official told us, however, to wait a few minutes, and if there were cancellations or no-shows, she would let us in. Indeed, we got in at 11:45. Blessed be this lady. First of two miracles that day.
Second miracle. I had failed to notice from the website that the whole of the Chapel was in scaffolding--investigations and restorations going on--but that the visits were continuing, in extremely limited numbers. (How we got the May 30th reservations is a mystery since, when we checked later that day, there were no availabilities left the whole summer!) In any case, we got in, with 8 other people. We hardly knew what to expect. Yes, there was scaffolding, as neat and clean and carefully constructed as I've ever seen. But the wonder of it all was that the scaffolding took you high up into the chapel, eye-to-eye with the more famous upper registers of the frescoes: looking at the paintings as the painter would have seen them, something no one ever gets to do except in these exceptional circumstances. Miraculous!
As I said the better pix from the Branacci are from my 2011, 2013, and 2017 posts, but I'll include a few below, just to give a flavor of the experience. Our most memorable visit to a most memorable place!
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| The scaffolding was there, but, being so close to the paintings, you could look right past it |
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