San Marcos

The Convent of St. Mark was built in 1436 on the order of Cosimo the Elder, to house Dominicans. There are two reasons to visit it nowadays: the very abundant frescoes and other works by Fra Angelica (and later Fra Bartolomeo) and the effects of Savanarola, prior at San Marcos, who led the anti-Medici uprising in 1496-97. Those years featured the "Bonfire of the Vanities," in which unnumbered works of secular art and literature were consigned to the flames. The reactionary demagogue Savanarola eventually offended the pope and himself was consigned to the flames in 1498. Sic semper demagogues, I say.

The bell that was rung to convene the uprisings

Fra Angelica's Crucifixion

Throughout, the cells are decorated with Fra Angelica frescoes,

many of them very well-known masterpieces; here, his

Annunciation

Fra Angelica's Linaioli Madonna (for the linen

merchants), 1433, his first public work; much

under the influence of Masaccio (whom we'll

see a bit later)

According to our 1896 Michelin Guide, Savanrola's cell

was the one with the Juda Kiss, above; the museum

designated his room otherwise

Last Supper; note the guy on the lower right with the

black halo: unusual treatment of Judas

Crucifixion

Some of Savanarola's personal effects; apparently he still

was venerated here; the signage mentions his "martyrdom"

Famous portrait of the demagogue

Artsy-fartsy shot out the window, the Duomo

Torment

The Last Supper was always a popular treatment for, you

guessed it, the refectory; this one, in what is now the gift-store,

is by Ghirlandaio, one of three he did in Florence

Jesus seems to be saying "From now on, his limit is two"; note
the guy sitting nearest does not have a halo; nor does the cat; I
regard this as rather seriously bad news for cats

Of course I'd take any Fra Angelica fresco in my bed-chamber,

but this one seems particularly appropriate

Galleria dell'Accademia

Another sight we saw that day was the Academy, right up there with the Uffizi in popularity (and price), but, in my humble estimation, a one-trick pony. Oh, there are a variety of strays from various masters, but nothing of huge importance. Except that one trick...

The real thing, too

Rare behind-the-scenes view

Oh, M's Prisoners are there too, but really not

much to look at; here, another of his Pieta,

unfnished

Medici Tombs, Palazzo Medici-Riccardi

Our second day was a long, five-sight day, starting with the Medici Tombs and then the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. The Medici--"Godfathers of the Renaissance" as a TV documentary aptly styled them--ruled Florence and then Tuscany, and more, for 300 years. They were the primary patrons of the arts, and sciences, too, in the Italian Renaissance. Two were popes. Much of what one sees in Florence is either about or funded by the Medicis.

The dome above the tombs; all this is part of the San Lorenzo 
church, the Medici family parish church; we'll see more of it, 
the church proper, the cloisters, the great library, another day

In the tombs below, sculpture by Michaelangelo, whom the family had raised 
as one of their own from his early youth

I said in an earlier post I thought most of M's sculpture was forgettable; this one, 
I have always thought, is unforgettably repulsive; Lorenzo the non-Magificent's 
tomb, with Dawn and Dusk

Party room at the Palazzo

Nice ceiling, Luca Giordano's Apothesis of the 2nd Medici Dynasty

A stray Botticelli Madonna con Bambino, from a distance, 
behind glass

And just a detail from the small but overwhelmingly beautiful chapel, 3 walls 
of which are Gozzoli's Procession of the Magi, which, despite the Biblical 
subject, was populated with Florentine scenes and personages; this is often said
to be a young Lorenzo the Magnificent

Florence Scenes

A few pix of familiar sights from our first day in Florence...

In the Piazza del Duomo, the famous cathedral and its leaning

tower (nyuk, nyuk, nyuk)

In the Loggia dei Lanzi, off the Piazza dei
Signori, Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine
Women; most people figure all the sculptures
in the Loggia and Piazza are copies, since the
David is; but no, the Giambologna is in fact
the real thing, a single piece of marble, the
first vertical composition--later perfected by
Bernini with his Apollo and Daphne; with its
multiple perspectives, Giambologna added
bronze plaques to explain what was going on

And, in the Piazza, also the real thing, Giambologna's giant

equestrian bronze of Cosimo Medici

Dante's house

Dante

Right at the club-house turn of the Uffizi, with

the Duomo, the Palazzo Vecchio Tower, and

the (Gothic) Construction Crane in view

The Palazzo Vecchio from the Uffizi's bar (I

swear I only had an expresso)

Ponte Vecchio from the Uffizi

Perils of Google Translate: "Let's see, for my

Anti-Meal, I think I'll try the Mannered

Compound; and what kind of wine would you

recommend with the Compound?"

c

Uffizi Outtakes

Like other great museums, the Uffizi rather peters out towards the end...fewer priceless treasures, fewer people, fewer guards. So I did take a few pix, mostly of items that amused me.

Parmigiano's (I think) Madonna of the Long

Neck; I post this here simply to call attention

to the fact that the painting of this title in

Google's Art Project Uffizi Collection is the

wrong painting

An unusal composition for an Adoration (what's his left
hand doing?) by the Cortona master painter Rene Sance

Another of Rene Sance's masterpieces, his

unforgettable landscape The Pissing Contest

Virtually every museum in Europe has at

least one Rembrandt Self-Portrait...

The Uffizi of course has two; leading us to

wonder again what greatness Rembrandt might
have achieved had he painted anything beside

himself

The Uffizi also has a Caravaggio Room

(at the very end); I doubt there is a more

fashionable artist in Italy presently; anyhow,

it has three minor works of his, including this

Medusa, featuring the same male friend

featured in several of the still-lifes; I bet this

one was done after they broke up

Uffizi

We spent five hours at the Uffizi, a personal best for me. (Vicki has far more attention, stamina...). Most touristic authorities say 3 hours is the useful limit for museum visits, at least for ordinary mortals. Weeks of touring Italy, reading about the art and artists, watching art history DVDs, etc., have us poised and prepared for Florence. Besides, it's one thing to see your Cimabue in Arezzo, your Giotto in Assisi, or your Duccio in Siena, etc. It's quite another to see them all in one room, maybe even side-by-side. Toss in a Masaccio or Botticelli or Lippi or Rafael, and then you find yourself spending half an hour in a room and returning to it again. And again.

I did not take any photos of the most important paintings in the Uffizi. Just being there and standing right next to them was wonderful enough. Besides, the rooms were crowded, the lighting was less than optimal, and the best pieces all were behind glass. And there were frowny-faced guards everywhere: I did not want to risk getting kicked out nor having my Florence Card confiscated just as we were beginning to use it. So I'll post just a few of the masterpieces we liked best, grabbed off the web, and refer you to my special Uffizi collection, the items we liked best, via Google's Art Project (thanks, Jeremy) at http://goo.gl/IZnbY.

Of course, Botticelli's Birth of Venus, the Uffizi's emblem and pretty much the 
emblem of the Renaissance

And his Primavera, an equally alluring, complicated and controversial work

Giotto's 1302 Badia polyptych; among the late Medievals was the KO for us; 
it's in the same room with major altar pieces of the same age, by Cimabue, 
Duccio, and Giotto; but in the smaller Badia you can see a real change...
real faces with real emotion, not just paintings of Byzantine mosaics

Anyhow, check out the rest if you wish, at http://goo.gl/IZnbY. Runs from Giotto to Titian, but only a dozen or so.

Bargello

We started our week in Florence (and our 72 hours) with two of the super-biggies, the Bargello and the Uffizi. The Bargello is largely sculpture, the Uffizi, well, everything, but mostly painting, of a certain age.

Perhaps this is the place to note, and complain, that nearly all of Tuscany has gone to the "no foto!" policy. Except where this bears on preserving the works of art (idiots using flash, e.g.), I don't know how to construe it except as more gouging of the tourist and visitor. It's not like many of these places have websites with good copies to look at. So you have to go the museum/church's giftstore (usually multiple locations) and buy print copies, postcards, books, etc. Or you can play games with the museum's guards, as we do, and many other people do. I've come to regard the "no foto!" injunction as merely a challenge.

In the courtyard of the Bargello; the palazzo

itself is Florence's oldest administrative

building, originally the headquarters of the

city manager (who by law had to come from

some other city), then an armory, then a

prison, etc.

Cannons, in the olden days, were sufficiently rare so as to

have names; this is Saint Paul; also works of arts

In the chapel, formerly the jail; very old sources had indicated

that the chapel/jail contained frescoed walls and that one of

the scenes included a nearly contemporaenous  representation

of Dante; much time and expense scraping off the layers of

plaster yielded this result; he's the guy in red

In the early 1400s, the Florence city fathers announced a

competition to see who would get the contract to do the

Baptistry's east bronze doors; the finalists were Brunelleschi

and Ghiberti, and these two were their entries; Brunelleschi's

entry is perhaps more dynamic, but its pieces were welded

together; Ghiberti had mastered a new technique--it's all one

piece; Ghiberti won and spent the next 20 years or so doing

the doors, one of the greatest Renaissance masterpieces;

Brunelleschi decided to become an architect; and became

the greatest architect of the Renaissance (more of him later);
the winner is on the left; both were assigned Abraham's
Near Sacrifice of Issac as subject

 Cellini's bronze bust of Cosimo de Medici

(off the Bargello's very meager website)

What we came here to see (apart from the

Ghiberti/Brunelleschi bronzes): Donatello's

(bronze) David; this is the first nude male

sculpture done since antiquity in the West;

full of complexity, controversy, etc. 1440s.

Wow.

Donatello's more conventional St. George

Can't remember who did this cherub,
Donatello, possibly, but, as Vicki observed, it
really extends the notion of ass-less chaps

Michaelangelo's Bacchus, as I recall, his first
free-standing sculpture; not his most famous,
but a tipsy pose that was to become widely
imitated; and, hey, it's a Michbaelangelo

Florentine Update

We've been in Florence since Thursday, staying in an urban camper-stop about 3 km from the old city center. It's a ten-minute bus ride to the historical district. We bought Florence Cards Friday--for 50 euros you get admission to most everything plus free transit on the bus and tram systems. The really good news is that with the Card you don't have to stand in lines, which, in this town, can go for hours. The bad news is that we always gorge ourselves at the all-you-can-eat, Florence is just about incomparable in its offerings, and the Card lasts only 72 hours. Consequently, I've scarcely had time to download photos, much less select, edit, shrink and post them. It will probably be a couple more days before I get to posting all this stuff. Indeed it has been overwhelming, and, because of our on-going art history lessons, more rewarding than ever before.

Sandro Botticelli's 1486 Birth of Venus, at the Uffizi