Florence III~ The Bargello

My quest to put myself in glorious old buildings continues with my visit to the Bargello, also known as the Museo Nationale.  It looks like a miniature version of the Palazzo Vecchio as it was built during the same time and has a small tower.  It has had many lives, from palace to police station to prison to museum.  So we are fortunate indeed that this glorious building, with the typical internal courtyard, is now a fabulous and rather underappreciated (from the looks of it... no hoards of tourists here) sculpture museum.

Sculpture played a specific role during the Renaissance.  Not only were these artists the ones to bring back the essence of the nude, the glory of the human form, the pulse to the marble, but they used their work in allegorical ways as well.  This sculpture is a great example of that.  It shows Florence defeating Pisa.  These two cities competed with each other throughout the late middle ages and into the Renaissance, but Florence always had the upper hand.

Florence also aligned itself with a unique biblical association.  David, the small and unassuming upstart who took on the giant, Goliath, and WON was the unofficial 'mascot' of Florence.  And here you see Donatello's masterful bronze of David, the first free-standing nude in over a thousand years:

David is in good company because there is a whole room of Donatello's work here.  His John the Baptist:

I really enjoyed strolling around this museum.  Just me.  Not the hoards.  Ahhhh..... beauty!

Florence ~ Palazzi continued... The Medici Riccardi Palace

The Medici Riccardi Palace is glorious and few tourists come here.  Again, I'm going to imagine the place is mine and roam about, from one room to another, see the splendor, fluff the pillows, check the rug pad, move from the sitting room to the chapel.... that just happens to have Gozzoli's paintings of the Magi along with his melding of the Medicis into the Christian narrative.  Anachronistic, but powerful.

(accidentally named the video The Bargello, sorry)
The Medici-Riccardi palace was once the home of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  And magnificent he was, indeed.

He knew how to rule, bank, support the arts.... he loved Fra Fillipo Lippi's work...

And he appreciated splendor!!

And okay, there was that stuff about beheadings, assassinations, disemboweling, rape, pillage, plunder, clandestine deals with the papacy, lust and other 'stuff'.... but he did know art.  So there you go.

Florence~ Palazzi and io

Two things I have really gone after this trip: linens and palaces.  I can't get enough of both.  I want them all!  I want to wrap myself up in glory, sumptuous, luxurious, glamorous, decadent, staircases to the heavens, marble, velvet, embroidery fantasticness.  Seriously.  So in keeping with my palace obsession, this weekend I traveled to Florence to walk some serious palace action.  All the while, imagining that I live there. 
First off, Palazzo Vecchio.  What more can you ask for? Once a Medici home, this castle-like fortress with groovy castellated roof line and tower is right next to the Uffizi.  As you walk to the entrance, you can thumb your nose at all the suckers standing in line to enter the Uffizi.  No one goes here!!  What the heck?  So you can roam the place, imagining that it is YOUR home, which is what I do. 

I LOVE the style of the frescoes here.  That is called grottoesque Raffaelesco and I can't get enough.  I must order an ENTIRE set of dishes in that pattern.

I want alllllllll of this..... see these floors, how they are worn down and shiny?  How many ruthless Medici walked on this floor on their way to order the secret assassination of someone?

Or wander up and down these staircases arranging for soandso to become Pope?  Or to kidnap someone's wife and hold her as a sex slave, then dump her in the river?

I mean, the Medici were fabulous!  Okay so there were some episodes of immoral behavior, true.  But they sure knew interior design.

And I know what I need after all this splendor...... Campari Spritz!!

Excursion to Tarquinia

Tarquinia is a lovely, picturesque medieval town very close to the sea.  It is a walled city and has architecture from the 12th century on.  One of the most beautiful structures in the city is this one:

This is the Palazzo Vitelleschi.  It was commissioned by Cardinal Giovanni Vitelleschi in 1436 and he had the architect design a palazzo that incorporated sections of previous buildings from the 12th and 14th centuries.  It may look a little odd from the outside, but step inside the front gate and you find a little paradise.  So exquisite.  It was transformed into a palazzo in the Florentine style with loggia, center courtyard and well, various upper floors and open cloister-style walks:

It's really very elegant and the photos simply don't do it justice.  Now it is the home of the Etruscan Museum of Tarquinia and houses lots of wonderful and fascinating Etruscan artifacts.  The Etruscans are still somewhat of a mystery.  Discovery of their tombs began in the late 18th century and continue to this day.  Judging from their 'stuff' and their burial practices, they were a very sophisticated society with clear ideas about aesthetics, social structure, grooming, military, literature and mythology.... In fact, scholars are looking into the ways that they might have interacted with ancient Greek and Roman societies and that those societies may have actually adapted Etruscan ways and design.  We know what we know about them based on their tombs.  They believed in the after life and that one's life continues on just as it was down here.  Their bodies were prepared for death and placed in gorgeous sarcophogi with an effigy of the person looking divine.

Then one would be placed in a tomb, deep in the earth, with some of your favorite things, some food and wine, and the tomb would have a door painted on one of the walls as that is the door you are to go through to the other world.  We got to explore some of the tombs.  It was v v groovy.

A Quiet Morning in Pisa

Pisa is like so many Italian cities that are a destination for one particular site.  Here, it's the Leaning Tower.  As I said in my previous blog, it's such a shame that tourists come here just for that.  Pisa is rich in history and art and local traditions that are still going strong, as I discovered!

The Tower is just part of what is known as the Campo dei miracoli, the Field of Miracles.   It's just ONE of four miraculous structures on this (later discovered to be marshy) field.  It was conceptualized as an allegory (most things were in the middle ages) and if you look at the scheme of it, you can see:

On the left is the Baptistry, the largest in Europe, and this is where you begin your life as a Christian.  From there you move to the Church, and grand it is!  This is where your life as a Christian is conducted.  The Church and its sacraments follow you through every rite of passage, even to death.  From there you go to the Camposanto, the 'holy ground', where you are consecrated in death and reminded that your corporeal self is there but your soul is swooping upwards, into the heavens, which is what the Tower represents.
These four buildings are beautiful and made of white marble.  They are very impressive and very huge.  A visual reminder of the Christian's journey.

And by the way, the Tower doesn't seem to be the only thing that's crooked.  All of these buildings don't look level.  At least to my eyes.  The whole thing was built on soggy ground, I think.

One has to remember that Pisa, along with Lucca and Florence, was a top gun during the late middle ages and early renaissance.  The city competed for trade and business and even banking business and so you see that in the architecture that was meant to impress.  Pisa has oodles of churches, a few towers, the river Arno, AND it was favored by the Medicis to come here and escape the high summer heat in Florence.  Because of that, there is a Palazzo Real here, a Royal Palace, filled with gorgeous things....

The museum guide pointed out that it was through textiles and fabric that one demonstrated one's wealth, style and lifestyle.  Cosimo de Medici was particularly fond of tapestries:

Ladies of the court wore their wealth:

And portraits were painted not merely to capture the images of the artist's clientele, but also to transmit clear ideas about fashion, jewelry, what was in and what was out.

Also, the 16th was the annual Feast of San Ranieri, the patron saint of Pisa.  From the two main bridges across the Arno, the houses are both sides were strewn with tea lights.  NOT electric lights.  Actual tea lights (what a feat of organization!).  Then at midnight a huge fireworks display for 30 minutes!  Craziness!  Then in the morning, scraping all the tea lights away.  Wow.  Sorry, I thought I had pictures of this but there's nothing in my phone.  Not sure how that happened.....

Pisa: Come for the Photo Op then leave

Ragazzi!
I am in Pisa for the weekend.  I arrived at 1:45 and was ready to move on at 5.  In fact, I will.  Tomorrow I will take the train to Lucca which is only 30 minutes away.
Really, though.  It's not terrible.  It's just that it's a bit worn out.  There is a lively University here and it has that kind of groove, a European University town.  While I was having lunch, the chaps at the table next to me were engaged in a spirited discussion of Russian history.  And they thought it was interesting!
Most of the interesting bits are in the Campo dei Miracoli (the Field of Miracles) and there are several miracles there indeed.  The leaning tower is only one of them.

Okay....there are so many silly tourists trying to hold up the tower:

That no one is even looking at the tower!  It's absolutely beautiful!  Poetic!  A miracle of GLORY!

It was begun in 1173 most likely under the architect's eye of Bonanno Pisano.  It took 5 years to complete the base and the first floor.  Even then, it was starting to lean.  The problem was that they were building it in a marshy ground and as they kept building up, it kept leaning.  They stopped at three floors.  Stood back and said, "hmmmm......"  In 1272, they tried again.  The next architect tried to fix the problem by angling the next three floors backward, toward the lean.  And they all stood back and said, "hmmmmmm......"  The last architect, Tommaso Pisano, finished it from 1350-72, trying to correct the lean and he ...... didn't.  Prego!
But it's gorgeous!  And remember you're being watched:

And that is very exciting in a way.

Here'e my report on the rest of the Field of Miracles:

Italian Splendor.... experimenting with video :)

Etruscan Museum

Usually Italy inspires me to wrap myself up in velvet brocaded Renaissance glory, undulating wildly in Baroque ecstasy, all while indulging the senses to a Bernini-infused glory.  But this time, I seem to be rather interested in the ancients, the Etruscans and Romans.  Is it because I watched HBO's Rome before I left and it gave me a crush on this guy?

Who knows?
But I am certainly learning a lot about Rome and its predecessor, Etruscia.  I spent some time in the Etruscan museum in Viterbo and had a look at some artifacts.... and even drew one.

Interesting coins...

Amazing fragments....

Lots a wondrous sarcophagi..that I drew.

But really I'd just like to leave you with this image:

Hail!

A Morning of Splendor!

Here's the deal.
When you wake up ...

And the first thing you see is this on the ceiling.....

You can't help but suddenly be transformed into this! .... and you're ready for a day of GLORY!

So you must head out into the loveliness of San Gimignano for a morning walk.  And for the most part, you are alone.  You see, most tourists treat San Gim as a day trip from Siena or Florence.  I stayed here a couple of nights just so I could have the city to myself in the morning and evening.  And it is a treat indeed... wandering the labyrinth, all the darling doorways, little kitty cats and chirpers....

The doors are seriously no taller than 5 feet.

And the cats are all thin and kind of scary....

And that is just what you need to make you turn in the other direction and head to San Agostino to look at the frescoes that tell the story of Saint Augustine:

And what a good little student he was:

Hikes and Vistas... and wild boar

Today I wore my Crown of Splendor as I filled my day with hiking and hiking... and maybe a bit of shopping.  (Someone fax me quick and talk me out of spending $$$ on pottery!)
I went on an early morning hike around town, following the medieval wall, and simply enjoying wide open spaces with no cars and no tourists.  San Gim doesn't begin to fill up with the masses until around 10 so I took advantage of that. 
One of my treks was to the Rocca (a sort of castle-type fortress).  Through the olive grove and up some steps to the look out post.  From there you see the WORLD .... or at least much of Tuscany.

Then to the Tower climb.  213 steps up and up.  I must say, it was slightly unnerving.  I was shaking, and I'm not a wimp.  The thing is, the stairs are steel and installed through the center of the tower.  So that means you can see DOWN as you climb.  Okay, that's scary.  Other towers I've climbed in Italy, in Florence and Siena for example, you are climbing the actual stone staircase.  You can't see how far up you are.  Then, to top it off, the final ascent is up a ladder!!  Freaky.  Then you have a look around... and then you have to descend (you have to go down the ladder backwards!).  Oy!

Then I took a look around the Duomo.  Very lovely indeed.  I learned about St Fina of St Gimignano. She lived from 1238-1253, and she lived the typical life of a young martyr.  She is the 'saint of the gillyflowers.'  She loved God and devoted herself to him.  She fell ill with a 'serious disease' at age 10 and it left her bedridden and paralyzed.  She prayed through her illness and refused to be put in a comfortable bed.  Instead she insisted on sleeping on a board.... that is now a holy relic in the side altar devoted to her.

At the moment of her death the bells of San Gimignano rang out even though there was no one touching the ropes.

Well.... good for her!
I'M no saint, as you all know.  So total bourgeois decadence for me.  Lunch is wild boar and potatoes.  Followed by a vin santo with biscotti!

I'll have to find some other way of getting to heaven.

San Gimignano is Beyond Torture

Yes, San Gimignano features not one but two torture museums along with shops that carry reproduction scythes and disemboweling kits.  And yes, the hoards of tourists who pack the place during the day make for a bit of torture.  And yes, the streets are SERIOUSLY up and down and that makes it torture on your calves.
However, the food is divine.  Lunch is fresh pasta with cream and shaved truffles, Tuscan white beans, and a glass of local vino.

San Gimignano is a total Tuscan medieval hill town.  In its glory days of the 13th century it was a thriving city of commerce.  The fact that it was on the Via Francigena certainly helped this out.  Pilgrims were constantly going through and of course that means business and trade.  At around the year 1300 it is believed the city had a population of around 13,000.  That's very good.  We also know it was a wealthy city because there is evidence that there were once 72 towers here.  Only 14 survive and they make for the distinctive silhouette of the city.

If there is a tower in town, I'm climbing it.  That is on the schedule for tomorrow.  But today, I keep my feet on the ground.  Walking around.  Viewing the glory.

Then to San Agostino Church to look at the lovely art:

And this marvelous tomb on the floor....sleeping peacefully.

And I will be sleeping peacefully as well.  I'm staying in an elegantly restored 15th century townhouse in the center of the city.  Stone floors, worn marble staircases, fireplace in the room, frescoes on the walls and ceiling..... Splendido!