Day one in Florence

Today was tour day in Florence.

We spent the morning touring the city, with the first stop at the Accademia to see the original David, in a city full of Davids. Things I learned about the David: It is a tribute to David who killed Goliath, and was previously depicted with David resting a foot on Goliath's head, so this one was quite a departure. Michelangelo was not the first sculptor to work on the David, two others started on it and abandoned it, because it was too hard to build it to the scale the commission demanded. The marble had been left for over thirty years when Michelangelo began work on it. It was originally built to be outside the Duomo, but was moved inside after 300 years. One of the arms was broken off and shattered; it was restored many years later, so for a while David was an amputee. Someone attacked the David with a hammer in 1991, because he was ordered to by a painting he saw in the Louvre. He was only able to damage some toes on one foot, so now there is a barrier.

The Duomo is an interesting building in that the technology to build a dome as large as the architect scoped was not available when he designed it, but since it would take almost 150 years to build, he figured it was someone else's problem. Brunelleschi is the man that solved that problem, unfortunately he burned his blue prints after he finished the dome, so people are still not sure to this day how he did it.  Make sure you go inside on your tour as you'll get an interesting lesson in telling time. The clock over the door tells you how long it is until sunset, which was more important to people back then than knowing it's 5 pm. The Duomo Baptistery was under restoration, so we were unable to see it.

After lunch we spent the afternoon in the Uffizi Gallery. It is organized chronologically, so you can see how each period influences the next and learn about the birth of Renaissance art. If you have a good guide they will point out the masterpieces of Raphael, da Vinci, and Boticelli’s ‘Primavera’ and ‘Birth of Venus,’ but hopefully you'll also get some interesting color commentary on the Medici and the amazing soap opera that is the family's history. One of my favorite pieces was a painting by Bronzino, 'Portrait of a Dwarf Morgante.' In response to Varchi's challenge that sculpture was nobler than painting. He painted both sides of the dwarf to prove painting could demonstrate the passage of time and many dimensions.

This is one of the few paintings in the Uffizi painted by a women. She was raped by a fellow apprentice painter when she was young and went on to paint a lot of pictures of women decapitating men. Seems like a model of restraint.

This is a wine hole. In the old days there was a small door here and you passed your wineskin or bota bag in along with some money and you got a full bag back.

Last note for the day. If you come here in July and it's 100 degrees every day, the power is going to go out at some point. Hopefully this doesn't happen while you are trying to sleep in a nice cool room.