Florence again.

Yesterday, we had prebooked, timed tickets for the Uffizi Gallery. So after breakfast we set off in the right direction, but slowly, so we could stop to look at the Loggia Dei Lanzi and anything else we passed which seemed of interest. Phil’s imagination was particularly stimulated by the bronze plaque marking the spot of the Bonfire of the Vanities, and the burning to death of Savonarola. It gave him the creeps.

Palazzo Vecchio

I’m busy trying to remember all the people who have a plaque on one of the palazzi to mark where they stayed in Florence. So far, I’ve noticed ones to George Eliot, Hans Christian Anderson, Mozart, Longfellow, and John Milton. Of course Florence Nightingale got her name because she was born here. Her less fortunate sister was born in Naples, so got landed with the name of Parthenope. But I suppose “Florence” sounded  pretty exotic as a name in those days; it’s just that it caught on, thanks to Nightingale’s fame. It’s not one I’d go for. The English (British?) habit of shortening names is too strong. My gran had a friend who was always called Florrie. Why is it that the French go for these hyphenated names and still no one shortens them, whereas in England even a two syllable name will be shortened to one syllable? Or, as in the case of “Florrie” a different, less attractive set of two syllables.

Back to our tour – the Uffizi has been refitting since 1999, and there is no end date, but this is actually fortunate, since the tour of what was open took us four hours; you get museum feet and backache, and you just can’t appreciate any more in four hours, so if there was even more to see ……

Actually the crowds congregate round certain pictures, so you can get a good look at others without being harried. But when you want to see one of the hotspot pictures, it’s difficult. At least nearly all the guides and their groups have headsets, so they aren’t yapping away, spoiling it for everyone else.  But when I went to see The Birth of Venus, I was driven away by a loud American father telling his son that this painting had been judged one of the three most famous paintings in the world by the New York Times! I presume that was his reason for wanting to see it – he didn’t seem to appreciate anything else about it. Over coffee and a rest, Phil and I had fun wondering what were the other two most famous pictures. We’re pretty sure one must be the Mona Lisa, but we couldn’t settle on a third at all – far too many candidates. 

It’s all very different from 1969. You can enjoy the rooms at the top of the building, which are immensely long corridors with fantastical painted ceilings, and the paintings are very well displayed, whereas I remember a series of smallish, darkish, rooms. So we concentrated on the early stuff – Giotto and Cimabue and so forth – and the Botticellis. I can take or leave Raphael. There were some fantastic portraits of Florentine bankers based in Bruges, by Memling, and a wonderful Cranach pair of Adam and Eve.  Phil’s going to have the small Botticelli of Judith with the head of Holofernes, so as he’s having that, I can choose a Cimabue. Or the Cranachs, as long as I can have them both. Although there was a very lovely sleeping child sculpture, a Roman copy of a Greek original; but it made me feel very sad, so probably not the best thing to have in your home. 

Finally we went across the Ponte Vecchio for a very late lunch, and pottered back to the hotel via Orsanmichele, which has an incredibly elaborate altar and altarpiece by Daddi, well worth seeing,  and the posh shopping street. Both Salvatore Ferragamo and Gucci have museums, believe it or not. I feel we could give them a miss.

 

Today, Thursday, has been very full, but there’s just so much to see, and we do like to be thorough.

We started at the Medici chapels at San Lorenzo. Well, they did think a lot of themselves. The workmanship is very beautiful, with all the inlaid marble and and semiprecious stones, but the total effect is way over the top. And I’m concerned to say it, but I’m beginning to be more than a bit disillusioned with Michaelangelo. First, he didn’t seem to finish much; and second, it doesn’t look as if he’d ever seen a naked woman in his life. No one at all ever had breasts like “Night”. The figure of “Dusk” is better, though. And the statue of Guiliano is finished and good – hagiographic, but then it is a tomb and the family were paying!  Perhaps he saved the good stuff for Rome. I don’t remember feeling the same way there.

There’s also a lot of reliquaries, sometimes with recognisable body parts, and although the goldsmiths’ work is often incomparable, Phil really hates them. I find them gruesomely funny, which obviously isn’t what I’m meant to feel. They even have a whole mummified corpse on show in the church. In a glass case under the altar of course, but its discovery ended our tour rather abruptly.

Then we went on to the monastery of San Marco. Fra Angelico and others painted each cell; there is a crucifixion repeated in lots of the cells, with lots of blood, that I really wasn’t keen on, but also a beautiful, serene Annunciation, which I’m sure you would recognise. But the gripping bit was the glimpse into Dominican life in the fifteenth century. Talk about the past being another country – the Ellora caves seemed less weird. Or at any rate, no more weird.

The cloister

Savonarola was a Dominican, and they have various portraits of him, and the banner carried at Savonarola’s sermons. In a case, there are his rosary beads, and a belt and vest for the mortification of the flesh. The inscription was only in Italian, and I can’t now recall the exact word, so I can’t look it up, but they were covered with scratchy stuff next to the skin. It might be horsehair – I know that’s what Thomas More used – but the inscription  also added something about “spina di pesci”. Fishbones?  Whatever, the man was a dangerous fanatic. He was right about the Pope being corrupt, though, and that was why he was burned.

The heretical bell

They also have the bell which rang to let people know Savonarola was going to preach. After his fall, the bell – the bell!- was dragged through the city and flogged, and afterwards exiled out of the city. See what I mean about it being weird?

Next the Bargello. The building is well worth seeing in itself, with pretty pristine medieval ceilings.

 The museum is mostly sculpture. There’s an early Michaelangelo, of a drunken Bacchus, which I did like, but what they do have is a number of Cellinis. I don’t know why, exactly, but I just love his work. It’s so graceful, but full of life and energy, and he knows just what a naked woman looks like. His bust of Cosimo is wonderful, and not hagiographic – I can’t help feeling I would have had rather mixed feelings, if I’d been the sitter.

Upstairs they have two Donatellos which were fascinating in the contrast they provided. They’re both of David. The early one is an awkward mix of Gothic drapery and a classical style head; the second, later, one is pure renaissance. And all within a few years.  There’s lots of Della Robbias, and I can see the quality, but I’m afraid they don’t appeal. They won't let you take photos in the gallery, but in the courtyard was this fountain, from one of the Medici's gardens.

I thought you ought to see it. Just to add to its charms, the women spray water from their nipples, and the men from their penises.

Then, Santa Croce. I said it was a full day.

Santa Croce

The square is huge, and there were photos of the “calcio storico” which takes place in June. It seems a lot more organised than the Ashbourne  Shrove Tuesday  football match. Here, there are teams, medieval style football strips, a pitch, and it’s only men. In Ashbourne, everyone joins in, I’ve no idea how you know who is on each side, and the goals are at either end of the town, so something like a mile apart.

The church is also huge. It seems to be a sort of pantheon or Westminster Abbey for the great of Italy. So there are the tombs of Puccini, Michaelangelo, Ghiberti, a monument to Dante, although he’s not buried here, and Galileo. I hope he’d be alright with that, even though they used to burn heretics in the square outside. But I don’t think he thought of himself as heretical.

Santa Croce - cloister and campanile

There are frescos by Giotto,and a crucifixion by Cimabue, all in pretty poor shape – Santa Croce suffered really badly in the 1966 floods. But the cloisters are lovely. 

Phil, looking lost, in the colossal Pazzi chapel

The Pazzi chapel is amazing high renaissance. Unfortunately the Pazzis conspired against the Medicis, lost and fell, and the chapel was never properly completed. I don’t know where the Pazzis were buried, but it wasn’t in their chapel.

Finally, we wandered back to the hotel. We can’t go anywhere fast in Florence, there’s always too much to see.