Firenze (Florence), Italy

Florence (Firenze), Italy is the city where the Renaissance began.  Over a one hundred year period, Florence produced a succession of artistic geniuses:  Brunelleschi (1377),  Ghiberti (1381),  Donatello (1386),  Fra Angelico (1395), DaVinci (1452) and Michelangelo (1475).  Combined with Florence's powerful political family, the Medici's, Florence became renowned for its art treasures.  That reputation survives today.

As with any good medieval town, Florence has a piazza which contains their major cathedral.  In Florence, it's not one building, but a series of buildings including the Santa Maria del Fiore Cathedral, the corresponding Baptistery, and the Giotto Campanile (bell tower).  These buildings were begun in 1296 and completed in 1436.  They were 'faced' with elaborately carved marble panels in the 18th century.  Also in the piazza is the modern Duomo Museum which hold treasures that have been brought indoors to preserve them.  Replicas have replaced the originals.

Florence Cathedral (Santa Maria del Fiore)
one of buildings in the Duomo Piazza

The cathedral and attached dome was designed by Fillipo Brunelleschi, the founding father of Renaissance architecture, and the originator of modern construction techniques.  Brunelleschi's dome started construction in 1420, and was so innovative his building techniques were copied by other architects for the next one hundred years.

Model of Brunelleschi's dome in the Duomo Museum

The entire Duomo Plaza is a UNESCO Heritage Site.  Our hotel in Florence was on the Plaza, so we walked past these famous buildings every day.

There's the dome peeping out behind the cathedral

Every inch of the plaza is decorated.  We saw something different every time we passed by the various buildings.

Not only did saints decorate the exterior of the cathedral, but some statues or busts were of famous, rich Florencians who paid to be included.

The Medici family ruled the city state of Florence, and over the decades of the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods were major art patrons for some of the most famous artists the world has ever known.  Today, their art collection is called The Uffizi Museum, and it contains iconic paintings and statues.  Here's one of its most famous.

Boticelli's Venus

Contemporary with the building of the famous Duomo buildings, and during the rule of the Medici's, a humble Dominican friar, Fra Angelica, was creating world famous frescoes for the cells of his fellow monks.  His most famous fresco is called, "The Annunciation"

Fra Angelica's "The Annunciation"

Before Michelangelo, the most famous Italian sculptor was Donatello who cast the first full size bronze statue since the first century.  His "David", cast in 1430, was carefully studied by Michelangelo prior to the creation of his David.  Today, Donatello's famous statue is part of the collection at the Bargello Art Museum in Florence.

Donatello's 'David'

Seventy years later, Michelangelo produced his idea of "David"

Michelangelo's "David"

This statue was originally designed to be in a niche on the cathedral, but it was so magnificent, the city fathers decided to put it on a pedestal in the heart of political Florence, the Piazza del Signoria.  He stood there until 1873 when he was moved indoors to the Academia Museum.  Michelangelo was only 25 years old when he sculpted 'David'.  This sculpture represented the emerging Renaissance philosophy of humanism.

Over the centuries, pollution and weather began degradation of Florence's outdoor art work.  The solution was to create the Duomo Museum to preserve the outdoor artworks from the Duomo Piazza. Gradually, many of the outdoor decorations on the cathedral and baptistery were moved indoors and replaced with replicas.  The Duomo Museum now contains the originals.  The most famous of these are the doors to the Baptistery designed by Ghiberti.  When Michelangelo saw them for the first time, he commented they looked like the Gate to Paradise.  They've been known by that title ever since.

 Me in front of the Gate to Paradise

The doors are designed like French doors.  Instead of window panes, Ghiberti sculpted brass pictures of biblical scenes.  He also included his own self portrait on the doors.  Many art historians consider the doors the first great Renaissance art work.  Ghiberti is buried in Santa Croce, another famous Florence Cathedral.

Ghiberti's self portrait on the Gate to Paradise doors

Florence was Drake's favorite city on our Italian tour.  It was compact, extremely walkable, and at every turn there was some magnificent piece of art to admire, a pastry and coffee to linger over, or a lovely meal to eat.  We took a break from churches and art museums and went to the Galileo Museum of Science.  It was there we discovered Galileo's original telescopes.  

These are the telescopes Galileo used to discover four of the moons of Jupiter and to study Saturn

 
Close up view of Gallileo's 20X telescope.  The camera I used to take this picture has a magnification of 35X. 

By far the creepiest object in the science museum was the reliquary (sealed container) containing Galileo's actual finger. 

This contains the middle finger of Galileo's right hand

I don't know what genius thought this up, but really?  This was the first of many reliquaries we saw in Italy.  There are preserved pieces of people (saints usually) in decorative jars and boxes all over the place in Italy.  Gallileo's finger was just the kick off.  Almost every church we visited had a little 'nook' where they kept their grizzly items. 

In Florence I began to study the huge variety of what I call 'Mary' art.  Catholicism reveres Mary.   Artists generally portray Mary in four ways: The Annunciation (when the angel tells her she is pregnant with Jesus), the Nativity, (Jesus' birth in the stable), the Madonna and Child, and Jesus crowning her as the Queen of Heaven.  Here is a marble statue of Mary and Jesus in a niche on the front of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore in the Duomo Plaza

When you head to the famous Uffizi Museum (part of the art collection of the Medici family) you arrive at the Piazza della Signoria where "David" stood for hundreds of years.  (Today a fake David (a perfect replica stands there).  There's still a collection of original statuary underneath a portico just before turning into the street where the Uffizi is located.  During the 'high season', you can wait in the piazza and the street for several hours in order to enter the museum.  In December, we just walked in.

Piazza della Signoria

The building with the tower in the Piazza della Signoria was the center of Florencian government during the Medieval, Renaissance and Baroque era when the Medici family ruled the city.  Today, this is another museum which is mainly weapons and armor.  We skipped this one.  Can you believe there was actually a museum we missed?

One of the most famous statues in this piazza is by another famous sculptor, Cellini.

Cellini's sculpture of Perseus holding head of Medusa - 1545

Arriving at the Uffizi Museum, you climb four flights of stairs and enter the museum to see some of the most iconic pictures and statues ever produced.

Here's one of the most famous paintings in the Uffizi.

Venus by Botticelli 

The Uffizi, as well as the other Florencian museums, hold multiple versions of the Madonna and Child.  Here is Fillipo Lippi's version 

Lippi's version includes Angels holding the Christ child

     Raphael's version is called the Madonna of the Goldfinch

Raphael's Madonna includes John the Baptist

 handing a goldfinch to Jesus

Another artist Florence introduced me to was actually a family of artists.  The Della Robbia family produced ceramics for four generations beginning with Luca della Robbia.  Here's are some examples of their ceramic work which are four portraits of Mary:  The top is the Annunciation.  The bottom left is the Nativity.  The center bottom is crowing of Mary in heaven, and the bottom right is the Madonna and Child

The Medici family loved luxury.  They furnished the Pitti Palace with their decorative art collection as well as their lesser paintings which didn't make the cut to hang in the Uffizi.  When Napoleon conquered Italy, the Pitti Palace was his headquarters.  We walked through room after room  sumptuously decorated with inlaid tables, ceramics, clocks, paintings, statuary, and furnishings.  There were intensely decorated ceilings which were so lavish they were overwhelming.

This is only a small portion of one lavishly decorated ceiling in the
Medici Pitti Palace 

The impetus for the Italian trip was the Art History class I took last spring at an Arizona community college.  I arrived in Italy with a 'list' of iconic paintings and sculptures which I wanted to see in person thanks to that class.  Some works were obvious:  Michelangelo's works for example.  However, in Florence one particular art piece I was looking for was the fresco that started the idea of using perspective in paintings.  The name of this artist is almost unknown today.  He's Masaccio, and here's his fresco that started it all.

Masaccio's "Holy Trinity" - with Mary looking at the viewer
& inviting them to Christianity over the dead body of Adam - a cautionary that death comes to every human being

As always, I took tons and tons of pictures.  I split them up into separate albums, so they wouldn't be so overwhelming.  Pick and choose as you wish.  My pictures of Florence include museums, cathedrals, monasteries, and the Gallileo Science Museum.

Duomo Plaza, Cathedral, San Lorenzo Church & Santa Maria Novella Church  

https://photos.app.goo.gl/9bGQXm7nC8Dm2A537

Galileo Museum
https://photos.app.goo.gl/GTrp9AYNSDZMdrXv8

Museum of San Marco (Fra Angelica's Monastery)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/RvPqxjD8zdm1HSXG6

Academia Musuem (home of David & other Michelangelo sculptures)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/E3oSkLo8R3Z3N2zT7

Uffizi Musuem (Medici art collection)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/Ckmqax2JBsSi6WP88

Bargello Museum (Donatello sculptures)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/KrY49PbtCrrVtFLWA

Pitti Palace & Boboli Gardens (Decorative arts)
https://photos.app.goo.gl/odz7WAd9UeXLc8bC7