Florence in 9 days or bust

After leaving Bologna, I arrived in Florence.  Due to a desire to leave Bergamo early, I cut what was to be 7 days to 5 days, shifted the 5 days in Bologna up by 2 days, and added the extra 2 days onto the beginning of my stay in Florence (making it 9, instead of 7, days).

The Florence Duomo

Now that I've left, I'm wishing I'd stayed longer.  One thing I wished I had studied a bit more was the combined tickets available to visit a large collection of museums over a 3 day period.  It's fairly pricey, but it includes the Uffizi Galleries, the Pitti Palace museums, the Boboli Gardens, the Bargello, and a large number of permanent and temporary exhibits (e.g., I used it to get into the Natalia Goncharova exhibit in the Palazzo Strozzi).

Natalia Goncharova, Self-Portrait with Yellow Lillies, 1907-1908
(Sorry about the skewed picture, but they used reflective glass and it was hard to get an angle that didn't ruin the picture.)

When you but that combined museum ticket, you can also buy an unlimited public transit pass.  Both of these can be bought on-line and then used via an app called FirenzeCard.  In the app you look up the museum and click on "Visit Now", which generates a QR code they scan at the admission desk.  I appreciated this as I'm constantly misplacing all those pieces of paper that are otherwise called tickets!  Using the FirenzeCard also provides priority access to the museum, even if you haven't made a timed reservation.

A timed (or a FirenzeCard priority) reservation is mandatory for popular places like the Uffizi Galleries, Accademia, and a few others during high season.  Now, however, I was able to walk into about any of the museums without much of a waiting line. One benefit of low season.

And speaking of low season, it's also the Holiday Season in Florence.  Just as I was leaving they were putting up the decorations....



So my first museum was the Bargello, specializing in sculpture, as in Donatello's David, Michaelangelo's Bacchus, and Giambologna's Flying Mercury (I like this one especially because it shows Mercury flying on the breath of Zephyr).

Donatello's David

Michaelangelo's Bacchus

Giambologna's Flying Mercury

Detail of Giambologna's Flying Mercury: Zephyr providing the wind for Mercury's flight

I saw this statue of Bacchus and my first reaction was: I have to photoshop the wine cup out and substitute a cell phone....

Jacopo Tatti detto Il Sansovino, Bacchus
For those who have watched the Medici series on Netflix and saw that Giuliano de Medici was quite handsome and a lady's man, here is what a contemporary artist saw.  Jimmy Durante had nothing on Giuliano!

Matteo Pollaiolo?, Portrait of Giuliano de' Medici, 2nd half of the15th century

After you wander through a museum that is based mostly on sculpture, you start to wonder what makes one better than another.  In the grossest sense, one measure is how much the structure of the statue allows for a natural "look".  Some are quite compact without any "space" within the sculpture.


Like this one in which there is little "air" between the torso and arms or between one person and the other.  I will guess that many of these survive intact because there aren't pieces that can easily be broken off.  And then there are those that have a lot of "air" like this one:

Pietro Francavilla, Jason (with the Golden Fleece), 1589

How the arm holding the golden fleece survived is amazing.  The Bargello doesn't have sculptures only of gods, godesses, and Catholic religious figures, but even early hints that Thanksgiving is near:

From a collection of Birds (Gli Uccelli), this one by Giambologna

Sometimes, it can be overwhelming.  Here's a hallway packed with sculptures too numerous to identify...


And so it went.  And this was only my first full day in Florence!  There will be more.  For now, it's aperitivi time in Siena.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Week in Treviso/Venice

Image
My third city in Italy, Treviso is very near Venice, about a 30 minute train ride, +/- depending on how many local stops it makes.  I stayed here after reading a New York Times article about using Treviso as a base to visit Venice.  So far, so good! Treviso is also a city of canals, but of a different sort than that in Venice.  Treviso's canals are the results of diversions of rivers and streams, so the water is fairly fast moving, at least this time of year.  The original purpose was (probably, I'm improvising here) to drive water wheels to perform various sorts of work (grinding flour, running machines, etc.).  It makes for a picturesque city. My Airbnb is immediately adjacent to one of these canals, and there's a water wheel right outside my window.  The sounds of fast flowing water can be very soothing, even if it is quite loud (closing the windows cuts out almost all of that).  There are other side-effects.  Since the weather has been warmer than usual, highs int
Read more

A restaurant and a museum in Bergamo

Image
I have been complaining about the lack of good things of all sorts in Bergamo.  I found a restaurant wandering in the area after going to the Accademia Carrara.  The Accademia Carrara is a museum focusing on artists that visited or lived in Bergamo from the Renaissance through the 19th century. Gerbrandt van den Eeckhout, 1659, self-portrait It sounds pretty restrictive, but means that you'll see good to great artists that are not normally seen in musea (or museums, depending on your Latin).  There are some that look like a Dutch master, like the self-portrait of van den Eeckhout that looks vaguely like a Rembrandt. Or another that looks like a Frans Hals (something about the angle of that light...). Matthias Stomer, 1640-1650?, Man with lighted Candle and Wine Carafe But then there are some like this one, as poignant as any... Giuseppe Pellizza da Volpedo, 1889, Memory of Sorrow (Portrait of Santina Negri) And at least one that is somewhat intriguing...
Read more

Bologna is to good living what heaven is to good living (but different kinds of good)!

Image
I spent 5 nights in Bologna at an Airbnb that I've stayed at before, 4 years ago.  This has the advantage that I know the area, where the markets and pharmacies are, where the good restaurants are (or were), etc.  I had a good time visiting old haunts and reacquainting myself with the geography. But also visiting new places I hadn't been before. Bologna is a civilized place.  Back a few centuries ago (1500s?) there was a huge building program and the duke decided that all new buildings should have porticos. These are set-backs on the ground floor that are quite wide, up to 20 feet.  In the summer the porticos provide shade and a cooler place to walk.  In the fall and winter, they provide shelter from the rains.  Since the construction replaced much of the historic center (think the Haussmann project in Paris), these porticos are nearly everywhere to provide a retreat for all.  The picture above was taken at night along the front of a palazzo adjacent to my Airbnb (whi
Read more