How the other less than one percent lived and Sculpture

Buon Giorno

Another day dawned with brilliant sunshine.  Today I planned to dedicate largely to seeing Things I Should Have Seen on my first visit!

So I strolled across the Piazza to the Palazzo Vecchio just as it was opening and got my ticket.  I climbed the stairs to the state apartments where Cosimo and Lorenzo de Medici directed the government of their city.

When you enter a room in one of these places, you should always look up first.  The ceilings were richly coffered and gilded or magnificently frescoed.  Some of the rooms were spacious and splendid, others more intimate, but all bore decoration in wonderful profusion.  All of it looked beautiful, but some highlights were the chapel that Bronzino frescoed for Eleanora of Toledo and Dante’s death mask.  I also coveted some black lacquered cabinets with lovely scenes down in marble inlay of various colors.  This is what they call pietre dure, and it is still a living art in Florence.  The productions are exquisite and correspondingly expensive.

One area remained closed to us mere tourists.  A fancy function was being held down in the Hall of Unity. I looked down from the gallery eying the lavish buffet longingly, but I found it hard to grudge being shut out as the meeting had to do with the possible recovery of the fragments of Leonardo da Vinci's lost fresco of the Battle of Angliari.  National Geographic is one of the sponsors, and I gather they want to slip in more teensy cameras to avoid damaging Vasari’s fresco on the theory that he bricked up Leonardo’s rather than paint over it.

My next stop was the Bargello, which I had visited before, but I wanted to see the Dontatellos again.  The museum is in an old fortress/palazzo with a large, colonnaded courtyard.  I strolled about the various rooms looking at paintings and furniture, saving the sculpture halls for last.  There was Donatello’s stalwart St. George, handsome and serious.  I walked around his young David in bronze, an astoundingly beautiful portrayal of a nude twelve year old.  Donatello certainly meant it to be erotic.  If you google it you can check out how David has intertwined his toes in Goliath's beard and as for the feather in Goliath's helmet.  Ahem!  Fortunately, given my line of work, I do not react the same way he did to prepubescent boys.  Donatello's marble version of an older David is fully clothed but somehow even More Naughty.  If you are in the mood to do David comparisons you can also find Verocchio’s jaunty version of the Goliath slayer, but Michangelo’s is elsewhere although you can view his Drunken Bacchus in another room at the Bargello.

Pil, what's up with all these Davids?

He was a giant killer and the plucky little Florentine Republic liked to think of itself as able to defeat the giants—like Milan.

Then I strolled across town to Santa Maria Novella.  The church is splendid on its own, but I especially wanted to see Massaccio’s Holy Trinity, an early marvel of single point linear perspective.  The fresco is just above eye level, creating an illusion of looking up into a barrel vault with God the Father and a Dove supporting the Crucified Christ.

Yeah, Pil, all this art is all very well—but what about the FOOD?

You know, it hasn’t been all that exciting.  I am having a hard time finding really good comestibles at grocery stores, even that fancy one I went to yesterday.  Today I had chocolate rum, cherry vanilla, and honey-sesame for my gelato, and all were sublime.  I also found some borlottti beans, a favorite Tuscan variety.  I dressed them with garlic and some good olive oil.  Now that was tasty—and pretty authentic, too.  I washed it all down with some chilled Vernaccia di San Giminango, which is a fruity white.  As part of my research for this trip, I made some ribollita.  The word means reboiled and the dish is a wonderful example of Tuscan frugality and taste.  I made a minestrone--a big soup with white beans, onion, tomato, and some Tuscan or Lacinto kale.  If you can't find the latter use regular kale.  The result looks like the Italian flag!  Then the next day toast up some crusty Italian bread, lay a slice in a soup bowl and sprinkle on about a teaspoon of parmigiano or peccorino.  Ladle on the reboiled soup, add another sprinkle of cheese and a glug of good olive oil.  Yes, it's simple, but so good and elementally satisfying!
Ciao!