20 posts tagged “florence”

Guidebooks are full of restaurant recommendations, but perhaps you've noticed that the fine dining is rarely in tourist-friendly locations, while the well-worn paths are lined with eateries of the tacky and overpriced variety. And then there are the odd hours, which was the problem on my last night in Florence: most restaurants don't open until 7 and close around 11, a problem for those of us with concert tickets and early flights the next morning. So, I wandered down toward the Ognissanti district and entered Il Profuto almost at random--and kismet, it was perhaps the best meal I had in Florence.

As I settled in with a quartino of Chianti, the waiter--a friendly young man with near-perfect English, thanks to a stay in Michigan--took my order for ribollita and recommended the boar. The ribollita ("reboiled") soup is a Florentine specialty, stick-to-your-ribs stuff thick with beans, kale, and bread, in this case big croutons of bread instead of the boiled-down dough I had in Trattoria ZaZa's version.

It was delicious, but the money course was definitely the papardelle with wild boar ragu, thick, inch-wide ribbons of handmade pasta, sauced with hunks of lean, flavorful boar slow-cooked until it fell apart at the touch of a fork, plus black olives adding briny contrast. The waiter had said the dish was something special, and unlike when our American servers say that ad nauseum, it was quite true.

I think that will be one of my winter missions: trying to replicate that sauce. If you'd care to attempt the recipe, too, you can find boar at the Golden Gate Meat Company at the Ferry Plaza Market. While you're there, invest in some of their excellent chicken, duck, or veal stock, which will make your favorite soup recipes taste so much better.

(March vacation, continued.) The Pitti Palace has a history of one-upping itself. It was originally begun in 1458 by Luca Pitti, a Florentine banker and a rival to the Medici, who made sure each domed window was bigger than the front door of the Medici palace. However, Pitti went broke before the job was done, and the palace was bought by, who else, the Medici, who doubled its size and hired Vasari to build a corridor connecting the palace to the Uffizi via the Ponte Vecchio. When the Medici line died out in the 18th century, the Pitti Palace became home to successive rulers: the House of Lorraine (Austria), Napoleon, the House of Savoy, the Kingdom of Italy. In 1919, the palace became a museum.

Or rather, in the spirit of one-upsmanship, the palace became several museums--costume, carriage, porcelain, silverworks, modern art, Palatine Gallery (premodern art)--with some 140 rooms open to the public. It's vast: not even a full day would be adequate to viewing the entirety, unless you walked through without pause. So, after visiting the Boboli Gardens and Porcelain Museum, I decided to limit myself to two galleries, the Silver Museum and the Palatine.

 

Now, I went to the Museo degli Argenti, sometimes called the Medici Treasury, to see loot, but it turns out that the coolest thing to see are the ground floor rooms themselves. These were originally part of the summer apartments of the grand dukes and are decorated lavishly with 17th century frescoes, as you can see in the photo of the Room of Giovanni di San Giovanni, the artist who in 1635 designed most of the paintings in this chamber. As the Florentines were fond of doing, he emphasized the city's (often invented) connections to antiquity. Here he gets even more broadly historical, depicting the advent of Islam, the citizens of Constantinople fleeing the Turks, Greek poets and philosphers being kicked off Mount Parnassus, until finally (ta da!) these same Greek worthies arrive in Florence. In another panel, Lorenzo de Medici, that great patron of the arts, meets Apollo and the muses. Not overendowed with modesty, the Florentines.

Visitors to the grand dukes passed through a series of waiting rooms, including the Public Hearing Room, which offers advice to petitioners in a mural: "Rado tu parla e sii breve et arguto"--speak seldom and be brief and witty. Perhaps to keep these visitors amused, the room has optical illusions galore: galleries that appear to be 3D, bearing coutiers and a boy with a monkey, and a circular staircase, a structure that had not yet been built in actuality.

The hearing rooms are sparsely but richly furnished with pietra dura tables, stone vases, and other precious objects, including (in one) a massive ebony cabinet for gems. In the rooms beyond are more Medici treasures: ivory sculptures (some wafer thin as the fronds and flower petals they depict), amber carvings, lapis lazuli, a ship intricately carved from rock crystal. Upstairs are some of the gems that might have gone in the ebony cabinet--cameos, intaglios, ang "galanteries," whimsical objects like dragonflies, spiders, gondolas, etc., made of precious stones.

In the Palatine Gallery, I really wished for a guide, human or audio, to walk me through, but there was neither. The museum has largely been left in the style of a stately home's private art gallery, paintings hung three or more high, in rooms decorated with fine wallpaper, plaster, furniture, and sometimes painted ceilings. They're gorgeous, these rooms, but the art is not arranged chronologically or by school, and there are no helpful placards telling you about the works, just tags with the title and artist's name--and sometimes not even that. So, if you go, I recommend that you go with a guide or else give yourself lots of time so that you can flip through the guidebook as you go. Oh, and there aren't many places to sit and stare, so you might want to go early in the day, when your feet are fresh.

Anyway, there's art aplenty to see, more than 500 paintings, mostly Renaissance works, and then there are 14 rooms constituting the former Royal Apartments, occupied in the 18th and 19th centuries by the last of the Medici and then the Savoys. As you can see in the photos, the rooms are baroque in style, designed by Cortona, who finished only three himself--Mars, Jupiter, and Venus, named after planets in honor of Galileo--before he left Florence in 1647. However, the style influenced Le Brun when he designed the planet salons for the Louis XIV's rooms at Versailles.

In the Palatine, pass through the statue gallery and stick to the left to reach the gods and goddesses' rooms, first Venus and Apollo, then Mars, a spectacular room hung with paintings by Rubens, Van Dyck, Titian, Veronese, and Tintorerello.

In Jupiter--once the throne room--is perhaps my favorite work of the museum, Raphael's La Velata (1516), a painting that makes exquisite detail (look at the folds and sheen of the sleeves) look like sublime simplicity. The blush-cheeked young woman appears as serene as a madonna. Art historians haven't definitively determined who the model was, but she may have been Raphael's mistress, portrayed in his La Fornarina, which would make the paintings an interesting pair: the demure virgin and the sultry, nude lover.

From the same year is Raphael's Madonna and Child with John the Baptist, a tondo (round painting) in the Saturn room. Wandering through multiple Renaissance museums, you can grow weary of madonnas, but this one caught my eye with its tenderness--the artist must have had a real mother and child as models.
 

Next in the Iliad room, and opposite in mood, is Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith and Her Maidservant (1613-14), which is all drama, from the severed head of Holofernes in the foreground, to the close-cropped, dynamic pose of the women, to the contrast of shadow and fire light. This dynamism is typical of her paintings, and of her life, which had no shortage of drama. The daughter of a well-known painter, she was raped by her art tutor, then subjected to a long and humiliating trial, her testimony tried under torture. Remarkably, she went on practicing art, and in an age when women artists were rare, she was a great success: the first woman accepted into the Academy of Drawing, friendly with fellow artists,  with the Medici, and with Galileo, with whom she corresponded.

One of her artist friends was Cristofano Allori, whose Judith with the Head of Holofernes (1620) shows Gentileschi's influence. While Gentileschi's paintings show female subjects and their violent settings frankly and physically--Judith has sturdy forearms, sleeves rolled up like a butcher--Allori's Judith looks like a noblewoman who has found herself out of context. She's elaborately dressed, seeming too refined to wield a sword, but nevertheless stares boldly out. In London you can see another version of this painting in Buckingham Palace--ironically, this head of Holofernes was owned by Charles I, before he himself was beheaded in 1649. What's curious is that the king chose Allori's version rather then Gentileschi's, because she and her father were at Charles's court in England before the civil war, from 1638.

Allori's Judith is in the Education of Jupiter room, where I also admired Caravaggio's Sleeping Cupid (1608), who looks anything but divine. The guidebook says the painting was modeled on a dead child.

And that, my feet said, was enough museum trekking for one day. There was plenty at the Pitti I didn't see: the costume museum, the carriage museum, the modern art gallery. But again, that's why there's a next trip, right?

 

(Vacation day seven.) Where are the cats of Florence? After a couple days in town, I realized that I hadn't seen a single pet, no dogs in the parks, no cats in windows or courtyards, no budgies on balconies. Well, on my last day, I finally found the felines of Florence, at least a half dozen sunning themselves in the Boboli Gardens--tasteful cats, these, living like lords.

The weather was obligingly sunny and, after days of wintry March chill, at last warm enough to shuck my coat--perfect for a long tramp around the grounds. From the street side, the Pitti Palace is an imposing slab of stone, not very welcoming, but once you pass through the courtyard to the gardens in back, you have a lush vista of green, rising uphill. The gardens were first designed in the 16th century for Eleonora di Toledo--she of the pomegranate gown in the Uffizi's Tribuna, wife of Cosimo de Medici--and the gardens have a classical, Roman theme but show a definite Renaissance and Mannerist influence. As you wander, you notice the excellent variety: no two parts of the gardens look the same; you pass from sun to shade, from expanse to intimate nook, from rustic to cultivated. For example, you enter past the Artichoke Fountain and formal box gardens (photo at top of post), almost English in pattern, to a broad view of the amphitheater, a grassy semicircle where you seem to be the center of attention, with classical statues your audience. In the center are an Egyptian obelisk and granite basin.
 

Proceeding up the stairs from the amphitheater, the first plateau houses the Forcone Basin, with a statue of Neptune at center. It's a 16th century statue but was placed here as part of 18th century renovations.

Continuing up, there's a fine view backwards down the line, basin to amphitheater to the palace itself.

 

Atop the next flight is Giambologna's Abbondanza, the goddess of plenty, representing the bounty of Tuscany and a fitting subject for this scene. Giambologna was sculptor to the Medici, and one sees his works all over Florence: The Rape of the Sabine Women in the Loggia di Lanzi, the big, buff statue of Cosimo in the Piazza della Signoria, Mercury in the Bargello.





 

Finally, up one last set of stairs, you reach the Knight's Garden and Lodge; the latter is now the Porcelain Museum. Now, why the Pitti administrators thought that tourists who'd just huffed up many stairs would most like to see 18th and 19th century porcelain, as opposed to, say, a cafe, I really can't say. But I'm a china geek, so this suited me just fine. For such a small museum (just a few rooms), there's quite an amazing array of Sevres, Meissen, and Wedgwood wares, plus many lesser-known and unknown manufacturers. I really dug an exquisite teacup that looked like a sculpted head, and a cabinet full of gilt Viennese cups, including one on which a swan's bent neck forms the handle.
 



The garden outside had no flora to match the beauties inside, this being still chilly March. Originally, the Knight's Garden was stocked with medicinal herbs; now it's full of tea roses.




Over the back wall, there's a fine view of gray-green olive trees and, in the distance, San Miniato basilica.










 





I came back down the hill by another route, coming past this magnificent, reconstructed Roman head, descending the Cypress Lane to the Vasca dell'Isola (Island Pond--so much less elegant in English). You can reach that center island only in May and June, but you can stroll around the pond all year, from the capricorn gate to the half-submerged Perseus on one side to Andromeda on the other. On the island is another Giambologna, Fontana dell'Oceano.










Circling back toward the entrance, I passed the 18th century Lemon House, which was not open, but the nearby Annalena Grotto was. There are three grottoes at Boboli Gardens, artificial caves designed by Vasari but completed by later artists (the Annalena was last, in 1817). Practically speaking, the grottoes were a cool place to rest, but creatively speaking, they're terrific flights of fancy, sometimes housing pagan objects of worship, statues, fake stalactites, fountains and pools, shell mosaics, paintings, and so forth. In the Annalena Grotto, Adam and Eve hold court.



 

This fine Pegasus watches over the lane leading toward the palace; you can see the Duomo in the right background. I went past the gardens' entrance to the most magnificent of the grottoes, Buontalenti's.



The statue at center is Theseus and Helena, and in the corners are Michelangelo's slaves--hard to believe, but those precious sculptures were housed in this cave before they were moved to their current, safer spot in the Accademia, next to David. Above the statues, you can see mythological paintings, which rise to the top of the dome.










Last, I passed a little square where this vulgar but amusing Bacchus reigns, his polyhedral gut and genitalia dangling on a tortoise that must be glad of its hard shell. That was the end of my garden tour, though I'd seen maybe a third of the grounds and could easily have spent the rest of the day roaming.



Next: Inside the Pitti Palace museums.

(Vacation day six, continued and last.) A vacation dilemma: You're running around a foreign land, trying to see as much as possible, working up an appetite, and your experience would not be complete without exploring the local food. But you can't get reservations online (or at all), the good restaurants and markets aren't near the tourist sites, they often open too late and close too early for you to do both dinner and a show, and when you have just a few days to sample, it can be difficult to figure out the "musts" that will leave you most satisfied. What to do? For the past few years, I've been trying to compromise: booking a handful of restaurants to get a little cross-section of the local scene, then leaving the rest of my meals to chance.

Cibreo was one of the big to-dos on my Florence culinary list. The oft-recommended restaurant has been called the best in Florence, and it can be tough to get a reservation--and you'll pay through the nose if you do get a table. However, the main restaurant shares a kitchen with a trattoria around the corner, which does not take reservations, so if you're willing to show up and chance entry, you can get some of the same food for a lot less money.

Since I wasn't in town during the high season and turned up before the doors opened, I had no trouble getting seated. It's a small restaurant, though--within 20 minutes all the tables were full, and some couples had to share a four-top. The trattoria looks like a rustic kitchen, and indeed the food is simple, hearty stuff.

I started with a delicious herb polenta, the kind of dish that can make you want to kiss your grits. Clearly I need to work on my polenta skills, because my efforts thus far no more resemble this creamy, flavorful food than the average sticky, lumpen American risotto resembles the real by-god risotto. The entree was a letdown, zampa di vitella alla parmagiana, veal shank with tomatoes and cheese. This sounded fabulous, but the reality was rubbery bits of veal--some of it may have been meat, but it mostly looked like fat and gristle--in sauce that had no flavor of vegetation left in it, with an oil slick on top. It was disgusting. I tried a few bites, hoping that taste would make up for appearance, but it did not. On the side were some white beans with oil and rosemary, which were tasty and welcome but were, after all, just beans. To replace the grease on my tongue with a more flavorful fat, I ordered the cheesecake (pictured at top), a creamy, dreamy number that tasted of mascarpone and came topped with orange marmalade, giving a nicely bittersweet, acidic citrus contrast to the cheese. Thank god, because if dessert had been as dismal as the entree, I might have wept to have wasted a night out.

I had a second palate cleanser, too: a late program at the Teatro Verdi, Shlomo Mintz guest-conducting the Orchestra della Toscana in Grieg's Holberg Suite, Beethoven's Romanzas Nos. 1 and 2, and Schubert's Symphony No. 5, which sounded like spring. Lesson: There's nothing like a little orchestral music to aid the digestion; the violin can sing even through grease.

Next: Pitti Palace and Boboli Gardens.

(Vacation day six.) After four glorious days of Renaissance art, I was ready for a little science break at the Museo di Storia della Scienza, just down the street from the Uffizi Gallery. As with so much in Florence, the germ of this little museum was the Medici, in this case a collection of scientific instruments initiated by Cosimo in the 16th century.

The museum is an educational way to spend an hour or two. I'd say, though, that the organization is too instrument-centric: a room for astrolabes, a room for telescopes, a room for hydraulics, a room for chemical equipment, etcetera. That helps you see how an instrument developed, but I would've preferred a chronological arrangement, which I think would have illuminated how theories and new knowledge influenced tools over time, such as the impact of oceanic exploration on quadrants, compasses, and globes.

However, the instruments themselves are marvels of craftsmanship and, often, beauty: look at that Arab astrolabe at the top of this post, or the armature at left, or the surgical instruments (right) for operating on the skull. Incidentally, the armature is incorrect: it depicts the Ptolemaic solar system, with the earth at center. Also unexpectedly artistic: a wall full of obstetric models showing difficult birth positions, made of glazed terra cotta like della Robbia's ceramic sculptures.

Coolest, though, are the Galileo artifacts: a set of planes he used to demonstrate that sound travels at a constant speed, the only two telescopes remaining from his workshop, the lens with which he discovered Jupiter's satellites, and an elaborate reliquary containing the middle finger of Galileo's right hand. There's some irony, encasing the digit of that church-persecuted scientist like the remains of a saint. I couldn't get my bearings in the museum, despite all the compasses, but I sincerely hope that Galileo's middle finger is pointing toward Santa Maria Novella, from whose pulpit he was first denounced to the Inquisition.

I differentiated art and science at the beginning of this post, but Renaissance men and women tended to make less distinction--look no further than Leonardo for an example. Apparently Milton felt some kinship with Galileo, the "Tuscan Artist" who viewed the cosmos from the hills of Fiesole outside Florence. Here's a bit of Book 1 of Paradise Lost, describing Satan's shield:

He scarce had ceas't when the superior Fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb
Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views
At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands,
Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe.

Fact: Food tastes better on majolica. OK, that's an opinion, not a fact, but look at that photo and tell me you don't want to eat the pasta, lick the plate, and take it home.

After a long day's touring, ending on the Oltrarno side of the river, I returned to the Piazza Santo Spirito for dinner at trattoria Borgo Antico. It's a cozy, casual place with a young clientele, a good-sized menu, and quite reasonable prices.

That plate on the left was my appetizer, spinach and ricotta ravioli in a beautiful, creamy, saffron-colored sage sauce. I couldn't tell for sure if the brilliant yellow was coming from saffron or egg yolk, but I suspect the latter. I am sure, however, that it was delicious--I could have eaten that every night in Florence and been a happy camper.

My entree was salmon stuffed with artichokes--an irresistible choice, those being two of my favorite foods. The artichokes could've stood a little more cooking, as they were on the tough side, but the salmon was perfectly medium rare. Others who have dined at the trattoria tell me that it has great pizza, too.

Borgo Antico is open every day for lunch and dinner (the latter from 8 p.m.), so it's a great option on Sundays, when many other restaurants are closed.

(Vacation day five, continued.) Isn't it amazing how much you see and do in one day while you're on vacation? After a morning at the Bargello and an afternoon at the Uffizi, in the evening I was off on a twilight tour of the Oltrarno (literally, "other side of the Arno"). The Oltrarno has long been the boho district, home to artists and artisans--today you still see lots of workshops along the streets for framemakers, furniture restorers, pietra dura artists, gold leafers, antique sellers, and so on. It was (and I'm sure is) expensive to live within Florence's city walls, which existed until the 19th century, so artists moved outside them and kept moving even after the walls came down.

Coming over the Santa Trinita bridge, our first stop was the Santo Spirito church, begun in 1444 by Brunelleschi, ingenious architect of the Duomo, but not completed before his death. As you can see, the front is oddly bare looking, almost like Mission stucco. That's because Brunelleschi died before he'd created the facade, and one made in the 18th century was left unfinished. Inside (which we were too late to see) is an early crucifix by a teenage Michelangelo, his gift to the church and a bribe--the artist wanted access to Santo Spirito's morgue, one of the few of that time, so that he could study anatomy.

From the church we strolled to the Pitti Palace, built on a slope so that viewers are always looking up at it. When Luca Pitti built it, there was no room in central Florence for a huge palace, so he came to the Oltrarno. Pitti was a banker and thus a rival to the Medici, and he took that rivalry seriously, planning a palace that would be larger than theirs, down to the immense windows, each bigger than the Medicis' front door. However, Pitti had more money than sense and finally exhausted the former, going bankrupt building this folly. It was then bought by, you guessed it, the Medici, who enlarged the palace and added the Boboli gardens in the back. In all, the palace was under construction from the mid-1500s to the mid-1700s. I'll blog about the Pitti museums and gardens in a later post.

Coming through the alleyways, we reached the Via Maggio and the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello (1574) with its fantastic sgraffito, a technique of laying white plaster over dark and then scratching away the top layer to create a pattern. You can imagine how much labor it would take to do an entire building facade this complex! Bianca was the mistress of Grand Duke Francesco de Medici, though both were married, and their affiliation led to much intrigue. First, her husband died in unusual circumstances, challenged to a duel by a stranger on the Santa Trinita bridge and killed. Soon after, Francesco's wife became sick and died. Within two months, Bianca and Francesco married secretly, announcing their marriage a year later. However, Bianca bore no children and worried that Francesco's younger brother Ferdinand would inherit the grand duchy. To keep the peace, brother Ferdinand came to the couple's villa for a banquet--and Bianca and Francesco fell sick the next day and died 11 days later. Their deaths were attributed to malaria, but toxicologists tested tissue just last year and discovered that the couple were indeed murdered, poisoned by arsenic.

"It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great historical creek with four feet in the channel and some scows floating around. It would be a very plausible river if they would pump some water into it. They all call it a river, and they honestly think it is a river, do these dark and bloody Florentines. They even help out the delusion by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are too good to wade."

That's Mark Twain talking, that former Mississippi River captain unimpressed by Florence's "creek." However, in 1966 the Arno became a torrent, flooding the city. Our tour stopped on the Borgo San Jacopo, where markers show areas that were eight feet under water. If you keep your eyes open around Florence, you'll see markers here and there, and eight feet deep was not the worst.

That was the end of the tour, but we stopped at Le Volpi e L'Uva for some wine and further chatter about the flood. Our guide is studying restoration of books and works on paper, so she knows other restorers who are still working on flood-damaged pieces some 41 years later. For example, the National Library and National Archive are both right along the river, and some 1 million of their books were damaged in the flood. All were dried in the aftermath, but only one-third have been restored; the rest are sitting in the lab. Part of the problem is money--both organizations compete with the Uffizi for funds, and the Uffizi, being a tourist attraction, gets most of the money. I believe she said that there are just 12 restorers at the library and archive, and at the latter, the pay is only six euros per hour, less than a waitress earns. How's that for a damn shame? We need another Twain to excoriate the shallowness of Florentine pockets.

Our guide also shed some light on the ubiquity of foreign students in Florence. She said there are about 15,000 students in Florence--and that's just Americans! Unfortunately our young compatriots are advancing the Ugly American image, getting drunk in public, acting like frat boys, sticking together and not congregating with the locals. It's a wonder the Italians don't slap us upside the head on sight.

Man, could I take a little longer blogging my March vacation in Florence? Well, I hope to wrap it up before my next trip.

(Vacation day five, continued.) This was my blockbuster museum day: sculpture at the Bargello in the morning; paintings at the Uffizi in the afternoon. The Uffizi Gallery is Florence's Louvre: packed with masterpieces, packed with tourists, and much more impressive on the inside than the outside. I chose to take a guided tour, again through Original Florence Walks, again so that I wouldn't have to deal with tickets (you call ahead, or you get in one of the heinous lines) and so that I could have an art historian's perspective.

The Uffizi was built in 1560 as administrative and judicial offices of the Tuscan duchy, when Grand Duke Cosimo was in charge. Vasari designed the U-shaped building and, five years later, built a corridor connecting the Uffizi to the Pitti Palace via the Ponte Vecchio. In 1581, Grand Duke Francisco added a top floor, including a theater and the original art room, the Tribuna, which was completed in 1601. Originally, one could see the art only by invitation; the Uffizi didn't open to the public until 1765, when the last Medici, Anna Luisa, died and left a will declaring that all Medici buildings should be open to the public, domestic and foreign. Thus, the Uffizi became one of the fixtures of the Grand Tour (and the Grand Tour--now there's a tradition we should resuscitate!).

Our walk amounted to a greatest hits tour, which was dandy--though the Uffizi is smaller than the Louvre or the Hermitage, you could easily spend an entire day there and would have brain freeze and aching arches at the end of it. Besides, if you only sample, you have an excuse to return someday, right?

So, coming to the first corridor, we saw a horde of portraits, all of the Medici's important clients. The painted ceilings reminded me of one of the hallways in the Hermitage, except these "grotesques" (from "grotto") are based on figures that had been recently excavated in Nero's palace.

Moving into the rooms, we proceeded chronologically, which helped this art idiot see the small differences between one Madonna and another. This is Cimabue's Maesta of Santa Trinita, from 1280-1290, about the same time the Bargello and Orsanmichele were being built. Medieval paintings were icon-like, with standardized figures in standardized poses and a Byzantine influence, and artists were regarded as mere craftsmen. Here in Cimabue, though, you can some seeds of the Renaissance: a little perspective and depth, more unusual poses, a row of prophets along the bottom.

Cimabue's pupil, Giotto--who built the Duomo's campanile (bell tower)--went further down the path of perspective. As you can see in the close-up of his Ognissanti Madonna, he's using some shading--was the one of the first artists, in fact, to play with chiaroscuro. As you can't see in this washed-out photo, the figures have a rosy blush in their cheeks, making them look warmer and less icon-esque.

A century later, we can see some variations in altarpiece themes in Lorenzo Monaco's Coronation of the Virgin (1414). Florence was beginning to blossom as a world power, and trade was on the rise, bringing spices and pigments from around the world, including the vibrant lapis lazuli blue in this painting. Along the bottom is the predella, cameo paintings illustrating different scenes from the biblical story, kind of a cartoon for the illiterate. Much later in its life, during WWII, sad to say this altarpiece was used by soldiers as a table and was covered in wine and soup stains.

Perspective continued to develop in 15th century paintings, as you can see in Gentile da Fabriano's Adoration of the Magi (1423), which has more of a 3D effect with that winding road and subjects facing in all directions. The procession also shows how Florence is becoming a wealthy and cosmopolitan city, with fine textiles and all sorts of exotic creatures. Once, gold leaf had been reserved for religious subjects, but here it highlights the fabrics and horses' tack--appropriate, that gold, since this paintingwas commissioned by the Strozzi, those Medici banking competitors, for the Santa Trinita chapel.

Uccello's Battle of San Romano (~1438) commemorates a fight between Florence and Siena and was itself the subject of ownership tussles between the Bartolinis, who commissioned it, and the Medici (particularly Lorenzo), who coveted it. Then it became war loot when Napoleon spirited the panels away, which is why Florence has just one of the panels; the other two are in London's National Gallery and the Louvre.

Not the most handsome couple, are they? And yet Piero della Francesca's Diptych of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino (1467-70), for all its Flemish-style realism, was meant to be flattering at least to the duchess, Battista Sforza. Renaissance women went to some ugly pains for beauty: their high foreheads came of shaving off their eyebrows and plucking back their hairlines; their blond hair came from urine-based bleach; and their pale skin came from lead base, which they didn't realize was poisonous. Believe it or not, the ledge-nosed profile of the duke is actually showing his good side--the other was hacked off in battle. Originally, the portrait frames were hinged together in the middle, like a book.

Even the monks were getting more secular, and perhaps none was more risque than Fra Filippo Lippi. Where once Madonna and Christ child looked directly at the viewer, in this Coronation of the Virgin (1439-47) she's in the background and the commoners are front and center staring out, looking more blase than pious. At bottom left, with his chin resting on his hand, is the monastic artist himself. He seems to be staring not at the Virgin but at the blond woman at center right with children at her feet, looking out--this was a nun who became Lippi's wife. All in all, rather a cheeky composition for a church altarpiece.

And then, glory be, we came to the room with the Botticellis. The three paintings here were made in the 1470s and '80s for the Medici, who are actually pictured in this Adoration of the Magi (1475): that's snooty Giulio at left, Piero (the Gouty) at center, Cosimo kneeling before Mary, and Lorenzo in black standing at center right. Botticelli is in a monk's robe at far right, looking out.

Naturally you recognize Primavera (1482), but I have to say that reproductions don't do the painting justice. Then again, neither did the painting's original placement: apparently it was made to hang over a daybed or a chest (it was good to be a Medici). At the far right, you can see Zephyr clutching at the nymph Chloris, who's metamorphosing into Flora, with vines growing from her mouth. Continuing left we see Venus, three graces, blindfolded Cupid (a symbol of liberty), and at far left Mercury, stopping the wind. The painting's allegory remains somewhat obscure. Venus, for example, is wearing colors and standing in a pose associated with the virgin Mary. Even the background is impressively detailed--our guide notes that a botanist examined the painting and counted no less than 140 plant species.

And last, Botticelli's Birth of Venus (1484), which actually appears not to be her birth but her arrival on Cyprus. We have some of the same characters here as in Primavera: Zephyr at right, with the captured nymph Chloris, blowing Venus's clamshell to shore. Also on the right is Flora, perhaps representing the city of Florence (which was named after her) with her flowers and her rich cloth. It's hard to tell in the photo, but the painting has a transparent quality, because it's painted with diluted egg yolk and light tempera (like a fresco) on linen, with subtle gold highlights reflecting here and there. Looking at the Birth of Venus and Primavera, so pagan and sensual in subject matter, you can see why, when Botticelli was swayed by the fire-and-brimstone sermons of Savanarola, he was horrified by his early works and tossed dozens into the pyre. But what a gut wrench, to look at these paintings and to wonder if other works of this sublimity were some of those torched.
 

Delving deeper into the Renaissance, we arrived in the Da Vinci room, missing its most famous painting, The Annunciation, which (unusually) was on loan to Tokyo. But there were two pieces for us to admire, including this cartoon (preparatory study) for The Adoration of the Magi (1481). Ever an innovator, Da Vinci was experimenting when he painted this, starting to use oils instead of the temperas generally used up to that time, and going into asylums to study faces, on the theory that the insane show the true face of humanity, without the masks most of us use.

The other painting, The Baptism of Christ (1473-8) is attributed to Verrochio, Da Vinci's teacher, but scholars say that Da Vinci painted the angel on the left and the background, a hazy sky typical of his style. According to Vasari, when Verrochio saw his pupil's work, he gave up painting and stuck to sculpture.

From the Da Vinci room we proceeded to the Tribuna, an octagonal room that was the original art gallery when the Uffizi were working offices. It was built between 1581 and 1601 and refers to the four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. For example, there are mother-of-pearl inlays on the walls and ceiling, evoking water; the shells are embedded in scarlet lacquer, for fire, also represented by red velvet on the walls; and the floors are marble mosaics, for earth, and the windows are crystal. The Tribuna is a spectacular little jewel box, and that's before you get past the room and look at the art therein--sculptures, pietra dura tables, paintings covering nearly every inch of the walls.

This painting (1545) by Bronzino shows Eleanora di Toledo, wife of Cosimo de Medici, with their son Giovanni. Her sumptuous brocade gown, decorated in a pomegranate pattern (for fertility), was apparently depicted quite realistically: when her body was exhumed centuries later, she was found to be wearing that very gown. The Tribuna leads to another series of galleries loaded with works by Ghirlandaio, Raphael, del Sarto, Holbein, and many more. In one room, Cranach's Adam and Eve face Durer's--leave it to the Medici to have more than one Garden of Eden.

At the end of the Tribuna galleries, as you come back into the hallway, you can see the Vasari corridor outside, leading from the Uffizi over the Ponte Vecchio to the other side of the Arno river. I would love to go through there, but evidently there's a two-year waiting list to get in.

So, we dove back into the galleries and into the 1500s, starting with the Doni Tondo (1506-8) by Michelangelo. You can see the genesis of Mannerism here, with the elongated figures and the popping colors. Michelangelo designed the frame as well, inspired by Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise, though he didn't build the frame himself. The artist was quite an effective negotiator: he turned down the commission for this painting several times, until the price quadrupled--a common tactic with him. Though he was notoriously grubby--unbathed, uncombed, wearing the same clothes for long periods of time--he was in fact a wealthy man, our guide said worth about $90 million in today's dollars.

In another example of Medici influence, this is Raphael's painting of Pope Leo X (1518). Leo was the first Medici pope, and he's pictured here with Cardinals Giulio de Medici (later Pope Clement VII) and Luigi de Rossi.

Our last stop was at Titian's notorious Venus of Urbino (1538). The painting is his take on an old subject, the sleeping nymph, but we're no longer looking at a mythical or biblical figure, and she's one of the first reclining nudes (and anything that leads us to Ingres's grand odalisque is aces by me). Titian painted this for the Duke of Urbino, and one theory is that it was meant as a gift/guide to being seductive for the duke's 12-year-old bride. The sleeping dog, for instance, was modeled on a ducal family pet and symbolized fidelity.

Though that was the end of our three-hour tour, there were a few more galleries to enjoy on the way to the exit. I was pleased to see Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes (1620-1). Artemisia was the daughter of a painter and trained with a friend of her father's, and sad to say this tutor raped her. This was painted soon after and certainly seems informed by her experience in its violence and unprettified goriness. Though Judith leans back from the king, perhaps repulsed, she nevertheless holds his head firmly and pulls the sword across his throat determinedly.

Gentileschi was influenced by the great Roman artist Caravaggio, as so many painters were. I've seen two or three exhibits of his work but have never before encountered his Medusa (1595-8), painted on a rotella or tournament shield. It's even more garish than the photo shows: a surgical-scrub green background with a shrieking monster's face pushing out toward you in 3D--one can imagine freaking out a tournament opponent with that image alone.

And that was it for my visit to the Uffizi--my brain was full to overflowing, though it felt like we'd whisked through and barely scratched the surface. But one needs things to see on the next visit, right?

I should also mention that this treasure house faced some major trauma in the last 50 years. In 1966, the Arno flooded, and many buildings along the river were badly damaged, including the Uffizi. Restoration is still going on--I'll talk more about that in my next post about the Oltrarno. Thirty years later, in 1993, the Uffizi was hit by a car bomb, killing 5 people and destroying 3 artworks and damaging another 200. The perpetrators and their motives have never been found out, but it makes you realize that America's shock on 9/11 was rather like our shock at Pearl Harbor--bombing was nothing new to Europe and the rest of the world; we had just been a little luckier for a little longer.

 

(Vacation day five, continued.) A sit-down meal is a beautiful thing for the active tourist, but sometimes you want fast, fresh, inexpensive snacking so that you can get right back to sightseeing. Florence doesn't have much street food, aside from gelato, but it does have the I Fratellini sandwich shop, the kind of hole-in-the-wall noshery that apparently used to be all over the city but is now a rarity.

The sandwich board offers at least two dozen types of panino, each a hand-friendly size--one makes a good light lunch, two would be very filling. My friend Ericka recommends the spicy wild boar (cinghiale piccante), which unfortunately wasn't offered when I was in town, and you can find other exotica such as the lardo di colonnata, lard aged in slabs of Carrera marble. I sampled the pancetta arosto (roast ham) with truffle cream, which was divine, and another day I had the fennel sausage with goat cheese, also delicious. I don't know about you, but even the better sandwich shops near my office don't offer high-end meats, let alone truffle cream, and they charge more for their sodden tuna-on-wheat and "ham" in shapes not found on the pig.

Another perk: I Fratellini offers several wines in three glass sizes, from what looks like a shotglass to a full wineglass. You just belly up to the counter, order sandwich and beverage, rest your glass on the wooden racks outside, and loiter in the street (it's not crowded), eating and watching people go by.

I Fratellini is centrally located on the Via dei Cimatori, near Orsanmichele and the Central Market. It's open daily from 8 to 8.

 

Vacation day five, halfway through my time in Florence. (And how is it taking me longer to blog it than to do it?) This was my day for the Big Museums: the Bargello (sculpture) and the Uffizi Gallery (painting).

The Bargello is an old and historically much abused building. It was built in the mid-13th century as a meeting place for the podesta, the city government. In 1434, the elder Cosimo de Medici, returned from temporary exile, had painted on the facade the figures of Florentines who'd opposed his return. In the 1480s, the figures of the Pazzi family--the "crazies" who assassinated one of Cosimo's grandsons and nearly got Lorenzo too--were added to the wall. In 1502, the palazzo became the headquarters for the council of justice and the police, whose head was called the Bargello. Around 1574, the palazzo became the city prison, its rooms divided into cells, and the entire building grew dilapidated and squalid. It wasn't until the 19th century that restoration began. In the photo at top left, you can see the inner courtyard of the Bargello, walls embedded with the coats of arms of magistrates and members of the podesta, and a well at the center where the prison scaffold used to be.

From the 19th century onward, sculpture accumulated here from various spots in the city--the Uffizi, the Piazza della Signoria, various palazzos. The David was going to come here, too, but then the city decided to give him a special spot in the Accademia.

 

Off the ground floor courtyard is a gallery full of sculpture by Michelangelo and his contemporaries. Michelangelo's works came here from the Uffizi in the 1870s and include a David or Apollo that's not nearly as nice as the big David, a bust of Brutus, and the early Bacchus (1496-7) in the photo, with gorgeous detail on the grapevines in his hair (and I like the grape-pilfering goat boy behind him).

 

 

The Bargello has so many sculptural treasures that it doesn't say much about Giambologna's Mercury, though I dare say it's one of the most recognizable bronzes in the world. It's elegantly dynamic, the figure stretching diagonally as if about to rocket to the heavens. And perhaps because of poor reproductions or cropped images, I never realized that Mercury is getting a boost from a head (Aeolus?) puffing out a burst of air.

 

Also in the Michelangelo room is Cellini's base for Perseus--the statue and a copy of the base are in the Loggia di Lanzi, next to the Palazzo Vecchio. It's amazing how much work went into what is, after all, just a pedestal. The marble is in the form of a pagan altar, with capricorn heads (symbol of Cosimo de Medici, who commissioned it) and Diana of Ephesus; and on each of the four sides is a smaller bronze statue depicting characters relating to the story of Perseus: his mother Danae, his father Jupiter, Mercury, and Minerva. I'm afraid I can't find a good close-up of those bronzes, and photos weren't allowed in the Bargello, bother. 

 

Besides bronzes and marbles, the Bargello houses wonderful artistic miscellany: ivories, Islamic crafts, majolica ware, enamels, carved jewels, cameos, and works in glazed terra cotta by Andrea della Robbia.

 

But there's no question that sculpture is the star, and I was most pleased in the Donatello room, where several of his works reside, including the original St. George from Orsanmichele. However, the first to catch my eye was Atys (photo, 1440), who is such a strange figure no one has been able to definitively identify him as Mercury, Cupid, faun, or other. It's not often art makes me laugh out loud, but Atys did--he looks like such a jovial little hellion in his assless chaps, as if he's ready to mix things up at the Folsom Street Fair.

 

At another point in the sensuality spectrum is Donatello's David (1440-1450), who is somehow slutty and dignified at the same time. He's a far cry from Michelangelo's David, a sleek pretty boy rather than an athlete, an adolescent (and apparently that's more biblically accurate than Michelangelo's full-grown man), and looking more naked for the helmet and boots. Unlike the marble, he has already felled the giant--that's Goliath's head he's resting a foot on--yet looks as though he hasn't broken a sweat or even thought about doing so. It may be hard to tell in the photos, but up close the figure is soft, the bronze looking distinctly fleshy. (Update 6/26: Donatello's statue is currently getting its first restoration, and museum visitors can see the work in progress through 2008.)

If you find yourself in the Donatello room one day, also take a moment to look over the bronze panels that Brunelleschi and Ghiberti submitted to the contest to design the Baptistery doors. They're strikingly different compositions of the same scene, Abraham sacrificing Isaac.

That was the morning of day five. Next blogs: I Fratellini and the Uffizi Gallery.