Florence in the cold

Apparently winter comes even to Italy. This weekend garlands of Christmas lights and pine boughs appeared in the streets of Florence. Joe came to visit, and on Friday--bundled up--we set out to meet the Renaissance. The first stop was the Duomo, whose exterior reminds me of an elaborate sugar confection.

I was expecting a similarly ornate interior, but it's actually pretty spare inside. Apparently it was always somewhat restrained, and then it was cleaned out because of the flood of 1966. There's no such restraint, however, in the Vasari frescoes in the dome, which depict the Last Judgment. Several panels feature sinners either being flayed or peeling off their own skins.

At the top of the cupola--after a series of steep, twisty, low-ceilinged staircases that are pure nightmare fodder--is a lovely view of the city.

There's also an incredible amount of graffiti. Even though Italian gave us the word graffiti, I've been surprised at how much of it I see here, especially on monuments. The statue in the Arezzo Prato, for example, which shows (I think) native son Petrarch receiving his laurel wreath, is spray-painted with legends such as "Emo Lesbos." But I digress.

We went to the Science Museum, which we'd both been looking forward to. As it turned out, two of the three floors were under construction and therefore off limits. But we did see Galileo's middle finger. Apparently one need not be a saint to ignite obsessive interest in the preservation of one's body parts, or else someone wanted to prevent his posthumously flipping the bird to the Church. We also saw a fantastic exhibit on the development of the Galilean and Newtonian telescopes.

From there, in the thickening rain, we headed to Santa Croce.

It, too, is currently under construction--what looks like a restoration project for the frescoes behind the altar. Major sections of the interior are hidden behind scaffolds and drapes.

But the side chapels and frescoes--especially those by Giotto--are still wonderful.

Santa Croce also houses the tombs of Machiavelli, Michelangelo, and Galileo. Minus his finger, of course.

Dante would have been entombed here if he hadn't been banished from the city--nothing like carrying a grudge past the grave, although you could argue that Dante himself did a fair amount of that in the Inferno. But there's a memorial statue of him outside.


When we came out, dusk was falling--early, because of the rain--and the whole city seemed chilly.

By night, the Duomo looks much less like candy.


We spent Saturday in Siena--which will have to be a whole separate post. This morning Florence was brilliantly sunny. You can just see the Ponte Vecchio in the background here (the foreground bridge is the Ponte San Trinità).

We crossed the Arno and headed to the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, which houses the Brancacci Chapel. In this chapel are the Masaccio frescoes that changed everything, that decisively brought human emotion and individuality into Renaissance art. From art history class I remembered the image of Adam and Eve expelled from Eden, but it's another thing altogether to see the actual fresco on the wall, the matter-of-factness of this revolution, off to the side in a silent, almost deserted church. This I suppose is what Walter Benjamin means when he talks about the aura of a work of art, and I have to admit that in this case he seems to be right. Anyway, I long for my art history textbook and notes; I have the sense that all these works have suddenly come to life around me.

On the way back we happened to glance into an open doorway, and so discovered an item that clearly belongs on the list of Best Things Ever: the pasta vending machine.

I wish I could report that we were brave enough to try it.