Orsanmichele

This is the big cubical building that sticks up between us and the Duomo in the view from our terrace.  The books explain that the name comes from Orto San Michele, the vegetable garden at St. Michael's.  The place went through a bunch of changes from about 1300 to 1400, when it went from a wood structure to a stone loggia (a roof supported by pillars, open sides), grain storage, headquarters of the guilds, and finally a church.  One interesting thing is that the books tell about all the changes without emphasizing that they all took place over a period of 100 years or so, reaching the present state 600 years ago.

The big thing about the inside is that it looks pretty much as it did back then, no major remodeling as most churches have had.  It has just three floors.  The ground floor has a 50 foot ceiling, and the next 2 floors have 40 foot ceilings.  The windows that you see in the picture from our terrace are on the third floor (or, as the Europeans say, the the second floor).

This is an entrance.  There are several, used at different times for different purposes.  This one is used for concerts.  Around all four sides (it occupies its own, odd-sized block) are niches with a lot of famous old statues.  Actually the ones outside are all copies, and the originals are inside up on the first floor.  The second floor is going to be a museum, but right now it just has a lot of small, old, badly weathered, unlabeled statues.

Back to the ground floor, the medieval church.  The primary attraction inside is a magnificent painting, itself inside an incredible tabernacle as tall as the ceiling.

The picture was painted in 1346 and the plague struck in 1348.  There were reports of miraculous appearances of the Madonna, it became a site for pilgrims, and the tabernacle was built in 1350.

This shows the top of the tabernacle, with its delicate stonework.  The next shows the lower part better.

The carving of the base includes one of the nicest Annunciations I have seen, the two characters clearly respecting each other and communicating, but the guards don't like people taking pictures and I would have had to cross a rope to get close enough to poke my camera through the fence, so I didn't.  The two figures are in a simple setting reminiscent of the Fra Angelico Annunciation (the one with simple background) except that they are more leaning toward each other, and the woman is higher than the angel, implying (to me) less worshipfulness on her part and more attention to the actual content of the message.

The other side of the ground floor of the church has an altar of Sant' Anna.  The stained glass windows go all around the church, and are the oldest in Florence.

The sculpture shows Jesus, his mother, and his grand-mother Sant' Anna.  (Or, in English, St. Anne).  It was added to the church in 1526.

Upstairs are the originals of most of the outside sculptures.  I say "most" because the original of Donatello's St. Francis is in the Bargello.

The ceiling has been cleaned, and shows the state of brickwork 600 years ago.  It is fascinating to try to figure out how much of the variation is brick size and how much is laying patterns.

The top floor has famous views of the city, which are not much different from the view from our terrace.  In this  next picture, from the upper floor of Orsanmichele, our penthouse apartment is right in the center of the picture.

The tower of the Palazzo Vecchio can be seen well from this vantage point, which shows a staircase up to the very top.  Savonarola was imprisoned up there, before being hanged and burned in the square.  He had ruled the city for four years before that.  He was a preacher from the convent of San Marco, invited into town by Lorenzo the Magnificent, but he took over and instituted a strict religious rule, including the Bonfire of the Vanities.  He was inspired by the corruption of the church and wealthy, and by the Medici take-over of the formerly republican form of government.  Actually, the politics are too complicated for a quick summary.  Or maybe I just haven't gotten it straight in my mind.  It is one of those things that, the more you know about it, the more complicated it becomes.

Anyway, here are the pictures.

And one last picture showing some of how the architecture has all kind of grown together over time.

The tower is the Badia, which is undergoing reconstruction and we have had no luck trying to figure out when it is open.  We saw it open one time and didn't realize that we were seeing the entrance from a side building because the main entrance is closed off.

More wanderings

This post was recalled for further comments.  I'll start with a new picture, so it looks different.  This is the kind of electric mini-bus that goes a few places in the pedestrian zone.

The pedestrian zone doesn't have traffic lights, this picture was taken at the central bus and train station, where we went to get tickets for Venice, the subject of another posting or two no doubt!  Also, the bus up to San Miniato was regular size, but I use what I get until truth gets in the way.

But our first try at going on the bus was San Miniato.  You buy a ticket at a tobacco store (Tabacchi) and stamp it when you get on.  Then go where you want and transfer when you want.  If a ticket checker gets on and you don't have a ticket stamped in the last 90 minutes, you are in trouble.

San Miniato al Monte

This church is on top of a hill, just outside the old city.   They have Gregorian Chant mass every evening at 5:30.  Pat wrote about it, but, since I am elaborating ....

I haven't gotten around to looking it up yet, but I seem to remember something about Gregorian chants not using regular keys or measures -- they were written before that notation was invented.  In any case, the music is hypnotic and/or entrancing.  We are going to try to get more, either up at San Miniato or at one of the San Angelo artist masses at San Marco.

There is a great view of the city from up there.  It is just a little higher than the Piazzale Michelangelo that every tour includes.  The Piazzale has full size bronze copies of all Michelangelo's most famous statues.

The inside is very elaborate (the internet has lots about architecture and history of all these places.)  The lower arch in this picture is a very fancy chapel that the Medicis had to build in the middle because somebody else built a very nice one off to the left side.

This is the giant mosaic at the rear, on a surface which is a quarter of a sphere.  Byzantine I believe...

And this is the ceiling.  The rafters and trusses are wood, but there is also this stone arch.  It would be interesting to know how much of the geometric designs are just designs, and how much is symbolic of something.  For instance, what is with the goose, or whatever, maybe a black swan?  And the four stick figures beside it seem to vary from each other in ways that can't be random, given how precise everything else is.

S. Stefano al Ponte

This is the church across the street from us.  Or actually, across the street and through an archway to Piazza Sant Stefano.  The arch runs through a building.  At one time in the middle ages, so many streets had buildings above them that torch street light had to be used even in daytime.  Our street (Via Lambertesca) is supposed to be the most medieval street left.  Maybe this is part of why.  There is a similar arch going to the Ufizzi, and between them there are several narrow side streets, one of them about 6 feet wide.

It is just under 100 feet from our door to San Stefano.  It turns out they have concerts every night, at least while we are here.  Attendance has varied from 25 to 40.  The concerts are only an hour long, but not very expensive.  I am always amazed by the acoustics.  One instrument, or one singer, fills the space.  These two pictures show the front from top to bottom.  The ceiling is about 70 feet up.  We can look down at it from our terrace.

The capitals of the columns date from the first century.  The whole place has been redone several times, most recently restored to medieval appearance.

There is also a carved Madonna and Child on the wall, identical to the one at Piazza del Limbo.  This is attributed to Mino de Fiesole, about 1450.  Mino did a lot of sculptures, enough that Piazza da Mino, the main square of Feisole, is named for him.

San Trinita

This is a couple of blocks down the street.  It was built in the eleventh century, I believe, on the site of an older church, as most were.  This view from inside of the entrance to the church shows some typical history.

The central darker stone is the old part, with a round window, now blocked, over the door.  Above that is the higher window put in when the church was reconstructed, and it is half blocked off because the window was moved even higher when the outside was reconstructed again.

At the front, the top of the stained glass window and the altarpiece are what I have called the old-style trinities.  The blue glare streaks on the painting are because it is painted on wood panels, which are not quite flat.

Well, it is called S. Trinita.  I am getting about tired of Trinities, and also of Annunciations, although they have a spectacular one here.  Details of the principal characters:

I appreciate St. Joseph's reaction at seeing the crowd coming to visit the baby.

Ognissanti

This is where I took the picture of the Trinity that starts this whole blog.  It turns out that that fresco is on the opposite side of the church from where I remembered, and it is attributed to Ridolfo Ghirlandaio, son of the man who did all the famous frescoes.

Here is the interior of this church.

This time, I noticed the following relief carving mounted on the wall.  I don't read enough Italian except to figure out that it is a memorial to a woman.  I'm not sure that it would be considered a Madonna and child, but even so, it is remarkable.

Other places and pictures

Telephoto view of mountain ridges, from San Miniato.

A shy statue at the British Consulate.

I started to take a picture of the flowers, and the composition just grew.

Seen while waiting for sunset on Ponte Vecchio.

The Pitti Palace courtyard.  Note the people at the front door, for scale.

Accademia

This is the place that is famous for Michelangelo's statue of David.  It is impressive, alright.  I don't think the hands look too big.

The hall leading to David has a large (huge) Annunciation on the wall.  The wall plaque describes how it shows the collected influences of Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.  It is very well painted, I must say.  This one shows God at the top, a lot of other characters, and the holy spirit sending a golden ray straight to Mary's head.  Gabriel looks like he is raising a finger in admonition to her.  She is pointing to herself with a coy gesture that says "Who, me?"  God's hair is standing on end.

I am reminded of two Annunciations at Santa Maria Novella.  In one of them she is holding up both hands in the kind of gesture of surprise you would expect from a really neat Christmas present.  In the other, she looks already 5 months pregnant.

In the picture gallery at the entrance to the Accademia, that most people hurry through, where the attendants spend most of their time yelling "No pictures!" there are a pair of paintings by Fillipino Lippi, that I got a fairly fuzzy picture of.

These are John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene.  Most of Filippino Lippi's pictures are fairly bright and cheerful, I think, although I will have to look at more of them in the Uffizi.  But these are definitely done in shades of brown, except for John's cloak.  They both look old, ragged, tired, and wondering what it was that happened earlier in their lives and what it all amounted to.  Maybe next time I can get the faces in better focus.

There is quite a collection of 13th century altarpieces, the ones with lots of gold background.  I particularly like this Madonna and Child, in which I think the artist has anticipated the cubist form about 650 years before Picasso.  The mother and especially the child look a lot happier than they do in most images of this era, when everyone looked deadly serious.

There is an upper floor to the Accademia where not many people go.  It is quite a climb, but all along the way are Greek icons.  I'll need to learn more about them.  They are very interesting, but not at all realistic, or I suppose if I knew more about art criticism I would say the style is not realism.  I read in the section of Vasari's work (Lives of the Artists, written in 1570 or so), in discussing the work of Cimabue, who started the rise of Florentine art -- that when Cimabue started, the government had brought in Greeks to restart art in Florence, but their style was just what they had learned from their masters, nothing new.  Apparently the urge toward realism grew as a reaction to that, and the more recent trend to abstraction grew as a reaction to that.  Anyway, I don't know whether these Greek icons are the style of 1200, or whether they are 20th century, or whether they evolved over the years.  Something else to find out about.

But up above, there are a couple of galleries of old things like this Annunciation, from 1260 or so.

San Marco

In the last two days we have visited two of the standard must-see sights that left quite different impressions on me.  (My current intention is to hit all the things that look to be interesting, skim over them to see what catches my attention, and then go back to revisit when I know what I am lookng for.)  First, we went to San Marco, or rather the museum, which is the attached cloister.  Fra Angelico pained frescoes all over the place and his other paintings were brought in from other places to make a collection  of his works.

On the way there, we passed through the Piazza della Signoria and stopped in to see the courtyard of the Palazzo Vecchio, the ancient seat of government.  As we were leaving, I discovered that this is the view out the door.

Well, architects and sculptors have been working on the view for a few hundred years.

Proceeding north, we found one of the few parking areas in the city center, restricted to electric cars and motorcycles.

The San Marco museum contains many frescoes by fra Angelico, but the subject that appears most often is some variation on this.  The kneeling figure is St. Domenico, the founder of the Dominican order.

There are lots of other images, too, including a couple of very interesting Annunciations.  The Annunciation is when Gabriel appears to Mary to announce that she is going to have a baby, she should name him Jesus, and so on.  (See Luke 1:26-38).

The Annunciation is one of the most frequent images.  It seems to me to represent the most direct confrontation between the human and the divine.  There is a lot of standard symbolism in the images, including always a large distance separating the two characters.  There is also a physical barrier (a post or wall) between them and/or a view out a doorway showing the whole world between them.

In the early altarpieces, the separation is often so great that the angel is in a small panel on the upper left corner and Mary is in a small panel on the upper right panel, with the whole of the altarpiece between. In the earlier works, the angel tends to be majestic and Mary terrified.  Later in the Renaissance the angel becomes more worshipful and Mary more composed.  By the end of the Renaissance, when painting was beginning to go to secular subjects, the angel is trying to get her attention and Mary looks bored.  I had to put that in now, because although it makes a nice story, as I see more variations the situation gets more complex.  There are variations in all kinds of directions, but I think it all shows the basic direction of the artists' views on spirituality.

Fra Angelico has one Annunciation at the head of the stairs as you approach the floor with the monk's cells, 

This is a standard pose, although the figures seem more respectful of each other than usual and the background is less cluttered.  It is justifiably famous.  But then, back in the private cells, where he painted a fresco for each room, there is the most remarkable Annunciation I have seen yet.

There is no boundary, no symbolism, no distracting decoration, just the direct confrontation.  With St. Dominico looking on.

Fra Angelico never retouched his paintings.  He said the way they turned out was God's will.  The Pope offered him the chance to be archbishop of Florence but he turned it down, because he did not feel capable of governing other people.