firenze

I spent the day in the wonderful city of Florence yesterday, or as the Italian's call it- Firenze. I was a little confused for a couple days when I kept seeing signs around Siena that point in the direction of "Firenze" and then people would talk about how close Florence was a few sentences later. I later realized that they are the same- thank goodness- before I embarrassed myself by asking someone else. Allora, (this is my new favorite italian word…it means well, so, now, etc. they usually use it as a jump-start to whatever they are going to say)Firenze was such a wonderful experience. Peter took 12 of us girls, all of whom are in the watercolor class together, on a day trip to see some art work in the Uffizi Museum. We spent the day looking at paintings that use broken tertiary's for their color scheme. The best way for me to explain this is that they usually have grey undertones and if you were to look at a painting that contains lots of them you wouldn't be able to point to specific colors and say the name of it. For example you wouldn't look at it and be able to say periwinkle, apple green, cerulean, etc. I found one that I felt a connection to and spent a good 25 minutes observing, analyzing, and writing about it. It was a picture of the Madonna and Child with two angels, which is pretty common subject matter for the art we look at, but it was unlike any that I have seen before. The colors used and the places that catch your eye were beautiful and I really enjoyed looking at it, thank you Peter for pushing us to expand our taste in art and spend time actually looking and seeing the art around us.
I thought that Florence itself might possibly just burst at the seams with the amount of skooters, tourists, cars, statues, paintings, and locals that it contained but it seemed to stay connected, at least for the time that we were there. The weather was absolutely beautiful with a nice cool breeze to keep us from sweating to death and a stark blue sky with perfect white clouds to contrast. As we walked into the piazza that takes you into the baptistery and the duomo I literally had my breath taken away. The duomo in Florence is hands down the most magnificent church I have seen in all of Europe. The stone used is all shades of green, pink, and white and its massiveness is non-comprehendible. We went inside and it was surprisingly plain in comparison to other cathedral's we have been inside of. The marble floor had intricate designs to match the outside of the church and the dome artwork was incredible. It was nice to be able to appreciate the beauty that they had inside without being so overwhelmed with options that they all mix together into one huge intricate artwork.
I also had the opportunity to see the David…the actual one. This is funny because there is a piazza near the Uffizi that is filled with marble statues, half real and half replicas. Well, there is always a massive congregation of tourists standing around the statue of "david" taking pictures…I am not sure if they know that the statue they are taking pictures of is by no means the actual one or if they are aware and just too cheap to pay to see the real one. For those that really don't know that it isn't real I find it quite hilarious. Do they really think that the real David would just be put into a huge public square to be exposed to weather, people, pigeons and who knows what else? Hmm. I think not. But the actual statue is quite, shall we say, massive? As I walked around a corner in the gallery my attention was on all the other half finished carvings they have that are quite interesting (it was very wondrous to see how they take a huge cube of marble and catch a vision of a person inside and make it reality…) and all of the sudden I looked up and in front of me and bam! there is the David! Holy cow. After all the many school years of learning about it in art classes you think they would have mentioned that he is about 4 times actual life size. Even as just a side note somewhere…nevertheless he was striking. Although not perfect, I enjoyed him very much. His imperfections (like the size of his right hand in proportion to his body) make him even better. I was having this topic of discussion with one of the other girls in our group when two old (like 75+ years) walk up from behind us and are admiring the statue like us and the other 200 people around. At one point in their similar conversation about the hand one of them quiets the tone of her voice, always a sign of an awkward comment in this type of setting, and whispers into the ear of her friend "although, he does have a rather small p _ _ _ _!" Probably the funniest museum moment I have yet experienced. Priceless.
By the end of the day I felt like I had run a marathon from all the walking and brain pushing I had been exposed to and the bus ride home was a nice refresher. It would have been prime if not for the massive potholes in the road that we hit, oh about every 25.3 seconds that was always accompanied by a slamming, banging overhead luggage rack- without fail. The Tuscan countryside was so wonderful. The sun was setting casting a glorious shade of orange over all the scenery of rolling hills and Tuscan trees and fields creating scenes that seem only to exist in movies and photo-shopped snap shots on overpriced postcards.