Another MondayTuesday

Monday! 

On Monday the first part of class was spent talking to our professor's friend from Milan about Italian culture. It was really interesting to hear about their idea of beauty and the current male/female roles in Italian society. We then took a nice break for lunch and then headed over to the Duomo to finally tour the inside!

Another one of our professor's friends met us there to give us a tour. We started with the baptistry doors -- in which Ghiberti and Brunelleschi (who designed/built the dome) competed for the artistic privilege of designing them. Ghiberti won and the doors took an incredibly long time to make -- here are the most famous ones:

We then went inside the Duomo, which was underwhelming next to St. Peters, but I still liked it =) It was a less decorated, more austere interior of a Church which used to be the biggest church in the world, but has fallen back to the 3rd biggest. 

The most impressive thing about this church is of course, the dome which launched the Renaissance.  It was so revolutionary that Brunelleschi actually had to design tools to build it as well! Note the Octagonal shape. The inside was painted much later by other artists, but it is still beautiful. 

One of the most interesting things about the Duomo is that it was built literally around/on top of another church. We were able to go into the crypt of the Duomo which was once the original church. 

The last part of our tour led us up into the main part of the cathedral again to see a painting of our good friend, Dante. It's a dark picture, but if you can make it out, Florence is the right side. 

After that we walk to the Museo Opera Duomo where I was introduced to Donatello.  This sculpture used to stand in the former facade of the Duomo.  Donatello sculpted it and it's as if he caught a moment when the evangelist was doing every day things. His gaze is incredibly dynamic, and his hands actually look natural. I was very taken with this one. 

Next we saw an unfinished work by Michelangelo. This piece he was reported to have never finished and destroyed part of it, because he wasn't satisfied with it. His assistant actually came in and added Mary Magdalene on the left. 

 

It's a beautifully dramatic piece and the man in the back actually looks to be Michelangelo himself.

The last outstanding piece in the Museo was Donatello's version of Mary Magdalene. Carved out of wood, she is completely clothed in her own hair, and she looks gaunt and most disturbing for a woman who was known for her beauty. It's a radical sculpture for that time and I have no further words about Donatello except to say he is a master. 

After dawdling a bit I went home and made some dinner. I wanted to try the heart shaped pasta, so I made that with tomatoes, carrots and pesto! I even made garlic butter from the bread! The heart shaped weren't my favorite type of pasta, but it was definitely fun to have =) Surprisingly, I'm not tired of Italian food yet. I feel like I'm going to make pasta so much next year when I have an apartment! It's basically all I make here.

Tuesday!

The next morning I woke up early (which is possibly why I am still so tired) to get to Piazza Signoria before the masses of tourists came. It was totally worth it. 

To be able to sit in one of my favorite squares without a million people around was wonderful =) One of my guide books had also told me that there was a good hot chocolate place right on the piazza. I knew it would be expensive ish, but I wanted to try -- so I got hot chocolate and a plain pastry for breakfast. Omygoodness the drink was almost black. . . it was WAY too intense. . . I didn't even drink it all and I still felt sick after! I am sticking to cafe lattes from now on! After that incident, I went to class and presented my Decameron stories and headed to San Marco, which used to be (and partly still is) a monastery. 

We mostly came to see some very important frescoes that a famous artist had done (although the name escapes me now). Every cell had a fresco in it and they were all pretty astonishing. There were, of course, no pictures, so alas I have none of them to show!

After having the pasta salad version of the previous night's pasta left overs (which was DELICIOUS) we headed up to the Medicci Villas on the periphery of town. The first had a garden with the largest collection of citrus (or something like that) in the world. It was also quite gorgeous. 

A villa is the setting of the Decameron -- they sit in the garden and tell these stories.  It would be such a beautiful place to relax.  They had beautiful woods too, with benches that were shady, and quite cool. We headed over to the next villa, whose garden was just as lovely as the first.

It was a nice break from the heat in the shade, and it felt like something out of a story (well I guess literally since we are reading a story with that background!). I enjoyed myself. 

We then viewed the inside, in which you weren't supposed to take pictures, so this is the only one I have of the inner courtyard (covered in the 19th century) which I took before I found out the rules.

The inside was magnificent. Much of it was done in a 19th century style, as it was a home for the King's chosen wife (the one chosen for love, whose children could not inherit) when Italy became a nation.  The opulence was rather stunning. . . the wallpaper was silk. We then headed back and after making dinner, I found a park to read in for a while. It was fun people watching =) There was a man riding a bike with his cat in the basket and his dog following behind, people learning how to juggle, a woman training her dog and a football (soccer) game going on in a dirt field. After feeling as if I was being eaten alive by bugs, I came back and sat at my favorite gelato place around the corner, listened to and Italian singer sing everything from Willie Nelson to Janis Joplin (yes dad. . . she sang "Lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz" I thought of you) in a semi-perfect American accent. Thus ended another day in paradise =)