Day 9 - Florence III

Today was our big museum tour day in Florence. We were busy visiting a few different museums from 8:30am until 4pm this afternoon. Unfortunately, I most places did not allow us to take photos, so I don't really have any. First we went to Bargello where we were able to see a bunch of art, including probably the most famous in the museum: David by Donatello. There was a lot of pottery and ceramic art. There were many that had the ideas and designs based off of famous paintings and drawings. There were even some of paintings that we had seen in other museums or elsewhere before. Watching a video on the art of pottery gave me a greater appreciation for how difficult it is to decorate and paint the intricate details onto this medium. When I finally found the statue of David by Donatello, I could understand why so many people think that it appears more feminine than what David should probably be portrayed. The abdomen and stomach area seem more like the depictions of a woman, and also the face seems more effeminate. It was interesting to compare the different statues of David throughout Florence. The city had kind of adopted him as their hero, so there is plenty of art including him.

Then we went to Accademia. This museum is famous for having the Sculpture of David by Michelangelo. First off, we entered into a part of the museum that was devoted to music and instruments. We were able to see how a piano and a harpsichord’s strings are hit or plucked differently. There was also a giant bronze bowl thing that showed resonance when you had your hands wet and rubbed the handles back and forth. The water would get some awesome ripples and ringing sounds. One of the coolest things we saw there was a Stradivarius violin that that was on display. There aren’t very many of these left in the world, so it was cool to see one since I wasn’t expecting to have that opportunity. After we were done with the music part of the museum, we walked down the next hallway with unfinished statues of Michelangelo. It was interesting to see the different works that he had not yet completed, and it was quite amazing to know that these statues would have turned into something incredible. They didn’t seem that amazing because they were still rough with chisel marks all over them, and had yet to be polished at all. At the end of the hall, there was what we had come to see primarily, David by Michelangelo! It was even more incredible than I would have imagined. The pictures that there are of it did not even do it justice, it was so lifelike in a gargantuan sense with extremely lifelike body definition. I had to stand around and just look at it for over half an hour just to absorb it all. After I felt like I had a good impression of it in my memory I finally moved onto the next room. In that room, there were a lot of busts of different people along with many different plaster statues. The piece that stuck out the most was this bizarre piece of modern art from 2000 that no one could figure out why it was even there. It was a sculpture of a man in jeans, a shirt, and Adidas shoes who was crying into a puddle of water that would cycle around because it was electrically powered and plugged into the wall outlet behind it. It was the weirdest thing because it was the only piece of art in this room that had any color to it besides the white of plaster and the green of the weathered metal framework of the plaster sculptures. After I walked through this part, we had reached the end of the museum except for another piece of modern art that was a fake David statue that was painted pink for his skin and yellow for his hair. It was really weird and I don’t know why artists seem to feel like copying a famous piece of art is a good idea. If you really want to be excellent, you should express creativity and come up with original designs.

Then we went and had lunch before heading to our last museum in Florence. A few of us went to the supermarket that we had finally found where we could get some less expensive food. I grabbed a peach and some cherries and then we went to a pizza shop and grabbed a slice of pizza. Then I went back to the hotel and prepared my fruit and had a nice lunch.

Finally we went to the Uffizi museum which was overwhelming with the amount of art kept there, similar to the Vatican museum, only the art was a little more varied so that I was able to observe and enjoy most of it. Here we had another handout assignment to write down observations and take notes about several paintings and the museum as a whole. We were supposed to observe two paintings, “The Birth of Venus” and “Primavera”, both by Dr. Erdogmus’ favorite painter Sandro Botticelli; also we were to observe one that was actually under restoration at the moment, but they still had a copy of it up so we could get a sense of it, “The Adoration of the Magi” by Leonardo da Vinci. I can definitely see why these were the painting that she choose out of all the ones in the museum to have us view. They were all phenomenal. First I decided to view the “Primavera” which had a group of famous people from the culture. It was a painting that seemingly deals with the kingdom of Venus where all the others seemed to not be infatuated with her, but just themselves or the others in their group. Then I moved onto “The Birth of Venus,” which is probably the most famous piece of art in this museum. It depicts Venus being blown on a seashell towards land where the lady of spring is ready to embrace her with a sheet to cover her up. It seems as though he are portraying her being given from the mythical world to the real world almost. She was being brought onto the land from floating on a seashell, so that is the way it appeared to me. After seeing this painting, it reminded me that we had actually learned about this piece of art back in World History class, but I had kind of forgotten a lot of the things that I had learned from it. It was cool to see it in person this time. This one is probably one of my favorite portrayal of a female in all the art that I have seen. The expression on her face and the tilt of the head just seem to fit so incredibly well. It is one of the most pleasant faces that I have seen because although she isn’t full out smiling, similar to most of the art in this time period where they do not have smiles, she has this little happy smirk and innocent look on her face. After appreciating this painting for quite a while, I moved on to the next room to find a painting by one of my favorite artist/inventor/creative persons, Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Adoration of the Magi.” It one was extremely fascinating to me because of the fact that I enjoy his creations, but also since they had a sketch that he had done in preparation for painting this masterpiece. To see how he planned out the perspective for this painting was quite interesting; he had many parallel lines in order to have a sort of grid planning out how the objects needed to be painted and drawn. The quality of da Vinci’s work is always amazing, and I enjoyed how he also had indistinguishably distinct worshiper of the Christ that was born.  After I had finished my observations for the worksheet, I went along meandering through the rest of the museum. There were so many pieces of art that I could not take time to look at all of them individually. I would give all of them a glance an if something peaked my interest, then I would take more time and actually observe all the details of it. There was one that was a very detailed painting of some buildings, but I didn’t have my notebook to write it down since they made us check in our backpacks at the front. Then I finished the rest of the museum through a floor almost exclusively devoted to tapestries. I think that these are one of my least favorite mediums of art. I recognize the difficulties associated with their creation, but they just do not seem that intriguing or appealing to me.

After we were done with these tours of the museums, we had the rest of the day to ourselves. I went and worked on some journaling and rested a little bit before we went out for supper. Some of the guys wanted to go to a specific restaurant, but it was pretty packed so we walked around for while before we split up and ate at separate places. Then that night, a group of us went out after having a little fun playing some cards before. I went out and helped everyone have a good time and made sure that they would get back. It was pretty fun and funny. It is kind of incredible all the people that are her from the US; I met some people from either North or South Carolina, Kentucky, and Minnesota. Then after getting some of our group back to the hotel, I went to bed to get some sleep before our “free day” the next day.