Palazzo Vecchio and the Cathedral

Monday, December 30, 2019

This was a truly remarkable day, and I’ve managed to pare my photos down to 24 for this post.  Apologies for so many.

We started with a short walk to the Palazzo Vecchio:

The entrance has the copy of Michelangelo’s David on the left and Bartolommeo Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus on the right.

The courtyard is magnificent:

The building has three parts, the oldest being a medieval castle dating from 1299.  The great hall was added in the 15^th century and Cosimo de Medici (1389-1464) added the palatial third part.  It was in front of this building that Savonarola was executed in 1492 after the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent.  We had a wonderful guide who abbreviated a lot of history for us.  In any case, the Medici family ruled Florence for 300 years, and was responsible for much of what we saw. 

The enormous great hall has huge frescos, and a ceiling with many panels.  In the very middle is a portrait of Cosimo de Medici as some sort of a god figure (maybe Jupiter or Jesus):

Almost all of the magnificent frescos were done by Giorgio Vasari; here’s a sample from the guest apartments:

And a detail:

The audience chamber was meant to impress the visitor:

The ceiling is incredible:

Of course, the Duke had a gold crown:

After seeing the Palazzo Vecchio we were taken to a workshop for a lesson in fresco creation.  

We then each were given a panel with fresh plaster, and brushes and jars of paints.  The paints are all created in the same way: a material of color is ground into a fine powder and stirred into water as a suspension.  Very little of it dissolves.  The brush is used to bring the colored suspension to the wet plaster; when it dries, the result is a hard piece of art.  We very quickly learned that there is no repair of mistakes.  A mistake ruins the work.  Victor’s effort is not on display, but Joyce did an admirable job:

After lunch we had another docent-led tour of the cathedral, the baptistry and the museum.  The exterior of the cathedral is breathtaking, with Brunelleschi’s dome the capstone:

The cathedral took 80 years to build, from 1225-1305, and the façade was never finished.  Its formal name is Santa Maria del Fiore, (Saint Mary of the Flowers) and our guide related the parallels between flowers and Mary’s womb.  There are many such references throughout the cathedral.  The new façade was added slowly, from the 16^th to the 19^th century.  On the inside above the main entrance is an unusual 24-hour clock.  The new day begins at sunset, and we had a discussion of how and why that tradition began.  With no firm answer, possibilities included references to the Hebrew calendar, as the new day begins at sunset in it.

The interior of Brunelleschi’s dome has a phenomenal series of frescos on the theme of the Last Judgment done by the same Georgio Vasari who did the frescos in the Palazzo Vecchio.

Here is Hell:

And here, Chronos with a broken hourglass (which has a long explanation):

The treasures of the cathedral and the baptistry have all been moved to the cathedral museum, and that was our final stop.  The collection defies description.  It’s overwhelming.  Our docent led us to some of the most important treasures and spoke to us with great detail and wonderful explanations.  For an art novice like me, she was perfect.  A sampling: the Ghiberti Door of Paradise:

A panel with multiple Genesis stories in it:

A Pisano door:

Arnolfo DiCambio is represented by this pre-Renaissance Madonna created between 1300 and 1305:

Quite unusually, this expressionless face has blue glass eyes:

There is an overwhelming Donatello Mary Magdalene as a Penitent made of wood:

And finally, a very poorly displayed (backlit) Michelangelo Pieta with four characters:  the dead Christ, Mary, Mary Magdalene, and Nicodemus as a Michelangelo self-portrait.  This piece was originally intended by Michelangelo for his own gravesite.

After our formal tour there was time for us to explore more of this important museum, and I’ll show just one more wonderful Pisano piece, God creating Eve:

At the end of one floor is an exhibit on the architecture and the building of the dome.  Not only did Brunelleschi design the dome, he designed the tools and mechanical devices used to build it.  We didn’t have time to linger over that display.

We had a lovely dinner, and will get to bed early for we have an early start tomorrow.  More then.