Accademia, a pharmacy and more

Friday, January 3, 2020

Today was our last day in Florence, and it was lovely.  We began with an 80-minute lecture on the sculpture of Florence, with much history of Florence thrown in.  I did not know that through the Middle Ages, Florence was just one of a number of small towns.  But as merchants began to become more and more important, a common currency was needed, and in 1252 the merchants of Florence invented the gold Florin, which became the common currency of all of Europe and beyond.  It was universally accepted, as it was pure gold.  According to Marco, it was the invention of this coin which propelled Florence into prominence, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The artistic boom went along with the economic boom, all of which accompanied the move from the domination of popes, bishops and priests over everyday life to that of merchants and businessmen.  The Renaissance, then, moved from solid, rigid and stationary art back to the renewed ideal of Greek art, especially sculpture.  From covered up to nude.  There’s much more.  We discussed concepts of beauty, the Platonic idea that anything in nature is imperfect, and that one goal of art is the creation of the perfect, or ideal.  Marco quoted Polyclitus, the Greek sculptor, who believed that beauty relied on ideal proportions.  It was the essentials of Art 101 in 80 minutes.

This was all in preparation for our trip this morning to the Accademia, where once again we were able to go right in with a group timed ticket.  The lines for those waiting to get in were enormous.  The highlight of the Accademia is Michelangelo’s David, but there’s more, and it’s an eclectic collection.  Our docent took us first to the remarkable wide thin panel from 1420, the Nuptial Parade.  It’s attributed to Massacio’s younger brother.  Here’s a detail of musicians:

In the room which precedes David are unfinished sculptures from Michelangelo’s workshop, left when he died.  We had a short talk explaining that Michelangelo saw the figures in the blocks of marble, and saw his job as taking away the stone which kept them in.  Here’s what is thought to be an unfinished Atlas:

Here’s a partially done man rising out of the stone for a funeral piece:

Finally, Michelangelo's David.  We had a long talk on how to look at him, what to see, and what makes him unique. 

Here’s a close-up of his head:

The statue was originally to be high on a church front, and so Michelangelo made the proportions of the right arm and hand larger to appear proper from that angle and height:

The museum is closed on Mondays, and each Monday the statue is cleaned with women, only women, doing the work on temporary scaffolds.  This photo is from our guide’s computer:

There is a small but excellent music museum which is part of the Accademia, it’s not clear why it’s here, but the piano was invented here, and there is a display illuminating the transition from the harpsichord to the piano.  Here’s an unusual (to me) three-string double bass:

And an early 1739 upright piano:

We walked in a circuitous way back to the hotel, shopping and stopping to see things we had not seen.  Opposite our hotel is a pharmacy which is a whole lot more.

It’s basically a shop for all kinds of dietary supplements and cosmetics which will cure anything which is a problem for you.  If you’d like, magnify this shopping list, just one of many:

We had a lovely goodbye dinner, toasted our guides and each other, and ended our Road Scholar program.  Tomorrow we’ll have a day trip to the town of Ferrara, going and coming in only 70 minutes each way on the high speed train.  Then Sunday, up early for a 6:30 AM flight to Paris where we’ll meet up with Leah and continue on to Tel Aviv and to Jerusalem to our Air B&B.