The stairs from the Palazzo Pitti courtyard to the Boboli Gardens pass through this upswept curving space, creating a rather dramatic view of the sky:
Stairs To Boboli Gardens
This is the Medici residence wing of the Palazzo Pitti, where the Grand Duke and Duchess had their suites, and Napoleon’s bathtub can be found.
Medici Residence Wing, Palazzo Pitti
This is a view from the courtyard of the Palazzo Pitti out the main entrance. The bell tower in the distance belongs to Santo Spirito, a church with an ornate interior designed by Brunelleschi, the man who created the dome of the Duomo.
Entrance, Palazzo Pitti in the Rain
A wrought-iron gate in the Boboli Gardens.
Garden Gate, Boboli Gardens
This fountainhead is found in the courtyard to the Palazzo Pitti. And no, Ayn Rand had nothing to do with it.
Fountainhead, Palazzo Pitti
As you’re probably aware if you read this blog with any frequency, I’m fascinated by ordinary objects that we tend to ignore. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to capture a Renaissance storm drain cover and inlet in the Boboli Gardens, along one of the gravel paths ascending from the amphitheater to the Neptune fountain.
Drain Cover, Boboli Gardens
And finally a view of the Duomo from the Boboli Gardens. You don’t really realize how big the cathedral dome is and how much it dominates the landscape in and around Florence until you stand on the hill a good mile away and realize that it’s the biggest thing between you and the mountains some fifteen or more miles beyond.
The architectural folly known as the Kaffeehaus (Coffee House) in the Boboli Gardens behind the Palazzo Pitti. The Coffeehouse was built by Maria Theresa while she was the Grand Duchess of Tuscany (she would later become the Hapsburg Empress of Austria-Hungary). Thus the German spelling of the name for the building, which comes from its purpose- it was a refreshment center for visitors to the gardens to stop and get a coffee or tea or other beverage – exploring the 110 acres of the Boboli Gardens is thirsty work.
This is a bronze door handle on a well-weathered door in the gardens. I forget what structure it is attached to – it might be one of the servant’s entrances to the Palazzo Pitti.
Door Handle, Boboli Gardens
An allee of tall hedges in the Boboli Gardens, leading to a staircase. The gardens themselves are built onto the slope of a hill, so they have many changes of elevation.
Garden Allee, Boboli Gardens
A tower set into the hedges along the ramp from the amphitheater to the Neptune fountain. I’m not sure what purpose it serves- it could be just a garden shed for storing tools and groundskeeping equipment, or it may relate to the water control systems for the myriad fountains in the garden.
Garden Tower Boboli Gardens
A view of the Palazzo Pitti from the top of the amphitheater stairs. The title comes from the boy in the lower edge of the frame taking a phone selfie. A very modern take on a very old palace.
TC is a friend I’ve known for gosh, probably 10 years now. When we met he was a grad student working on his PhD at MIT. He’s now a full-fledged Doctor in Physical Chemistry, and working in Zurich. When I told him I was coming to Florence, he offered to pop down and hang out for a day or two. He was a real godsend, as I was still in the throes of a really bad allergy attack triggered by down pillows on the bed of my apartment in Rome, and he stopped at a pharmacy and got me some European Benadryl.
TC in the Boboli Gardens
We went to the Uffizi the first day I was in Florence, then grabbed dinner at a restaurant he found on Yelp. The food was quite good, but what shocked me was the size of the portions. I was used to these small portion sizes per course that I had been getting in Rome, so I had a pasta course, a salad, and an entree. The pasta wasn’t too much bigger than I was expecting, but the salad was entree- sized! I had only had maybe 1/3 of the salad when the waitress stopped by and asked about it. I told her it was very good but just too big. She offered to cancel my entree, which I was glad to accept. Half and hour later, we’re sitting chatting and the entree arrives after all!
The next day, we met up again and walked over to the Palazzo Pitti via the Ponte Vecchio. The Palazzo Pitti is gargantuan – it was the Medici family’s main residence in the 16th and 17th centuries, and everything about it was designed to overawe. The Vasari corridor connects it with the Uffizi over the Ponte Vecchio to provide a secure passage should the Medicis need to escape an angry mob, or just not want to mingle with the hoi polloi on their way to and from their private box seats at the Santa Felicita church.
Cyclist, Palazzo Pitti
The Boboli Gardens back onto the Palazzo Pitti. They were once the private playground of the Medici family, but now are open to the public. This is the garden facade of the Palazzo Pitti.
Pitti Palace, from the Boboli Gardens
After touring through the Pitti and hiking up and down the Boboli gardens (which are on the face of a fairly steep hill), TC and I grabbed lunch at a little cafe across from the Palazzo Pitti’s main entrance. I had my first ever cappuccino there. I’m now a devotee, provided there’s enough sugar.
So thank you, TC, for the Benadryl, the companionship, and for the swiss chocolates – they were delicious!
The bell tower, or campanile, of the Duomo in Florence. It is referred to as Giotto’s Campanile because it was designed by the famous painter Giotto, who had become the second Master of Works at the Cathedral after a 30 year gap following the death of his predecessor.
Campanile di Giotto, Florence
He created the polychrome marble scheme for the tower to match that which had already been designed for the cathedral itself, and saw the completion of the first floor of the tower before his own death in 1337. Today, the bell tower is as much a symbol of Florence as the dome of the cathedral or the Palazzo Vecchio.
Another in my Portraits of Ordinary Objects series.
Payphone, Florence
I’ve been working on this series for a while now, photographing common things we see every day and take for granted. I keep on doing this around the world, photographing pay phones, mail boxes, trash cans, fire hydrants, all the little things that populate the overlooked corners of our daily lives. The interesting thing about them is that despite cultural differences (mailboxes in France are yellow, in the US they’re red and blue) they’re pretty much instantly recognizable across all cultures. You don’t have to be a Spaniard to recognize a Spanish mail box, pay phone, or trash receptacle.
There’s something about fish in the market that makes them look especially good in black and white, don’t you think? It’s funny that most of the fish we eat are shades of black and silver and white – there are really only a couple fish that are colorful that we eat (red snapper, bluefish, Yellow Mackerel), the rest are enjoyed as visual treats when snorkeling, diving or in an aquarium.
Fish, Mercato CentraleFish, Mercato CentraleFish, Mercato CentraleFishmonger, Mercato Centrale
What trip to Florence would be complete without a visit to the Accademia to see David?
My first visit to Florence, I actually did NOT get to see David as I only had about 2 1/2 days, and back then unless you booked a tour group, the only way in was to get in the 2-3 hour line. Now, Florence the city offers a three-day, all-you-can-museum pass called the Firenze Card. It’s a bit pricey, but in my estimation well worth the 72 Euros because you can just wave it at the door and walk right in to the Uffizi, the Accademia, the Bargello and any of the other major public museums in the city. If you can make it in to say four museums in the three days, it’s more than paid for itself.
Back to the David – I had seen the copy that was made in the 19th century and placed in front of the Signoria on my previous visit, and I thought it was a good enough copy that I didn’t need to see the original. Having been now to see the original, I can say I was totally wrong. The public copy is an excellent copy, but it’s still just a high-end Xerox of Michelangelo’s. I tried with this composition to photograph it in a slightly less cliche fashion by including the architecture of the room.
David
There’s so much going on with this statue and its history. It was originally intended to stand on a pedestal on the outside of the Duomo along with a dozen or so other similar sculptures. The David was the only one of the group ever made, and it never was placed in its originally intended location. David came to symbolize the Florentine Republic, and as such, by the time he was finished, he was placed outside the Palazzo Vecchio in the Piazza della Signoria to remind Florentines of their independent status. The original statue stood outside in the rain and the wind and the sun and the snow for four centuries before being moved to the Accademia. In the 20th century, he was “restored” once, very poorly, and a second time, recently, with a far more gentle method. As a result of the cleanings, the exposure, and the hammer attack he was subjected to, there remains no actual surface which would have been touched by the hand of Michelangelo. In spite of this, the statue remains transcendent.
There’s a terrific book about the David, From Marble to Flesh: a Biography of Michelangelo’s David, by A. Victor Coonin. My only association with the book aside from having read it is that I was a Kickstarter backer of the original publication. If you look in the credits you’ll find my name. Regardless, the book tells the complete life story of David from his beginnings as a sculpture to be carved by someone else, Michelangelo taking over the task, his completion, public placement, life, moving from the Piazza to the Accademia (which took almost as long to accomplish in the late 1800s as it did to move from Michelangelo’s studio to the Piazza some four hundred years earlier), through to the cultural importance of David as a symbol in 21st century life.
I had mentioned in an earlier post about Michelangelo and the “Unfinished” sculptures. Here are some of the pieces in the Accademia’s main hall.
Unfinished Sculpture
If you look carefully at them, it’s hard to truly call them unfinished – there is a certain deliberateness about what is carved finely and what is left rough.
Unfinished Sculpture
The coarse textures blend very naturally with the revealed forms. To my eyes, and from my (granted rather limited) experience of stone carving, this kind of texture and modeling is something done very intentionally.
Unfinished Sculpture
While there are certainly areas that are unrefined, the transitions are fascinating and at the very least provide an insight into the working technique of a genius master sculptor, and given how far ahead he was in so many other aspects of his art, it is entirely possible for him to have been five centuries ahead of his time in his thinking, much the way Caravaggio’s paintings were.
Unfinished Sculpture
And I couldn’t let the opportunity pass without remarking on something that virtually everyone who’s ever looked at a Michelangelo painting or sculpture of a woman has noticed- his women are really just men with boobs and long hair. The hand of Mary that’s supporting a very robust looking Jesus in this “unfinished” Pieta is one of the manliest hands I’ve ever seen on a woman.
As promised in the previous post of the ceiling of the Sagrestia Nuova (also a Michelangelo design), here are the Michelangelo sculptures decorating the tombs of Lorenzo di Piero de Medici and Giuliano di Lorenzo de Medici. The great irony of this is that the greatest tombs in the Medici crypt go to the lesser members of the family – all the famous Medicis (Lorenzo Il Magnifico, Cosimo I, Guiliano, etc) are buried in the awe-inspiring-but-somber-and-over-the-top Medici Chapel, a giant domed octagonal chamber lined with dark marble mosaics and sarcophagi, or in the crypt below it.
Lorenzo di Piero de Medici, with Dusk and DawnGiuliano di Lorenzo with Day and NightDusk, Medici Tomb
The male figures of the tomb decorations both appear to be “unfinished”. While Michelangelo did leave Florence for Rome permanently before the sculptural figures were installed and all the tomb decorations complete, there is a debate in the art historical world about how “unfinished” they actually are, thus my use of quotation marks on the word unfinished. Michelangelo left behind enough sculptural works in rough form that some say he was really bad at completing projects, whereas others will argue that they are as finished as he intended them to be. Certainly his reputation as one of the greatest stone carvers ever to live has not been diminished by his “unfinished” pieces.
You can see more of his “unfinished” pieces at the Louvre in Paris and at the Accademia in Florence (the pieces at the Accademia are forthcoming in another blog post).
As part of my Michelangelo pilgrimage (the secondary pilgrimage, with the Caravaggio quest being the first one), I wanted to see the Medici chapel with the famous tomb sculptures by Michelangelo. Photos of those sculptures are forthcoming, but first I wanted to lead off with this architectural view of the ceiling.
Dome, Medici Chapel, San Lorenzo
I wasn’t even thinking about it when composing the shot, but in looking at it afterward, there are all these repetitions of threes in the scene – three windows in the lantern, three circles, the lantern and the windows together forming not only a trio of light sources but a visual triangle, and so on.
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