Day 5

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

View from Dome of Duomo

I spent the day in Florence, where the class met with Larry Bowne, an architect. I was excited to see the architecture in Italy, so I really enjoyed having an architect narrating the history and giving us information about some of the science behind the construction.

The first building we visited was the Duomo, which is a massive church. It’s a very tall building, and we got to climb the stairs all the way to the top of the dome, which is its highest point. It’s crazy to imagine that people built the dome by hauling materials up that high and that they climbed those stairs at least once every day.

Duomo

Most buildings in Italy took a very long time to complete because their construction began before the architects knew how they were going to finish them. The people building them just assumed that they would solve the problem eventually, so they started construction. The dome of the Duomo wasn’t built until after the rest of the building was constructed because no one knew how to build a dome that large. Eventually the problem was solved by building a higher, more pointed dome that put more stress in the downward direction instead of in the outward direction. I can’t imagine undertaking such a large project without knowing how to finish it.

Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

After the Duomo, we went to Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, a library designed by Michelangelo. Michelangelo focused a lot on masculinity, so the architecture is very imposing and everything is oversized. The rooms are very large with high ceilings and impressive detailing, and there are lots of skulls on the ceiling and floor. Michelangelo’s architecture is the Renaissance version of a man cave.

New Sacristy

After the library we went to the New Sacristy in Medici Chapel, which was also designed by Michelangelo. Once again, we saw his focus on masculinity, but this time we saw it in his sculptures in addition to his architecture. The sculptures are very muscular; one of them looks like a man with breasts added as an afterthought.

The Adoration of the Magi
by Leonardo da Vinci

The Annunciation by Leonardo da Vinci

The first half of the day was dedicated to architecture, and the rest of the day was dedicated to art. The class visited the Uffizi, which is another art museum. This museum is massive. It took several hours to get through the whole building. The Uffizi had the most impressive art that I’ve seen so far. I got to see some of Leonardo da Vinci’s paintings in person, including The Adoration of the Magi and The Annunciation. It was incredible to see them in real life. “Infinity is implied - or, rather, visually symbolized - by the fact that any set of objectively parallel lines, regardless of location and direction, converges towards one single “vanishing point”…” (Panofsky, p. 126). The Adoration of the Magi is an excellent example of the perspective Panofsky refers to; the staircases in the background clearly lead to a vanishing point. I learned about perspective when I took art in middle school, so it was really amazing to see one of the paintings that so clearly exemplifies perspective.

A Rabbi by Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn

At the museum, I saw many paintings by other famous artists as well. I was pretty impressed by the Rembrandt paintings because I’ve heard about Rembrandt almost as much as da Vinci. It was a strange feeling to walk into a room and realize that I’ve seen some of the paintings before now, but I got that feeling multiple times at the Uffizi.

David by Michelangelo 

After the Uffizi, I went to the Ponte Vecchio, which is a bridge in Florence with shops on it that crosses a river. It’s a lot like the Rialto in Venice. After that, I went to the Accademia museum to see Michelangelo’s David. Like Michelangelo’s architecture, David was very tall, muscular, and intimidating.

Today I got to see work done by Michelangelo, da Vinci, and Rembrandt in person. It was kind of surreal to see their work in real life. I’ve seen it so many times in pictures that it was exactly what I thought it would look like, but I could see the art that they had actually worked on themselves, which was a really amazing experience.

Source

Panofsky, Erwin. Renaissance and Renaissances in Western Art. Routledge, 1972.