Day 9 Florence: August 15

After many days on the road, we were thankful to have a slower pace in Florence. We started Friday morning by taking our laundry to a laundromat, called a "lavenderia" in Italian. We met fellow travelers from the US and Australia who were also doing laundry.

We had some time to wait for our clothes so we caught up writing about our adventures in our journals, Brandan digitally and Becky on paper.

We packed light for our trip and avoided buying souvenirs prior to arriving in Florence. We didn't have a lot of room in our suitcases and whatever we bought we would have to carry with us the rest of the trip. However, Florence was the last stop on our journey and is a wonderful place to shop for Italian made goods. Becky bought a leather messenger bag to use for school.

The shop is owned by two brothers, the sons of the founder of the shop. The owners' sons, who are cousins, were working the day we were there. One of them, Elias, branded the bag with Becky's initials.

Here's a photo of the shop from the outside.

We bought some ties at a nearby stand. We also bought some earrings at a small store, but we didn't take a photo of that store.

We stopped and watched fresh pasta being made at a restaurant.

Some stores were closed for Ferie. We learned that August 15th is called Ferrogosta in Italy. This holiday started in 18 BC to honor Emperor Augustus. The Catholic Church merged the holiday with the Assumption of Mary. Many Italians take two weeks off in August; it's Italy's biggest holiday. Learning about Ferie explained the large amount of vacationers we saw in northern Italy. Talking to our hotel clerk in Florence, we learned vacation spots in Southern Italy are even more crowded in August since Italians love going to the beaches.

While we saw art treasures that were hundreds of years old, we also saw some modern pieces like this sculpture of the tree of life made by Andrea Roggi.

We passed by the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore many times during the day. This church is most often called the Duomo and is in the center of historic Florence.

This is a beautiful arcade lined with shops.

This is a dramatic statue of Perseus with the head of Medusa, sculpted by Benvenuto Cellini.

Copies of Michelangelo's David and Bandinelli's Hercules stand outside the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence's town hall. It was built in the 1299 to house the government of the republic of Florence, then Cosimo Medici remodeled it into his palace in the 1500s. When the Medicis moved to a new palace, it reverted to its use as governmental offices and still houses the city offices, as well as a museum. We were headed to the Uffizi Museum, which is across the gap to the right in this photo.

The Uffizi specializes in Italian art, especially of the Renaissance and it upholds its mission beautifully. The art is thoughtfully presented and carefully curated so the viewers get a bit of an art education as they move through the museum. We spent several hours in the museum, looking at the masterpieces, sometimes retracing our steps to find the influence and earlier artist had on a later artist. We're not trying to recreate a museum catalog here, but we all share a few photos of art we found especially appealing. The museum had several paintings by Botticelli. Here's a detail of the archangel Michael in a painting called Madonna and Child. Becky liked the ethereal, graceful appearance of the angel combined with the seriousness of the angel's armor.

This is a very similar Michael painted by Francesco Botticini, named The Three Archangels with Tobias. The other two angels are Raphael and Gabriel. We imagine it might have been difficult for the artist to be two years younger than Botticelli, have practically the same name, and be completely overshadowed by the other artist, so we're giving Botticini some attention here. Interestingly, Catholic theology teaches that angels are pure spirit without form or gender, so if you are trying to figure out if Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel are men or women, they are neither. Interestingly, we saw A LOT of art that contradicts Catholic theology, for example, depictions of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost as three personages. However, Catholics would not see the contradictions that we saw and instead see the representations as symbolic, not literal.

Two of Botticelli's most famous paintings are in the museum, Spring, as seen above, and The Birth of Venus. Both paintings are enormous. Spring is famous for having at least 138 plant species, each painted in detail and identifiable. The mysterious blue figure is Zephyrus, the Greek god of the west wind. We also learned there are far more gods in the Greek and Roman pantheon than we learned in school.

Leonard da Vinci's Adoration of the Magi hangs unfinished in the gallery. The Church of Donato a Scapeto commissioned this painting for their high altar in July of 1481. Da Vinci left Florence for Milan in September of 1481 and never returned to finish the painting. We learned more often than not, da Vinci did not finish what he started. Still, his unfinished paintings are masterpieces.

The church still wanted a painting for their altar and finally gave up on da Vinci. In 1496 they commissioned a different artist, Fillipino Lippi, to paint the Adoration of the Magi. Da Vinci's figures are so elegant and his name as an artist so well-known, his painting could overshadow Lippi's, which might be why the paintings hang in different galleries from each other. However, Lippi's painting is also a masterpiece. It's especially worth looking at the well dressed Black man and other non Europeans on the right side of the painting, representing the gentiles of the world. Lippi shows honor to all Christians in the world by the dignified way he portrays them, not as the servants in the background, but worshipping Christ with kings.

The Uffizi is home to Michelangelo's only panel painting, Holy Family, painted for a merchant in Florence in 1505-1506. The wooden frame, carved by Francesco de Tasso, shows the head of Christ and 4 prophets, and is a work of art on its own.

One gallery in the Uffizi collects self portraits of artists. This is a painting of Raphael, which he painted in 1509 when he was 26 years old. We admired Raphael's paintings in the Vatican Museums as well as the Uffizi. He earned his reputation, his burial in the Pantheon, and his place as one of the inspirations for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in a short time. Raphael died when he was only 37 years old. In contrast, Michelangelo lived to be 88 years old, Donatello lived to age 79, and da Vinci lived to age 67.

This painting in the self-portrait gallery had a very brief description. The artist is Raimondo Zaballi and the painting was completed in 1841. While many artists depicted themselves painting in their self-portraits, Raimondo was the only artist who chose to paint himself painting a cat. We interpret this to mean Raimondo had a sense of humor.

When we left the museum we took a short cut through the Palazzo Vecchio. The space inside was elegant and old, like many spaces we saw in Italy, but the decorative painting on the ceiling was entirely unique to Florence.

Earlier in the day while we were shopping, we saw a restaurant that we wanted to try for dinner. Now that is was dinnertime, we could not find it. Although we had spent the entire day in the same square kilometer of space, we criss crossed it many times, walking over 12 km (8 miles) by dinner time. We might have re-walked up and down every side street we had walked all day before we found the restaurant we were looking for.

And the restaurant was worth the walk. It specialized in making risotto. Brandan ordered blueberry risotto topped with gorgonzola cheese and Becky ordered pesto risotto with stracciatella cheese and roasted tomatoes. Both dishes were delicious, full of rich flavor, and we swapped bites back and forth until we finished both plates.