Your Virtual Italy Vacation continues as Thor and I visit a last few sites of artistic splendor in Florence, before boarding a train to our next stop.
NOTE: Since European travel is still tenuous with the pandemic surging again, I’m continuing my blog series offering a virtual vacation and time-travel to my first big trip with Thor in 2008. Italy! After starting with highlight photos posted here on Saturday, Jan. 30, I offer a new installment every week (after a blogging detour in real time to Hawaii). Join us in Rome, Florence, Cinque Terre, Venice, and Milan. Buon viaggio!
Our all-too-brief time in Florence is ending — so much more we could see some day — so we’ll wind up with more amazing artistry. The Bargello Museum, built in the 1300s, was originally the town hall, then a prison and home to the chief of police. Executions took place in its courtyard until 1786, then it emerged phoenix-like in 1865 as one of Italy’s first national museums.
This lovely statue of the goddess Juno was originally the central figure in a 1556 fountain grouping by Batolomeo Ammannati:
The towering statue of Oceanus by Giambologna (1576) was also originally part of a fountain in the Boboli gardens behind the Pitti Palace (top photo). I find the common depictions of dolphins from this time most intriguing.
Does anyone know whose head is on this cannon? Again, I’m relying on Thor’s photos (and lack of notes), as my own Italy photos and journal have mysteriously disappeared.
A frisky and obviously fertile goat!
The first floor chamber is a work of art in itself:
Pietro Francavilla’s marble sculpture of Jason with the Golden Fleece (late 1580s):
My ongoing fascination with satyrs:
Sometimes it’s the little things encountered in the steets:
Or the famously grand and awe-inspiring, like the marble David in the Galleria dell’ Accademia. Michelangelo created his 17-foot-tall masterpiece from 1501-4, completed when he was only 29. It established him as the foremost sculptor at the time. Originally outside in the Piazza della Signoria (see earlier post), it was moved in 1873 for protection from violent protests of the Medici reign. A replica now stands in the piazza.
The church of Santa Croce houses the tomb of Michelangelo…
…as well as the tomb of Galileo.
Dante Alighieri was exiled from his native Florence and died in Ravenna in 1321, but Santa Croce houses a memorial to the famous author of The Divine Comedy.
A walk to the Boboli Gardens rewarded us with this view of the city:
More whimsical fountain creatures:
Sometimes nature creates artistry just as fantastic.
References to Greek/Roman mythology and Biblical stories mingle in garden sculptures. Here, Medusa is caught in an eternal scream:
There are rather strange sculpture grottoes on the grounds that house statues, many of them dripping with faux stalactites.
The first grotto room was designed to look like a natural cave where shepherds could shelter with their sheep.
Also a group called The Prisoners (originals now removed to a museum).
There’s also a 1560 Valerio Cioli fountain statue of Cosimo I’s court dwarf as Bacchus riding a turtle:
An 18th-century Vincenzo de Rossi statue of Paris and Helen, as he was absconding with her, only to trigger the epic Trojan War. No idea what involvement the wild boar had in the proceedings….
And the original couple bound for trouble, Adam and Eve:
Next week: We leave Florence by train for a change of pace — hiking along the rugged coastline of Cinque Terre with its picturesque villages clinging to the cliffs.
*****
You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Cafe is available in print and ebook: The Ariadne Connection. It’s a near-future thriller set in the Greek islands. “Technology triggers a deadly new plague. Can a healer find the cure?” The novel has received the Chanticleer Global Thriller Grand Prize and the Cygnus Award for Speculative Fiction. Sara has recently returned from another research trip in Greece and is back at work on the sequel, The Ariadne Disconnect. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com
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