37 Florence Day 2

Florence day 2

We are old. We cannot walk 10 miles a day on cobblestone streets as we used to. My feet hurt! Eight of those miles were inside museums and churches.

Adding to this aerobic workout is the side stepping to avoid all the people to whom, I swear, we are invisible. They come four abreast on a two person wide sidewalk. I have tried playing chicken with them. I always chicken out and step into the street or pretend I am a piece of spaghetti thrown against the wall to test for doneness.

Do you recall that I was saying that Michelangelo did not create plaster models of his statues before sculpting? The genius of his God given talent became poignant as we saw four unfinished sculptures that he began (evidently he was working on all four at the same time) for a grave monument for a dude who died before they were finished. The important dude’s family apparently did not agree with his own estimate of his importance and they canceled the order.

There is not a better way to describe his work than to say that he took hammer and chisel and chipped away everything that did not look like the figure trapped inside the stone.

I had a very odd memory as I stood staring at these stone men emerging from their marble prisons. I recalled an episode of the TV show superman from the early 60's. In the episode the bad guy had walled himself inside of a room that was made of something that was so thick or of some substance that made it impossible for Superman to break it down. Not to be defeated, Superman used his super power of mind over matter, by willpower he was able to make the molecules of his body less dense, and he could then melt into the wall and flow through the wall. The crude visual effects of early TV showed a stone wall out of which Superman slowly emerged.
Michelangelo’s statues appeared to have been frozen in time as they were caught in the act of emergingng from the marble.

The Academia museum, where we saw the unfinished works, is also home to perhaps Michelangelo's greatest sculpture: "David".

Fourteen years ago, when we were in the Louvre museum in Paris I remember my first impression of Michelangelo's painting of "Mona Lisa" was that it is much smaller than I had envisioned.

My experience of "David" was just the opposite. This statue is ever so much larger than I had imagined. My expectations had been shaped by the hundreds of statues that we had seen over the last few days in Rome and in Florence. Virtually all of them from ancient times to contemporaries of Michelangelo created statues of near life size. There were obviously some that were much bigger, but most were near life size.

David is huge - standing over 13.5 feet tall. Every inch of this work is a wonder of detail. Veins and muscles are clearly visible in the stone. Michelangelo sculpted David's right hand bigger than his left. The pose of this right hand is reminiscent of The Hand of God that Michelangelo painted on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican depicting the spark of life in the creation of Adam.

We visited Santa Cruze Church, which is the final resting place for a rather distinguished group of former citizens of Florence: Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Gentile and Rossini.

Florence is a great walking town at least in the old part where all the tourists are relegated. There are lots of pedestrian areas and all are well lit.