October 23, 2005
Topic: Florence
We finally made it to the Academy to see David and several other works by Michelangelo. Our reservation was for 10:15, so we made sure we got to breakfast right on time and then made the trek back to Piazza San Marco. We took a slightly different route, but it’s still quite a hike. We were a few minutes early, so we had time to stop at a bar for coffee. The nuns serve Nescafe and warm milk at breakfast. Just isn’t the caffeine jolt we crave first thing in the morning!

The reservation thing worked pretty well. We were allowed to go through the metal detector about 10 minutes before our scheduled time and then to buy our tickets. There are security screenings now at most of the major museums—I guess this started with the bombing of the Uffizi in 1993. How sad…

We bumped into the two guys who let us use their cell phone to make the reservation yesterday. They said it rained all day in town on Saturday. Guess we picked the perfect day to go to Fiesole.

The Academy is very small. There is a lot of art crammed into a few rooms. Much like the Pallazo Pitti, things are hung four and five rows high. Makes it difficult to see, but someone who works there explained to another visitor, “This museum really isn’t about paintings.” Okay.

So what it’s really about is several sculptures by Michelangelo. The four slaves or prisoners are here. They’re unfinished pieces that were originally meant to be part of a tomb in St. Peter’s in Rome. That didn’t happen for a number of reasons. The tomb was finally built, sans slaves, in St. Peter in Vincoli in Rome. At some point, they were placed in the grotto in the Boboli Gardens. We saw a picture of the installation there—very powerful. Now they’re freestanding in the museum. Each figure appears to be emerging from the piece of marble it’s in. None is complete, although two have more form than the others. There’s also another Pieta here, also incomplete and perhaps actually done by Michelangelo’s students, and an incomplete St. Matthew. Michelangelo apparently always worked freehand and believed that the figure in each piece of marble would present itself at the right time. These guys never showed him the whole picture!

Finally, there’s the David. It really is wonderful. The sculpture was cleaned recently, so it’s possible to see the detail clearly. Originally this piece was supposed to be put on the top of the Duomo. So, Michelangelo designed it to be viewed from the ground at a distance of several hundred feet. However, when people saw the David, they wanted to be able to view it close up, so it was placed at the Pallazo Vecchio instead. As a result, David’s feet and hands appear to be disproportionally large. Whatever. It was definitely worth the hoops we jumped through to see it.

When we left the Academy, we took a final walk by some of our favorite spots in Florence: the Duomo, Santa Croce, the Ponte Vecchio. We also went by the Piazza della Republicca, the original Roman Forum, which we hadn’t seen before. We had lunch near Santa Croce and then went off to do laundry.

We had dinner Thursday night at a pizzeria on the south side of the Arno and Steve really liked it. So, for our last dinner in Florence we went back and ate pizza again.

Garden at St. Elisabetta:
Florence 10-23-05