June 11, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Our last day in Florence was so much fun that we hardly had a moment to feel sad about our imminent departure and the end of our trip.
We spent the morning listening to each other give five minute presentations (in groups of four) about the artwork we've seen during our time in Italy and its place in the controversy surrounding art of the Renaissance or, indeed, art in general.
Each group chose one aspect of this controversy to focus on and the topics were: depictions of the Last Supper, Madonna, and Christ; one-point perspective (for which the group members composed a song to the tune of "Oh, What a Night"); and Florentine patronage of the arts. It was amazing to see how much knowledge all of us had amassed over a period of only seventeen days!
Afterwards, we shared the drawings and sketches we have all been working on during the trip. Even the students who are not art majors, who had never really drawn before this class, had some impressive things to show. Jen is a wonderful teacher, and her steady chorus of "draw what you see, not what you know" helped us all surprise ourselves with what we could do. She's made us love drawing and understand it, so that more than a few of us intend to keep a sketchbook from now on.
The big fun came later, though, during our dinner at a Chianti vineyard about a half hour outside of Florence. We began our evening with a brief tour of the winery to learn how Chianti and Chianti Classico are made. Then we went inside for an aperitif and a wonderful dinner. The wine was so good that we all bought bottles to bring home to our family, but most delicious was the company. Tom, Adam, and Jen all made speeches about how happy they were with the way this year's trip turned out, and we assured them that the feeling was mutual.
Sitting over dinner, and later singing karaoke on the bus ride home (yeah, really), there was a palpable sense of our cohesion as a group. For seventeen days, we have been one another's family, friends, roommates; for this brief space, we have been one another's whole worlds. Upon our arrival in JFK, and departure from Adelphi in Florence, there was a sense of loss but also a huge sense of what we have all gained: a deeper knowledge of the Florentine Renaissance, a broader sense of the world around us, and new and lasting friendships.
June 08, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Our penultimate day in Florence. In the morning, we went to the Academia to see Michelangelo's David, something we've all been eagerly anticipating. Though Italy is full of souvenir models, and there are two replicas in Florence, nothing can prepare you for seeing David in person. The marble is so lifelike that you can almost see the blood pulsing in his veins. The room that holds the David is filled with other, unfinished works by Michelangelo that seem to be struggling to free themselves from the marble so that the fully formed David at the end of the gallery stands as the realization of their potential. Michelangelo's David, unlike Donatello's that we saw earlier in the week, is a mature man rather than a young boy. When it was first displayed, it was controversial for about two days because of its nudity, but later became a symbol of the Republic. Since he was originally meant to stand atop the Duomo, David's hands, feet, and head are larger in proportion to the rest of his body. Even with this defect though, the overall effect is one of utter perfection.
So perfect, in fact, that the Florentine Renaissance had to end with Michelangelo. In many ways, the David is the acme of Renaissance realism, to which the only possible answer is the Mannerist movement of the 1500s. As an illustration of this movement, which emphasized color and theatricality, we went straight from the Academia to Santa Felicita to see Pontormo's Deposition from the Cross. Pontormo seems to anticipate neon light in his use of color that, along with his elongated figures, is clearly an abstraction of the Renaissance ideal. It is fitting that our last day of seeing Florentine art should include this next chapter in the development of the Italian Renaissance.
June 06, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Today was a packed and exciting day. Our morning was spent at the Church of San Lorenzo, first in the church itself and then sketching the architecture in the cloister. Both were designed by Brunelleschi, and the complex became the family church of the Medicis. My favorite part was the Laurentian library, which has an exhibit on the history of manuscripts. I came to Florence to study the Renaissance because I have a keen interest in the literature of the period, and here I got to see where the seeds of that passion began. And it is not a passion unique to me; since the ancient papyrus scrolls, people have been seeking ways to read and convey information. One of the placards in the exhibit notes how the Bible was a major text that inspired the urge to read and reproduce manuscripts. From the scope of the exhibit itself though, it occurs to me that this urge, part of the reason I'm in Florence in the first place, is far more fundamental than that. In my opinion, we read the Bible because we love to read, rather than the other way around.
In the afternoon, we went to the Medici chapel, which holds the Michelangelo sculptures of Day, Night, Dusk, and Dawn. It is absolutely breathtaking how Michelangelo sculptures seem to melt into flesh from marble. Since these are all unfinished, you can really see the way he seems to breathe life into them with his chisel. The chapel itself is one of the most impressive spaces we've seen in Florence, and the fact that it houses these masterpieces makes it nearly overwhelming.
After all of this, we boarded a bus for Antella, where Chiara (our tour guide)'s family owns a home. Her mother cooked us an amazing dinner and we all had a wonderful time drinking wine from the vineyard down the street, soaking in the last rays of the Tuscan sun before it set, and just enjoying each other's company. It is suprising that so large a group (twenty women!) coheres so well, but maybe there's just something about Italy (the wine? the pasta?) that puts everyone in a good mood.
June 05, 2008 - by Molly Mann
The morning was spent at San Salvi, a small museum that houses Andrea del Sarto's Last Supper. We were the only ones there at the time, and silence reigned for a good ten minutes as we all stood agape before this fresco. In contrast to the other last supper depictions we've seen in Florence, del Sarto's fresco is remarkably theatrical, full of action and emotion. The Apostles are all engaged in dramatic gestures, which are accentuated by the strong chiaroscuro effects in the folds of their clothing.
Another strong contrast was the one between the peace of San Salvi and the bustling Uffizi, where we spent the afternoon. The sheer volume of spectacular artworks, all concentrated in this first museum in the world, was overwhelming. Botticelli's Birth of Venus, Caravaggio's Medusa, and Artemesia Gentileschi's Judith Beheading Holophernes are just a few of the stars we got to see.
Over dinner, MaryEllen (Hackett), Melissa (Gandolfo), Hara (Stephanou), and I discussed our topic for the presentation we all have to give at the end of this trip. In addition to the eight page paper we'll submit over the summer, we'll all split into groups of four to give five minute presentations on the topic of our choice. With all we've seen in the past couple of weeks, all we've learned about art and the Florentine Renaissance, I can't imagine how any of the presentations could be that short!
June 04, 2008 - by Molly Mann
This morning, we went to San Marco, the Dominican monastery that was home to Fra Bartolomeo, Fra Angelico, and Savonarola. Monasteries provided a good life for men without considerable means during the Florentine Renaissance. They the only places where one could have privacy and an education. We got to walk among the cells, each of which contains a fresco by Fra Angelico that is a meditation on the life of Christ.
Most remarkable was the Annunciation by Fra Angelico that met us at the top of the staircase leading to the monks' dormitory. The figures are bathed in light that seems to emanate from the wall behind them rather than from an outside light source. Fra Angelico, as a Dominican friar, refused to use materials that were too expensive, so he ground sand and glass into the pigment of the angel's wings to make them shimmer.
The afternoon rain caught up with us and cut short our afternoon drawing session at the Opsidale Innocente (Hospital of the Innocents), the first orphanage in Europe. It was designed by Brunelleschi, who also designed the Duomo. A short day, perhaps, but a full one nevertheless.
June 02, 2008 - by Molly Mann
All day long the sun has been poking out through the clouds, and we have dodged intermittent rain showers. The weather report says it is supposed to rain all week, but we are still hoping that the rest of our stay here in Florence will be as sunny and beautiful as the first part has been.
This morning, we crossed the Arno to visit Santa Maria del Carmine to see the Masaccio frescoes there. Along the way, Tom seized the opportunity to tell us a little about the bridges of Florence. Of them all, the Ponte Vecchio is the only one built before World War II. The Nazis, when they took Florence, left only this one standing because they were so impressed by its beauty. Looking at it today, one can see how it would melt even a fascist heart.
At Santa Maria del Carmine, all of us stood agape before the Masaccio frescoes. They depict the life of St. Peter and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden. There is a remarkable contrast between the images of Adam and Eve in the gardenââ?¬â??where they appear weightless and glowing with warm sunlightââ?¬â??and being expelledââ?¬â??where they are weighed down with guilt and covering themselves for shame. Most remarkable though is the marginalia in the scenes of St. Peter. Rather than merely focusing on the man figures, Masaccio paid careful attention to the gazes and details of the onlookers. Each figure exists in his own narrative; you can almost read the individual thoughts running across each forehead. Looking away from the Masaccio for a second to observe our own faces, I noted that our expression were far more uniform than those in the fresco; all the gazes in the Adelphi in Florence group were of wonder. Masaccio had kindled the desire of which Plotinus writes, and it remained aglow during our afternoon drawing session in the Museo del Opera.
June 02, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Last evening, we all returned from our weekend trips to congregate for Adam's class at 8pm. Most of the group had gone to Venice, Padua, and Bologna and had amusing stories to tell of their travels (fitting eight people into a hotel room with three beds). The trip Adam, Maryellen, Melissa and I took to Cinque Terra was so inspiring - the unexpected vistas over the turquoise sea as one walks along the coast are breathtaking - that we are even considering going back there next weekend. We all had a wonderful couple of days, but the general feeling as we settled into our makeshift classroom last night was that we were all really happy to be home.
The night's readings were St. Augustine and Marsilio Ficino, each of whom spoke to the discussion of images started by Plato and Plotinus, whom we've already read. The focus of our class has been the controversy over images that dogs the pictures we are seeing here in Florence. To Plato, images lead us astray from the very truths they are meant to reveal. Plotinus, however, argues that the nondiscursive nature of those truths requires images rather than words to convey them. As Adam constantly reminds us, the tension between these two perspectives characterizes our modern attitude towards art: we like looking at pictures and pretending that they are real, yet we know that they are not.
One point in this discussion reminded me of why we are all here studying art and literature rather than back home in a classroom at Adelphi. Adam read aloud the passage in which Ficino describes the effect art has on the soul: "The whole soul then kindles with desire to fly back to its rightful home, so that it may enjoy that true music again." Adam then asked us whether any of us had had an experience like the one Ficino describes in the past week. Everyone raised her hand. Even if nothing else comes from this trip, we will all return home to our respective interests and careers with that desire - the desire to create art and beautyââ?¬â??kindled within each of us.
May 30, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Today was certainly interesting and eventful. We set off for Siena, about an hour and a half bus ride from Florence. Before long, however, Siena was covered in pouring rain, and so were we! I'm sure the Adelphi in Florence group looked a sight, slipping and sliding with our flip-flops on wet cobblestones, covered in plastic ponchos, and shivering from the rain. Due to the rain, our trip had to be cut short, but we did manage to see the duomo of Siena and a Duccio exhibit at the museum.
More eventful was our bus ride home. Since we left earlier than planned, we took the city bus rather than our private one, and ran into a group of gypsies. There are gypsies all over Italy, and they are infamous for their pick-pocketing habits. On our bus were three women who sat very near us, causing anxiety among our group. To our relief, the bus driver came back to check tickets (which bus drivers rarely do here) and found cause to eject them from the bus. We were all a little uncomfortable with the blatant prejudice we saw here, but it was a learning experience. Italians have very strong reactions against gypsies, and they do have much cause for that. We really got to see how these cultures interact, and learned a lot about how human beings will treat each other.
This weekend is our first free weekend to go on our own trips. Most of the group is going to Venice, except for my roommates and I, who are going to hike Cinque Terra, the five towns. I can see that we are all starting to feel really confident with our abilities to navigate Florence and Italian transportation in general, so this is a really exciting opportunity to spread our wings.
May 29, 2008 - by Molly Mann
A rainy day in Florence. Most of us have used today to catch up on sleep and reading, since most of the art the professors had planned to see were outside, like those at Orsan Michele. The hotel has already begun to feel like home, so we've all curled up on couches with some snacks from the nearby market and the reading for Adam's class.
This morning, though, the weather held and we got to see three Last Suppers by Castagno, Perugino, and Ghirlandaio. Seeing them all juxtaposed with one another revealed how much subjectivity there is in art, even in viewing the same image.
Castagno's Last Supper was painted in 1447 for a Benedictine nunnery, and is an example of point perspective. Also remarkable is the way Castagno uses the drapery of the togas to represent the figures' bodies. Each figure is depicted independently of one another; there is no real interaction among the apostles. But the details in the marble behind them and on the table before them give depth and action to the work.
Perugino's version of the same image was painted in 1493 for a monastery. His figures do interact with each other, and the perspective brings the viewer into the painting rather than loom above him, as it does with Castagno's. I found this particularly interesting considering the different audiences of both works, male and female. In this work, Judas looks right at you, so that you are seated at the table with all of the apostles.
Finally, Ghirlandaio's Last Supper, from 1480, rounded out our morning. It differed from the other two in that there seemed to be much more emotion and sensuality in the poses of the figures. Also, Ghirlandaio seems to have captured the skill of painting glass, which Castagno and Perugino had not developed.
Looking at this figures seated around this three paintings, it became apparent to me not just how much we were all learning about art - even those of us who are not art majors have started to feel comfortable chiming in during discussions - but also how much we have cohered as a group. Last night, most of us chose to go out to dinner together and sat around a table very much like the ones we were viewing, sharing an experience unlike any other.
May 28, 2008 - by Molly Mann
For the four days since we arrived in Florence, the Duomo has become a landmark for everyone in
Adelphi in Florence. This huge structure, that towers over every other in the city, is the central location by which we measure the distance to any location and orient ourselves to get back to our hotel. Today, we finally got to go inside and see this masterpiece, the result of the competition between Lorenzo Ghiberti and Fillippo Brunelleschi.
The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, or the Duomo, was built by Brunelleschi, one of the foremost architects of the Florentine Renaissance. Also trying for the commission was Ghiberti, who did cast the gates of the church's baptistery, the Gates of Paradise. The dome, 600 years after its completion, is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world, and we've all agreed that it seems bigger and bigger each time we pass it, which is several times a day.
The competition between these two artists has become a focal point of our trip, as it really shows how much personality was part of the Florentine Renaissance. As Adam has said during his lectures, art happens, great and small. The environment within which that art happens, then, the amount of patronage and importance placed on artistry is what decides whether that art will be known by posterity. Brunelleschi came from an influential, wealthy family. Ghiberti was the son of a goldsmith. Yet the importance placed on art and the personality of the artist caused both to receive patronage and create work that now epitomizes the city of Florence. Rather than merely an outpouring of spontaneous genius, then, the Florentine Renaissance was the result of several converging factors.
To end our day at the Duomo, Jen led several of us to walk the 463 steps to the very top of the Duomo. Gazing out over the city, I was shocked at how much I recognized, how I could trace the map of the city with my fingers, familiar with just about every point already. For all of us, Florence is starting to feel very much like home.
May 27, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Yesterday we took the train to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower and the Church. Despite the heat and the exhaustion that ensued, the day was a great one. Every student here has only seen these buildings as pictures in textbooks, or as icons on souvenirs, but suddenly here they were right before our eyes.
I was mystified by the architecture of the Baptistery at Pisa. The acoustics are designed so that every note sung instantly reverberates in three-part harmony. This was demonstrated for us by a tenor, and the sounds that filled the room as he sang were so exquisite and chilling.
Both in the Baptistery and in the church, I was amazed at how easy it is to deceive the human eye. Jen and Tom have been teaching us about one point perspective, the ability to depict depth in an image and make you see beyond the surface of that image. The dome of the Baptistery is designed to appear higher than it really is, and so is the dome of the church, with images of heaven swirling upward. It is remarkable that this understanding of human perception, the development of point perspective, came only 50 years or so after artists were painting flat Byzantine imagery. The juxtaposition of these two arts, perspective and flat imagery, in all of the churches we've visted so far, underscores this feat.
May 26, 2008 - by Molly Mann
Last night, after bringing us up to San Miniato during the first day so we could get a bird's eye view of Florence and orient ourselves to the city, Tom, Jen, and Adam turned us loose for our first free evening. At 5:30 p.m., Adam gave a brief talk about the readings we would be doing on neoPlatonism for the next three weeks and wished us a good evening. Excited for gelato, my roommates MaryEllen Hacket, Melissa Gandolfo, Rachel London, and I asked Adam about the best place to get our first taste of this Italian delight. He pointed us toward Vivolvi, near Santa Croce. After walking for an hour or so, we finally found it and wow! The flavors are all so fresh and the gelato itself is creamier than any ice cream you'll taste in the U.S. It was so good that we ate it slowly, savoring every bite as we strolled around the Ponte Vecchio and back to our hotel.
May 25, 2008 - by Molly Mann
We arrived in Florence last night, after travelling all of Friday night and Saturday. After taking a short nap in our hotel, we met our guide, Chiara, and went for a short walk through the streets of Florence. For dinner, Tom, Jen, and Adam treated us to some of the most amazing pizza I have ever tasted! None of us will ever be able to eat Sbarro again!
After dinner, we went for a walk to see the Duomo at night. The Duomo is the largest church in Florence; pictures don't even begin to capture its size, and it was all build with wooden scaffolding. It is right across from the Baptistery, where the famous Gates of paradise exist in reproduction. Florence is so beautiful at night, and the views from the Arno are breathtaking.
This morning, after breakfast at our hotel, the Hotel Corona, we set out by bus for the top of San Miniato, the highest point in Florence. From there we caught amazing views of the Duomo, which really stands out from all the other buildings, and went in the church of San Miniato itself. Jen and Tom lectured about the frescoes, and we were able to get a sense of the architecture.
Afterward, we broke for lunch and met again at Santa Maria Novella, where Jen showed us the Holy Trinity by Massacio, which she called the beginning of the Renaissance, for Massacio's invention of point perspective. Also in Santa Maria Novella is the Strazzi Chapel, where the characters from the Decameron met before telling their stories during the plague in Florence.
This evening, we have class with Adam, who will introduce us to the readings for the next three weeks. And, of course, there will be gelato!
