Florence Take Two

Wednesday, I woke up to catch the 7:09 train which actually most people on the program took, surprisingly since we didn't have to be there until 10:00.  When we got to Florence, we immediately went to the Louis Vuitton store so that Julie could first know where it was and second be able to walk around and decide on a purse which she is buying for herself as a birthday present.  Unfortunatley, they were closed and we didn’t have enough time to get to the Kosher market because we didn’t know where it was but we asked at the tourist information station.  We had to meet in front of the duomo at 10:00 to go inside on a tour with Paolo.  That was more like an hour long discussion about architecture, analyzing the gothic structure versus what you would see in northern Europe and France.  The dome itself is just fantastic.  Phillipo Bruneleschi, partially out of spite, left Florence to study the Pantheon and come back to build the structure about ten years later.  Until then, the cathedral had essentially been finished except for the open drum that covered the intersection of the nave and transept because nobody could quite figure out how to build the intended design.  Though there are a couple of large (and might I say, rather anxiety-causing) cracks, they have been there just about since the time the dome was built so there apparently does not seem to be much worry of the building collapsing.  Because the dome is actually a double shell, there are stairs in between the two layers so maybe one day, I’ll get to go to the top.  After that tour and then another tour through the Museo Opera, it was lunch time.  Megan, Kate, and I had bought food a couple of days before so that we would not have to pay for over-priced tourist food. 

my bread and cheese lunch

I felt so accomplished sitting there in the shade of the duomo, eathing my saltless bread (all bread here is cooked without salt so it’s actually not very good but you just cover it with spices, balsamic vineagar, and oil) and my Pecorino cheese which is local to Tuscany.  We were supposed to meet at the front of the Duomo at 1:00 to do a sketching exercise with Mark, our professor, but after fifteen minutes of him not showing up, we just started sketching on our own.  We joked that we were such good students for not following standard A&M 15 minute protocol, but we were actually slightly paranoid that maybe Mark was lurking in the shadows somewhere to see what we would do without his instruction.  He finally walked up about 1:30 and told us that we had passed; he was kidding of course, their lunch had just run over because it was particularly Italian and therefore long but he was rather impressed at how many people had, of our own accord, pulled out our sketchbooks.  He took us back to the piazza in front of Santa Croce so we could 1) sketch the area and the façade of the cathedral, and 2) to experience the chocolate festival.  Oh. My. God.  Chocolate everywhere.  Like Godiva on steroids.  There were typical looking truffels, chocolate barks, fondue stations, and chocolate-covered fruits; but then there were chocolate salamis with boscotti pieces, chocolate pizzas with anything ranging from candied cherries to pistachios to even chili peppers, every kind of flavored liqueurs, gears, bolts, and masonry equipement made from chocolate.  There was just too much to take in, too much to see.  Of course, I wanted some, well, all of it actually, but I was so overwhelmed that it took me probably half an hour to come to a decision.  I then ate my chocolate while walking around the piazza sketching so all in all, it was a fantastic day.  Oh, and I found the great synagogue of Florence and the Kosher market so I bought some turkey salami.  I also went to the art store and bought a couple of paintbrushes.  This place was no Hobby Lobby.  They had artist’s palattes that were probably almost as big as me as well as paintbrushes as long as my legs.  Any color in any type of paint, maker, pastel, or pencil could be found.  Basically an artist’s paradise.  

my attempted axonometric watercolor sketches, analyzing the differences between the duomo and Santa Croce piazzas

Thursday, we had to be up at around 7:00 this morning to make it to Piazza Garibaldi by 8:00 because we were going to the Chiesa dell'autostrada del Sole San Giovanni Battista.  This church was deisgned by Giovanni Michelucci to memorialize all of the workers who died while building the Autostrada (the highway).  It’s this awesome, modern looking building slightly in the middle of nowhere, directly in between Rome and Milan.  Similar to Le Corbusier’s Notre Dame du Haut, this building is made all of architectural concrete and stone from all over Italy.  It is sort of like the architect took all of the conventions of a typical cathedral and then modernized and inverted them.  Instead of the nave being rectangular with the altar at the end of a shorter side, the altar is midway through one of the longer sides.  Instead of having a vaulted ceiling that soars towards the heavens, the ceiling is almost a concave vault encroaching into the space.  While there are clerestory windows, they do not follow a specific form nor are they particularly visible but rather disappear into the crevices of the ceiling to only let in light in varying patterns.  The columns have no capitals and in fact, fork off in arbitrary places and into different planes.  Every moment of the building was a different experience with varying elevations, the transistions between them promoting movement throughout the building.  Anyways, everybody gabbed some cappuccinos and then we headed back to Santa Chiara to eat lunch and then work in studio.  We had somewhat of a miniature review, (yes, I do still have to actually work while here) and then dinner.  As a special treat, Santa Chiara brought in a local accordianist for our entertainment that night.  They also provided us with biscotti, a dessert cookie, and Vin Santo, dessert wine typical of the Tuscany area.  Clearly, the people around me are not particularly experienced wine drinkers as they didn’t enjoy the wine but rather chose to kick it back like a shot.  Dessert wine is meant to be sipped slowly, rolled around the tongue, and savored but few people appreciated it in that way.  Oh well, their loss.  I enjoyed it immensely, especially as I got to listen to fantastic and moving accordian music.  I especially enjoyed watching my professor, Paolo, who clearly enjoyed the music almost to an out-of body-experience level.  Just sitting there while the music and wine washed over us, imagining the what the sounds of the accordian would be like in a music hall or cathedral, I was reminded that I am in Italy and that this kind of experience is really what living in a foreign country is about.  

Going to Cortona tomorrow and maybe Torontolla on Sunday so until next time,

Ciao e a dopo,

Becca