Florence

I've decided that I feel the same way towards Florence that many people feel towards New York, I love to visit but I could never live there. It's just too small, I like big cities and the chaos they entail. Rome is no New York, sometimes it even feels small to me, but as far as Italy goes, it works. There isn't the same be able to do anything at any time of day or night atmosphere here as there is in New York, this is Italy after all, and places often close for 4 hour lunches, but you can do more than in most other places in Italy.

I went up to see a friend from Davidson who is studying abroad in Florence, but she was really busy so we didn't end up seeing each other until Saturday night, which worked out very well because it gave me time to stroll around and see the things I wanted to on my own pace. I found a hostel on hostelworld.com that had beds for 14 euros a night and when I got there I had an entire room to myself in a newish building a block for Santa Croce. It was called Tourist House Santa Croce, I was skeptical about the name, but it worked out very well.

I got in on Friday night and went out looking for a place to grab an aperitivo to hold my hunger off until a more reasonable dinner hour. It took longer than I expected to find a decent looking wine bar in Florence (you'd think there would be one on every corner in the capital of the wine capital of Italy) but it is such a tourist town that many things are just too touristy. I finally did find a nice spot on Via de' Ognisanti. I had a glass of Rosso di Bolgheri which was interesting but nothing special. The nice part of the bar was the location, the street was already decked out in Christmas lights and they had outdoor seating with good space heaters.

After a glass of wine and a few little bites I headed to the other side of town, the Oltrarno, in the hopes of finding a slightly less Americanized place to eat. After passing a half dozen places or so that were either too expensive, empty, or had tourist menus, I finally settled on a place just to the left of the facade of Santo Spirito. There was a group of three American girls waiting to be seated, and they were having trouble sorting through the menu which was only in Italian. So I offered to help and ended up joining them for dinner, a nice surprise for a solo traveler. The food was pretty good and the girls were very entertaining. I had a great ribollita (Tuscan soup) followed by a polpettoncino (a really big meatball), also very good and smothered in a sweet tomato sauce. We parted ways after dinner and I headed back to my hostel for a good night's sleep.

The next morning I blissfully awoke to the sounds of silence, no alarm clock, no sirens, no annoying scooter alarms, not even the garbage truck that rumbles past my window in Rome all too frequently. It was great.

I spent the day ducking in and out of churches, which you annoyingly have to pay for in Florence, and going to the Bargello museum, which I had managed to miss on my prior visits. The more I'm in Rome and more I study its art and architecture, the more I realize how I really prefer the two things to be separate. I'm not sure if this makes sense even in my own head, but let me try to explain.

Rome is a baroque city and in the majority of its churches every inch is covered in something. Take St. Peter's for example. Even in its enormity there is hardly a bare wall anywhere. Baroque art is so frantic, your eyes can't focus. I partially understand the reason for this and I'll try to explain, but I'm still not a fan. Renaissance art strove for a level of perfection not achieved since Greek and Roman times, idealized figures in idealized settings showing little emotion. The Manneristic period, which followed Renaissance starting in the 1520s, distorted that realism and added emotion. This was done because people thought the art they were producing was not pleasing God. In 1517 Martin Luther wrote his scathing 95 Theses against the Catholic church, after he spent a year in Rome witnessing the exorbitant spending of the papal families, thus starting the Protestant Reformation. In 1527 Rome was sacked and the Pope was forced to flee to the stronghold of Castel Sant'Angelo, and eventually Orvieto. So things were off kilter in the Catholic world.

Artists, more so their patrons probably, took these as signs that things needed to change, so they did. So they took the exquisite proportions of the High Renaissance and skewed them. The best example I can think off the top of my head is Parmigianino's Madonna of the Long Neck, who has, surprisingly, a long neck. ( http://surveyofwesternart.haloslinkup.net/studymaterial/307_madonna_long_neck.jpg ) Other features are distorted as well, her fingers are elongated, and the baby Jesus in her lap is all out of proportion. The setting also doesn't fit. On one side behind her is a drawn curtain, but you don't see a window or any architectural feature to suggest she is in fact indoors. In the background there is a column that seems to be part of nothing, just standing on its own. Her world is out of place, like the church at the time.

By the end of the 16th century things were looking up for the Catholic church, kicking off the Baroque era. The Protestant Reformation didn't take off, the Catholic church outlasted it, as it has all challengers for 2000 years. However the church's numbers were depleted so they needed to do what they could to attract more followers. The answer, at least in art, came by incorporating the emotion of Mannerism with the idealism of the Renaissance, and bringing that idealism to human settings. A good example in painting isn't coming to me, but the effects were also seen in architecture, and Bernini is the perfect example. His churches are covered from floor to ceiling with gold and white, a celebration of light, enticing new comers.

But now back to Florence and why I like the Renaissance churches more, and why art and architecture should be kept separate. Churches in Florence let the architecture speak for itself. There is an emphasis on simplicity, a clarity of line. It is cleaner and less distracting. In St. Peters it is hard to appreciate the amazing barrel vault that covers the nave because it is so decorated, where the undecorated ceiling of the Santa Maria del Fiore (the Duomo) in Florence lets you appreciate the simple, elegant curves of the pointed arches that make up the groin vaults. If you cover all of that with angels and gilding and all the other little devices Bernini loved to use, the architecture merely becomes the stage for Bernini's theater and not the show itself. I think, when done well, the stage itself is enough. If all its parts fit harmoniously you don't need anything more. Not to be overly metaphorical, but the individual architectural features become the actors. A plinth supporting a column that leads to an arch that draws your eye to a window.