Okay, so I’m bad at keeping in touch. Nothing that you didn’t already know. Well, the trip so far has been everything — amazing, stressful, awesome, tiring . . . . In a nutshell, I’ve received what I asked for and then some.
For instance, I had a couple of near perfect days in Florence — One morning, I toured the Ufizi Gallery and saw with my own eyes Boticelli’s Venus, his Primavera, and the Gift of the Magi, as well as the Assumption by Leonardo Da Vinci. In the evening, we had a great Italian meal followed by coffee and gelati. On ths stroll home, Dennis and I popped into the Church of San Lorenzo to hear a full orchestra play some of the most beautiful music ever written. The next day, in an empty museum early in the morning, I had a private viewing of Michelangelo’s unfinished Florentine Pieta — the one Michelangelo originally intended to be for his own tombstone but which he never finished and in fact partially destroyed in a rage. Thankfully, one of his students has repaired most of it. One of the most interesting things about the statue is that Michelangelo carved his own face into the figure of Nicodemus, one of the men who took Jesus’s body down from the cross.
After that, I had the privilege of seeing yet another of Michelangelo’s works, the David. Though copied many times, there is nothing like the original. The proportions, its hugeness, its detail, like the folds of skin on the thumb, and the motion captured in stone, is truly the work of a genius. This particular day ended with a trip just south of the River Arno to view Florence at sunset. How perfect is that?
