I am just SO. FULL. This morning’s second (mini) croissant
was almost a chore. ALMOST. And then the tagliatelle with truffle cream sauce
this afternoon—well, let’s just say you are WELCOME, Italy. I am giving you
literally everything I’ve got.
“Didn't go inside or anything lol. It's fun
outside for kids to run after some pigeons. Pretty touristy restaurants across
from it. But it's a nice view of a boring building.”
I don’t know why I was reading reviews of the Pitti Palace
but I was and stumbled onto this gem lol. Really appreciate you taking the
time, sir, to provide this extremely helpful and informative summary of what
appears to be your (brief?) experience standing in front of what is in fact an
unbelievable treasure trove of outstanding and amazing things. Well, except for
maybe this thing—even the mannequin agrees with me that we’ve crossed a line
here somewhere.
So Thursday was Pitti Palace day and wooooooooow those
Medicis just did not know when to say when. Like, at ALL. I mean, I get it that
sometimes you end up in a situation where people get fixated on something you
said you liked once, years ago, and then they keep buying you versions of that
thing forever even though you totally outgrew your interest in it—that
happens, sure. But even if every single one of these things was a gift, at some
point, you just have to get the word out that your collection of ivory vases,
let’s say, or gold…cake stands?...is really at capacity and you’re good, don’t
need any more, thanks, maybe a donation to charity.
Unfortunately, the Medicis had pretty much unlimited space—the
Pitti Palace is ginormous—and I guess they felt like they could always find
room for, say, an elaborate box displaying 131 different minerals because THAT'S gonna come in handy at some point.
Or, for example, their collection of giant seashells that
had been, mystifyingly, made into…drinking vessels? With feet? (And yeah, check out that ceiling
in the reflection—let it not be said the Medicis neglected an opportunity to
give a ceiling painter work.)
These two items were, naturally, part of a larger collection
and damn, y’all. Regift or something.
Before I went and got my mind boggled in the palace itself I
spent a while touring the Boboli Gardens, which were just lovely. It brought
back fond memories of strolling around Versailles with S & C lo so many
years ago, though alas the Boboli Gardens are certainly smaller and did not feature
regularly-placed wine stands. (Perhaps those come out in the summer.) There was
an avenue of cypress trees and they smelled absolutely heavenly and father, you
would have loved these trees. They even put a statue up to point at the trees
in case you weren’t noticing them. Thank you, sir!
At one point, wandering in a daze, I saw a picture of an owl
and so I followed the arrows and you’d better believe I gasped in delight when
I saw this sign: hell yeah, snails!!
I love pretty much all (non-human) creatures (excluding
eels) and snails are on that list for sure. Did you know there was only one
known left-handed spiraling snail in the world? Creatively, some scientists somewhere I forget called him Lefty and had
him make as many snail babies as a snail is willing to make but not a single
one turned left. Lefty died recently, and I’m pretty sure the snail that had
occupied this shell is also dead, but this is the way of all things and I will
be happy with the memory of running into an informative snail conservation poster
in the middle of the Boboli Gardens.
The Gardens were quite hilly and then I trekked around the
Palace itself for four hours and by the time I was ready to head home I was
flagging. I was window-shopping my way along the Pont Vecchio, as one does
(this version of the bridge is not the original, which was built in 966; this
one was rebuilt after a terrible flood in 1345 so, you know, it’s basically just
a replica but it’s still pretty), and a man came up and talked at me in
Italian. I assumed he was looking for directions because apparently all of
Italy thinks I work here, and I was so tired I just answered in English and
said sorry, pal, no Italiano. He switched to English and informed me he was
half-Japanese and half-Italian and he liked to introduce himself to people
because he enjoys talking with them and learning about their lives. I paused, then bit the bullet, even as he
was taking off his glove to shake my hand: “I’m sorry, sir,” I answered, “but *I* do not.”
There was an article in the New York Times recently about
the ghosting phenomenon and while most of us have experience with it in some
way or another so we all know it sucks, people still do it, and this article
was basically like, just tell the fucking truth you cowards. So yeah, random
bridge guy, I don’t like talking to strangers: no judgment on you, but go introduce
yourself to somebody else. And it worked! We told each other to have a nice day
and that was that. Human interaction, curtailed! (I am, however, on warm terms
with Andre and Alessandra from my hotel and I will stop to catch up with them
whenever I see them. Andre is from Mauritius and when I asked him why he is
living in Florence, he crossed his wrists in front of his waist and gave me an
expression of mock terror. I was horrified, thinking for a minute either he had
gone to jail or was an indentured servant or I don’t know what, but then he
explained no, no, he just met a woman and fell in love and so he lives in
Florence because that is where his wife and family are and apparently the ol’ball
and chain trope is universal. How…delightful to think there are all these men
out there informing strangers that they are imprisoned by the woman they have
sworn to love and honor. Women don’t make this joke, men: maybe you should stop!
But Andre is super nice and this hotel really is lovely and it has been a very pleasant,
if gluttonous, few days here.)
I made a pit stop on the way home from the Pitti at a bar along
one side of the Palazzo d’San Giovanni, and I have finally come to terms with
the way Italian bars seem to work, which is that they are not actually bars as I
know them, with stools and the smell of stale beer in the air; they are counter-areas
where you prop an elbow up and stand there and have a coffee or a glass of wine.
(I think you are supposed to make friendly conversation with the other patrons,
as well, but I skipped that part.) The bar I ducked into had a special going on
and it took some back-and-forth before the waitress was really convinced I
wanted only the glass of wine, not the glass of wine AND the cafe-au-lait for
the same price. Which, what are you doing, Florence? You’re getting a coffee
and a glass of wine at the same time? This would make a ton of sense if I were traveling with my mother, as we could split the bevvies, but there is no good reason for any one person to be ordering both at the same time, HUFF.
Obviously I have returned to taking lots of poorly
framed/organized/lit photographs wherever I go, but I have been more mindful of
what I’m (trying to) do there. Mostly I take pictures because I see something I
think is funny and I want to remember that, but today I also took some pictures
because I was inches away from chisel
marks made by Michelangelo himself, and from one of the only (?) completely
intact Stradivarius violins in existence, with the ink decorating the bridge
put there by the master himself (hell
yeah, audio guide!).
I’ve already mentioned how much I enjoy being in a place
with allllllllll this history, but I’ll say it again: while so much of Florence
is obviously completely different or new, these are (in essence) the same
streets where Dante, Michelangelo, da Vinci, and a bajillion more artists and
thinkers and poets and writers have walked and I really think there is
something a little magical about that.
Of course, the downside of all this accumulation of genius
is that you have to find somewhere to put it. I had a reservation at the
Accademia Gallery this morning, and since it is a 4-minute walk from my hotel,
and the museum is relatively small, I felt like I was running an errand—just gonna
pop over and take a look at the David; back in a flash! I did hang around in
the David area for a bit, soaking up the crowd and taking in Michelangelo’s
prisoners from different angles—they are absolutely breathtaking and I could
hardly get enough of them. I also snickered a bit when my audio guide informed
me the project the prisoners were originally commissioned for (some pope’s
tomb) ending taking over 40 years, was consistently changed/scaled down, and
ended up not using the prisoners at all, and yo, Michelangelo: I feel you.
The story of how Michelangelo came to sculpt the David is
pretty well-known and the image itself ubiquitous, but it’s still undeniably
powerful in person and for as much selfie/picture-taking was going on, there
were a fair amount of people just wandering around the statue, completely
enraptured by it.
I found a little corner niche and posted up there for a while
to watch the crowd and be near the statue and this is the first “famous” thing
I have been around where I felt like people just wanted to stay with it instead
of getting their picture and leaving. Gotta tell you, pal: you knocked it out
of the park with this one.
Part of the sheer chutzpah of this work, all 14 feet tall of
it, is that Michelangelo wasn’t one to make plaster molds, first, and use those
as a guide for marking the stone. He worked mostly free-hand, which is
borderline insane when you think about how risky that is, but he had this whole
thing about how he was just freeing the statue that was in the stone and I
guess it worked out okay for him. (There is also a theory that for the David he made
a wax model and laid it in a tub of water. He would drain the water a little to
allow more of the figure to emerge and use that as his guide but yeesh even
this feels like playing pretty fast and loose there, Michelangelo.)
Anyway, everybody else made plaster models first and there
is a whole giant room full of more than 300 of them including, inexplicably,
this one horse head.
Upstairs (up 51 stairs, to be exact, and that just gets you
one floor) in the museum I found an absolutely stunning piece of embroidered
cloth that was made in 1336 (!!!). I spent no small amount of time studying it
and it was wild to see so many familiar stitches (why yes, she sniffed, I do
enjoy a spot of embroidery from time to time)—those a French knots in Mary’s
head-thing, for example.
In the next room, there was a video about how panel
painting is done (spoiler: it involves boiling scraps of goat skin in water and
a LOT of egg whites) and after I learned about how the gold leaf is applied and
then manipulated I had to go back to a bunch of panel paintings and get as
close as I could to the halos, because that is where the really interesting gold
leaf stuff was done. All that decoration, done by hand with a little hammer!
This gallery didn’t have a time limit or anything, like the
Borghese does, but it’s a pretty small museum and most people are there for the
David (instead of, say, the Medici instrument collection or the SIX HUNDRED AND
EIGHTY-THREE YEAR OLD embroidered cloth) so I didn’t worry about getting kicked
out of any of the galleries where I lingered perhaps overlong, but I did feel sorry
for whichever guard was monitoring the CCTV and had to decide whether someone
sitting through the full length of the panel painting video, twice, while taking
notes, was someone to worry about. (Answer: maybe, tbh.)
Pictures!
Hahaha look at the expression on this fish's face. He's so pissed.
This is my kind of god--one who shoots birds at you!
The Pitti Palace has a special little display set up to show off Napoleon's bathroom, which, okay. There it is. Tub seemed kinda small lol.
This is another one of those fill-up-the-ceiling situations, I think, and while this is just a tiny part of the whole fresco, there is a LOT going on here, including some outstanding side-eye from the guy deliberately, dramatically, pouring the wine. And why are Hercules's butt cheeks so red?
My collection of bad tapestry faces is growing...
The roads are very narrow here, as are the sidewalks, and the city buses just barely fit. People walk in the street a lot, especially on the side streets, and as in Rome scooters are lawless and everywhere. It is apparently considered de rigueur to us the oncoming lane if it is mostly free of traffic, FYI, and at this point I'm just assuming there are no traffic cops at all in this country.
This place has great truffle cream sauce but I thought it was a little weird that they have chosen this little tableau as their signature.
I do, however, fully support this sign.
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