a few highlights from this week....

A few highlights from this week...a little photo essay!


This is a shot inside the restaurant Perseus up in Fiesole...they have the best Tuscan Ribollita soup (vegetable soup with bread) per Fred!  The various types of raddichio in bloom right now and I had a little dish of raddichio risotto that was wonderful.

 Andrea del Robbia terra cottas are all over the city...this one is in the portico of the Hospital of the Innocents we visited in Art History class.  The Robbias had a three generation history of glazed terra cotta makers.  The third floor of the Bargello Museum has the family history and a number of these terra cottas.  You can identify them anywhere in the city here.  Getting pretty good at identifying the Annunciation...the angel Gabriel announcing to the Virgin Mary she is pregnant, a frequent event here.



 Ospedale degli Innocenti (Hospital of the Innocents).  Love those little terra cotta infants in the spandrels.  This is where all the unwanted foundlings were left until the middle of the 19th century on a little "roti" (see below).  the surname "Innocenti" is even more common here in Florence than Rossi.  The children were sent out to the campagna with a young wet nurse for 3-5 years and then brought back here and raised.  The silk guild originally paid for this hospital and upkeep and dowries for the girls!

This is a little case with the "Articles of Identification" at the Hospital of the Innocents.  A mother would anonymously leave the infant on the Roti (a lazy Susan-like contraption on the portico of the hospital), ring the bell and a nurse would swing the baby inside.  Often, a piece of jewelry cut in half was left around the infant's neck so that if the mother later had the means, she could come back and claim her child.  Very powerful.

This is the original site of the roti with the opening in the wall where the roti was. It is now sealed. Very interesting that on the other side of this wall is the terra cotta with the depiction of the Annunciation! There are also the "ladder" symbols on the building (silk guild symbols). A whole group of young kids on a field trip were frolicking on the porch when we came through...quite a juxtaposition, I'll say...

 This is a wonderful restored fresco inside the Brancacci Chapel (of Santa Maria del Carmine) ---part of the cycle of St. Peter's life (only it's set in the 15th century).  Masaccio ("mad Tom") painted this and was the first artist to use this level of perspective (and also real human, non-wooden portrayal of humans).These frescoes were studied and sketched by artists from all over Europe.  The Brancacci chapel has a neat video you can watch on the fresco cycle, computer graphic construction of Florence of the 15th century...really worth seeing.

 Here is an Xray of Giambologna's bronze of Christ...we had the amazing opportunity to see a restoration in progress in the workroom of Santissima Annunciation church. This statue was made with the lost wax casting method...which the restorer explained to us.

Fred at cooking class with nine women!  We learned how to make focaccia (yes, I can make it with rice flour!), risotto with artichokes, tiramisu...etc.  Ryan said that if we were taking a cooking class in Italy, the least we could do is learn how to make tiramisu! It's really fun being in this class--this time we had women from Argentina, Columbia, Australia, Belgium, Italy and, of course, the states.

a little window on Tuscany, ciao ciao!