Pietra Dura

My dad and I walked over to the Sant Ambroge outdoor market this morning along Via de Macci (just down the street from Piazza Santa Croce where we're staying) and I noticed a placard saying that one of the buildings we walked by had been a hospital built in 1355 by the Macci family.  It was run by the Poor Clares for the Malmaritate (battered wives).  I have walked down this street at least twenty times since we've been here and never noticed this before. When my dad looked inside the opening, we saw what you see in the first picture, the Lastrucci Mosaic studio where the Lastrucci brothers keep alive the pietra dura tradition.  First, I will say I have marveled at the ornate pietra dura tables in both the Pitti Palace and Palazzio Vecchio.  Pietra Dura means "hard stone" in Italian but it also refers to the decorative art using cut and fitted, highly polished stones and semi-precious stones to create images.  These are made from a drawn template, sliced and cut into different sections and glued together as in the traditional way with beeswax and applied to a support.  This reached its maturity as an art form in Florence in the 15th century.  I have always loved decorative arts and this was a bonanza to just come upon this shop.  They invited us in and showed us around the studio and explained how these are made...bonanza number 2! There were stacks of stones everywhere...everything from porphyry from Egypt (there is none left in the earth they say), lapiz lazuli, various marbles to petrified wood from Arizona! They had a little gallery in the back with new and antique pietra dura works from past centuries and they were absolutely remarkable.  It is also remarkable in this day and age to see craftspersons keeping alive a tradition in the same way it was originally practiced in buildings that were built at the time the craft was introduced.

Just inside "I Mosaici di Lastrucci" where the Lastruccis have a studio where they keep alive the mosaic technique (from 15th century Florence) on via de'Macci in the historical building that was once a hospital set up by the Poor Clares for the "Malmaritate" (the battered wives). 





They use the templates cut out from a sketch on paper and use beeswax to stick the pieces together and then they are glued on a solid support at the end.

a floral mosaic in process

showing the precious stones used in the mosaics: everything from lapiz lazuli, porphyry to petrified wood!

Here are the guys cutting the stone pieces

A large finished stone mosaic (approx. 24x30 inches)

tourists, vendors and then Pisa

Ryan, dad, Jackie and Evan in Pisa in front of Duomo and Leaning Tower

The Leaning Tower was 17.5 feet off the vertical by 1990 and closed to the public. Here it is now after fortifications including 661 tons of lead weights fixed to the tower's north side to counterbalance the southward tilt!  Today, they allow about 40 people to climb it every half hour. This is where Gallileo did his famous experiments utilizing the overhang to drop metal balls from the tower and show that falling bodies of different weights descend at the same rate.



Pisa's Baptistery, Duomo and Leaning Tower (to the left you
can see a piece of the cemetery)



Pisa's Duomo (this predated and served as a model for the Duomos in both Florence and then Siena).  Pisa started the line.  There was a saying in Pisa: "Better a dead man in your living room, than a Florentine at your door!"

Notice there were only two tourists the other day in Pisa!! 



The pulpit inside Pisa's Duomo



Several people have asked what it’s like to live here in Florence.  We don’t really feel like inhabitants here, more like we’re skimming the surface of this great historical pond.  This city is really a living museum within a museum.  When we first came here to the historical district, it was enough just to find your way around…the streets are narrow with very narrow sidewalks, the edifices of these imposing stone buildings come right to the sidewalk, there are tons of people speaking a variety of languages, there are cars and scooters to avoid along with the vendors constantly trying to sell you things.  You don’t really “see” the layers of things here until you begin to know your way around and feel a little more comfortable.  I have always been interested in human perception, how we experience things.  Particularly with human vision…when we are overwhelmed by something new, we focus on a few things and don’t take in as much of the surroundings because we are just navigating our way at first.  Later when we become accustomed to something visually, we tend not to slow down and notice things as we are bent on getting to where we’re going. Now, as I have more time than usual AND I am not driving a car, I began to notice some of the less obvious things—the markers on building around this area for the 1966 flood, the little tabernacles on the outsides of buildings, usually at corners (Florence has a 1000 of them!), the little water fountains in strange places and…

There are many street vendors here: they will roll in these large carts and set up shop on streets, at the edge of piazzas and they obviously have licenses to do so.  Then there are the itinerant vendors who show up spontaneously on rainy days, the ones who grab your arm when you’re walking in the rain to try and sell you cheap umbrellas or rain ponchos.   If you really walk around the city as we have, you notice these repeating patterns.  There are a number of North Africans who sell cheap replica purses, packets of tissues, etc.   There are others who sell standard art replicas…they will lay out pictures of the David, Botticelli’s Venus, some pretty awful paintings of nudes and they are all the same throughout the city so you know they all have the same boss.  Then there are the Oriental women with cheap shawls on their arms…they can be anywhere and it is almost uncanny how they do exactly the same thing…they shake and shimmer the shawls on their arms and tap you.  When you go to the open markers (Mercato Centrale or Sant Ambrogio), the gypsies will come up to you and stand and front of you, grab your arm especially if they see that you are purchasing something, and make that instant sad-sack face and say “miei bambini” (I know no other way to describe it, they do it as if on cue and it is fascinating to stand back and watch them work people…it is also fascinating to see them congregate at the end of the day together somewhere and smoke cigarettes).  Evan noticed that at least three of them in different areas were carrying the same laminated picture of the same two bambinos!  These are observations simply of people trying to carve out a living.

If you walk east along the Arno, there is an area just before Ponte San Niccolo bridge where the tour buses let off throngs of people…right there the itinerant vendors work the people getting on and off the buses.  Then there is the fascinating aspect of tours…most of these tours at some point come through Piazza Santa Croce and stand for a little bit in front of Santa Croce Church.  They never seem to go inside.  Each morning, I will take a walk or run along the river and often on up to Piazzale Michelangelo which has a replica of Michelangelo’s David and a fine view of Florence from a high vantage point.  In both places by 8 a.m. there are Chinese tour buses unloading whether it is raining, very cold, foggy or sunny.  I have seen more Chinese and Japanese here than any other group and they come in very large numbers (these are strictly my observations and I find it fascinating: the Italians find it less than fascinating and say the Chinese in Prato just north of Florence in the textile area where they comprise 50% of the population are undermining the quality of “made in Italy!!”).  You can tell one of these groups from the window as they always have a tour leader/guide at the front holding up a plastic flower or other object on a stick, and they walk two-by-two or single file in an orderly fashion down the streets, across the plaza and then into this one leather shop off the piazza.  They go in and out in no time.  When the Italians come for a tour (of course, they must be from “other” places in Italy), they are in a disorganized group spread out here and there!  There is confetti all over Piazzale Michelangelo where there are group package weddings on the weekends for the Japanese. I’ve been told that it is very popular for the Japanese to have a wedding ceremony in front of an Italian monument. Yesterday, we visited Pisa to see the Leaning Tower in the morning and there was already a Japanese wedding occurring outside the Leaning Tower —the bride and groom went rushing past the Leaning Tower with the maid of honor! (I’m thinking right now of all that’s happening in Japan and am happy to see that some of these folks have missed all the trauma there). Thus, this is really a museum within a museum: there are the art and architecture of Florence and Italy and the living, changing museum of tourists that come here.  The Italians say that the Florentines are “chiuso” (closed) and I understand how difficult it would be to live here in the museum.  I am just getting now to the American college students of which there are approximately 4000 per semester.  They also congregate in separate groups from the Italians on the piazza, especially on the weekends until 4-5 in the morning, often totally inebriated and leaving their bottles everywhere (since the drinking age here is 16, it’s not such a big deal for the Italians, however, the American students cut loose).

I enjoy traveling on the trains, especially seeing the countryside from a train.  There is also the interesting issue of gypsies on the trains.  Often times, they will get on at one stop and get off at the next stop before the ticket master comes by.  Years ago when I came to Europe they would just walk through the cars and ask for money.  Now things are much more sophisticated as they hand out nicely typed (in both Italian and English!) little squares of paper with something about having to feed a couple of bambinos.  Then a few minutes later they will come back and ask for the papers back with money…then you will see them get off the train at the next stop and start the process all over.

Today, a British guy who works in the Etruscan museum in Fiesole told me that Americans that visit there keep telling everyone they’re from Canada as the Italians are happier with Canadians now!  When Ryan had to get a visa for Russia (he’s going next week with his class to St. Petersburg), his teacher told us the Russians are a little more fond of Americans this year and not requiring them to have the permesso soggiorno first (something you need in addition to your visa for staying in Italy beyond three months…I thought that’s what you needed your visa for in the first place!) All of us are tourists in my Italian intensive class—I have finally finished week 4 and am just participating in some group conversation classes in the afternoon this week.  In the past two weeks I have been in class with Germans, Swiss, French, French Canadian, Irish, Colombian, Guatamalans and a Franciscan priest from the Congo!  Talk about interesting…the classes and conversations are completely in Italian and it is like a UN volleyball game with words!  We often try to talk in Italian about the differences between our countries.  I am getting pretty good at understanding but I still have marbles in my mouth when it comes time for me to talk.  Very interesting to see in action the native Romance language speakers suddenly catch on (the French and Spanish) and even the Swiss and German have an ear for the Romance languages since they usually have some fluency already in one of the Romance languages.  Hearing the language day in and out on the street really helps…somehow there are just little phrases that stick in your brain and pretty soon you just understand them.  In no way does this mean I am anywhere near fluent.

So, I had heard that Pisa was more of a tourist trap and found that I was pleasantly surprised when we visited the other day.

this week

Remains of Roman and Etruscan ruins found on hillside in Fiesole in 19th century

amphitheater at Fiesole

Piazza Santa Croce last weekend.  The flags have the ancient Florentine lily emblem: red and white for the Guelphs (papal allies) and the Ghibellines (Holy Roman Empire allies)

Piazza Santa Croce last weekend

Santa Maria Novella

Chapel in Santissima Annunciata.

olive pitter--something you can not live without here, an absolute necessity!

Murals in grisaille (monochrome tones of gray) on the Cloister della Scalzo done by Andrea del Sarto (son of a sarto (tailor))  These look like they are 3D

Inside Santa Maria del Carmine

View of Fiesole

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!

Rome

Put your Roman togas on (by the way, they are remnants borrowed from the Etruscans!) as this will be a long post!

Fred came back to Italy for the boys’ “ski” break last week and we set out by train for Rome (just under two hours on the Eurostar) the next morning…spent three days in Rome and then flew EasyJet  (cheaper than the train these days) to Paris for three days and then back to Florence.   Rome was magnificent, much moreso than I’d imagined.  Rome and Florence are really worlds apart and were really “worlds apart,” different kingdoms really, until unification of Italy in 1860.  Florence was a republic for much of its history and was far enough away from the Vatican and not on the via Francigena (one of the main medieval pilgrimage roads between Rome and northern Europe…all roads lead to Rome) highway.  

We took a taxi through Rome to our hotel and the first thing we all noticed was the bright white of the travertine stone of many of the buildings.  I’m talking bright white!  Our taxi deposited us in Piazza della Rotonda where we’d booked a hotel (Albergo del Senato—a wonderful old hotel with a marble staircase, many rooms with little terraces facing the back alleys and a really nice staff) right next door to the Pantheon which is Rome’s oldest building and considered its greatest architectural achievement.   The Pantheon (pre-Christianity “all gods” but later co-opted into a Christian church at the end of the Roman empire about 608 AD) is the best preserved building in Rome…2000 years old, completely intact.  The pictures below don’t do it justice….all I will say is that I can see how Brunelleschi was inspired by the dome of the Pantheon in building the dome for Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence…and also how we was inspired by its perfect proportions…the diameter of the Pantheon’s dome is equal to its height in the center.  It is surreal being inside: light is provided by its circular oculus above (a 9 meter opening in the dome) and all around the marble floor are these small holes that drain the rain.  We were able to walk from the hotel over to the Trajan Forum, the Roman Forum, the Vittorio Emmanuel II memorial and the Colosseum.  The boys recognized a lot more of this than I did at first take since they’ve been studying Latin!  It’s so strange to see cars buzzing around on modern roads juxtaposed against large columns jutting out from the ruins.  And realizing, after walking through the Jewish ghetto and other areas, that buildings were constructed of salvaged and plundered “re-cycled” stone from the Roman ruins. People would just go up to the Colosseum and other ruins and hack out what they needed to build new structures.  In front of the Colosseum there were fake gladiators who gently accost you to take pictures with them and then ask for money.

Per Owens’ advice, we took a private tour of the Vatican and were so glad we did!  We didn’t have to wait in a long line with the other Pilgrims to get into Vatican City…went right through the queue with our guide who took us through the Vatican Museums. Too marvelous in the museums…particularly the ceiling of the map room and all the collected ancient statuary.  I was almost finished at that point reading “The Agony and the Ecstasy” about Michelangelo’s life…so seeing the culmination of about 7 years of his life work on the Sistine Chapel’s ceiling and front wall was amazing.  Thinking of him lying on his back up on scaffolding painting frescoes of the Creation story on the ceiling with paint and lime dripping into his eyes.  On the Last Judgment wall, our guide also pointed out one of the guys who gave Michelangelo troubles…he was painted with a serpent wrapped around his body and just about to ingest his privates.  Or how Michelangelo inserted a painting of his own face on the “hide” of St. Bartholomew after he (St. Bartholeomew) was flayed alive. So interesting also to see some of the coverings later put over the private parts when Pope Paul IV of Inquisition fame wanted the frescoes whitewashed over because they were heretical.  As an aside, it has been enlightening to read the history of the popes and think of how they characterize the pendulum of human behavior over the ages….the Medici popes with their orgies and excesses followed by Pope Paul IV who put the iron clamps on with the Inquisition.  Rome proper has over 1000 churches…it was the site of quite a bit of martyrdom, too, starting with St. Peter, who was crucified upside down (have seen that on a number of frescoes, probably best so far at the Brancacci Chapel in Florence) yet many of the popes seemed just as barbarous, if not more, than the Romans were.

We saw the marks on the floor of the Sistine Chapel where the stove is put during Conclave when they decide on the New Pope (wet wheat was originally burned for black smoke, and dry wheat for white smoke).  We went down the Papal steps, over into the grottos (catacombs) under St. Peter’s where all the Popes are buried.  Strange to walk past John Paul II’s tomb with all the little white notes on it and people praying beside it, and then round the corner and see the covering over the entrance to the crypt for St. Peter the apostle, right under the main altar of St. Peter’s basilica followed by walking into St. Peter’s basilica itself...the largest church in the world.  As another aside, apparently Pope John Paul II is quite well preserved and they are going to haul him up into the basilica where you can view him in a glass case like Lenin. You glean some appreciation of St Peter’s size compared with other great cathedrals of the world since there are  markings on the nave's floor comparing where the other churches of the world would be if they were fit inside St. Peter’s.  It would seem that part of  this was about bigger and better…the Popes just conquering and taxing to raise funds for bigger and better.   It casts even more of a shadow on Catholicism for me to see the excesses…however, the magnificence of Michelangelo’s works commissioned by so many cardinals and popes over his 89 year lifetime is a tribute to the sustaining power of art, especially his magnificent marble Pieta just inside and to the right of the main entrance. 

We walked to Navona Square (by the way the fountain is way too shallow to have drowned the fourth Preferiti in “Angels and Demons”….we decided to watch the movie again after seeing the Vatican), Trevi Fountain at night (had to see that in person after the scene in "La Dolce Vita"), and on to the Spanish steps to find the house where Keats died and also where the boys bought green laser pointers so that they could later shine on buildings in Rome at night.  They want to go back, we want to go back after we finish digesting this trip!  Speaking of digesting, I really can’t tell you a thing about food there…it seemed that eating was secondary to exploring!

Inside the Pantheon (built 2000 years ago as a pagan temple to all gods and later co-opted into a sacred structure)

oculus of Pantheon

Pantheon from our hotel

Ryan and Evan in front of Colosseum with fake Gladiators

Fred, Ryan and Evan in front of Trajan ruins

Colosseum

Roman Forum

Trajan ruins

Ceiling in Vatican Museum

Boys walking down Papal steps outside Sistine Chapel

St. Peter's Basilica

Famous huge Pine cone in Vatican Courtyard.  It is one of Papal symbols (yet this was said to be made in 1st or 2nd century by Romans as a pagan symbol of fertility.  Another explanation is that the pine cone requires a strong heart to withstand the fire required to break it open and spread its seeds and thus is a symbol of faith.) One of the other recurring symbols of  the Vatican are the gold and silver crossed keys which are the "keys to the kingdom of heaven"

Roman Empire at its apogee  

Monument to Vittorio Emmanuel II (love that bright white travertine stone)

St. Peter's Basilica dome

one of over 1000 churches in Rome

Altar in St. Peter's Basilica (oculus is made of alabaster)

Bridge of the Angels over Tiber River

Castel San Angelo (you can't see but there's a walkway that connects it to the Vatican--this is where the popes hide out when things get a little rough.  It has also served as a prison)


 

Pope's gown and triple crown (retired now because crown too heavy!) inside St. Peter's Basilica

Sopra Minerva Church right by Pantheon.  Beloved "Elefanto" and Egyptian obelisk out front.  This church has St. Catherine of Siena's body inside under altar (her head is under altar at Duomo in Siena).

Swiss guard at Vatican under Pope's residence