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A detail of a panel (one of 20?) that make up a huge bronze door in the “baptistry” across from the Duomo, where baptisms took place so people could attend church (in the Middle Ages, people weren’t allowed to set foot in the Catholic church unless they were baptized). At the bottom of the panel is David slaying Goliath.
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Michelangelo’s spectacular “David”, poised with sling in hand, staring down Goliath in the moment before the fight. He was carved from a single block of marble weighing 6 tons – marble that had been rejected by other sculptors for flaws. His right hand is intentionally large, because David was considered to be “manu forte”, of strong hand. He is gorgeous!
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Florence’s famous “Duomo” or dome, was not the work of an architect, but a watchmaker. Brunelleschi left behind no notes on his life’s work, the largest unsupported masonry dome in the world. No flying buttresses on this 150 ft. span. Modern architects have been unable to replicate the design on a small scale without having it crumble. All this with no GPS, no laser and no CAD! |
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Bas-relief of the workers in Florence, from left: mortaring the bricks, using levers to move timbers, sculpting in clay, and chiseling marble. Imagine what solid work this was for generations. |
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Dante, a famous Florentine, wrote the Divine Comedy, an exciting book (lust! greed! gluttony!) detailing purgatory, hell and heaven. Written in the Florentine dialect, its popularity cemented what we now know as the Italian language. |
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Florence is considered the birth of the Rennaisance movement, where a nostalgia for classical antiquity blossomed into a new art form. Artists fueled by each other’s creativity made contributions in sculpture, painting, poetry and music that still amaze as a body of work, generations later. |
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Galileo was not only an astronomer, but a physicist, mathematician and philosopher. Most famous for his theory that the earth revolved around the sun, he was tried in the 17th century and found “vehemently suspect of heresy”. In 1965, the Catholic church finally revoked its condemnation of Galileo. |
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The Ponte Vecchio, or “old bridge” is the most famous of Florence’s bridges. Hitler thought it so beautiful that despite bombing all the other bridges in Florence, he left this one intact. Note the upper enclosed walkway, added in the middle ages by the wealthy Medici family (bankers to the pope), so they wouldn’t have to mix with the riff raff when walking from their estate on one side of the river to the other. |
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Another Medici family change to the Ponte Vecchio was the replacement of smelly butchers with goldsmiths. To this day, the finest jewelry in Florence is found on the Ponte Vecchio bridge. This bridge is the origin of the word “bankrupt”. When a money changer was unable to pay his debts, his table “banko” was broken “rotto” by the police so he would no longer be able to sell. |
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Final resting place of Michelangelo. Considered to be the greatest living artist in his lifetime, he was called “Il Divino”, the divine one. The sculptures for his tomb were done by other artists – I love how the angel looks despondent at the death of the master, as no one remains to sculpt future angels with such skill and passion.
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