Florence,
Italy
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Day 35 (W) Io ho svegliato tarde cosi no coffe e cornetto per me stamattina. Today we are meeting on the steps of the Duomo before we get to go see Mike's famous David, I'm sure the rest of today's reflections will be filled with everything I take away from today's lecture. The David is simply amazing, turning the corner and staring down the 17 foot David was like Christmas day when you were a little kid. The corridor was lined with 6 unfinished works that were suppose to be on the French Cardinals that had him do the Pieta, but after the cardinals death other Cardinals cut the payments so there had to be reductions. We learned about all the middle steps of making a sculpture and how it was a legal process and Mike destroyed most of the middle works. The David was originally for the Duomo and the artist was Augusto, but when the huge slab of marble made its way to Florence Augusto messed up and exposed a huge imperfection in the stone. Augusto ran way from Florence, and the million dollar block of marble sat collection dust in the offices of the Wool Guild. Until the republic was reinstituted and the new president brought Mike back from Rome and convinced the guild to give Mike the marble block. Mike worked for two years before he started to see that his work was not going to be fully appreciated on the roof of the Duomo. He laid the idea before the president and said that this should go next to the Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the new republic. The city held a meeting and after the meeting the location was changed to the left side of the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio. Mike had a Neoplatonic view of the arts and sculpting most sculptors of the time sculpted different sections separately and then stuck them together with mortar. Mike believed this was not art and that it was not divine. The Neoplatonic viewpoint came from the idea of the creation of the world. Plato believed that the "Great Artisan" reached it to a gray mass and started removing all the unneeded things and then out of the center he pulled the earth and man's spirit. So the "Great Artisan" created by taking away not adding so Mike thought that the best type of art was sculpting ex una lapide, which is the sculpting of a piece from one block of marble, creating by taking away. For this he viewed him-self some what divine. So back to the David he got the same piece of marble that had been messed up years before. It took a total of around 4 years to complete. The statue was huge and it took a week being pulled by Oxen to be moved from the Wool Guild's offices to the Piazza Signoria under armed guard. Medici supporters sent out their teenagers to try and destroy the statue and the symbol of the new republic, but it reached its new home safely. The statue has two main view points each with a different meaning. In its original position, as you approach from the front the message of the statue is its strength and power. The muscles are perfect there is a lot of strength in his right arm and hand hanging straight down. The veins in his right hand are bulging out but are also anatomically correct. Mike supposedly made a deal with some local friars to perform dissections on the human body for data on this. You can only see the right side of his face and it too looks strong and confident. In the old days as you would move to enter the Palazzo Vecchio right as you get near the door and you turn and look up at the huge figure you would see something completely different. You can now see the whole face and from the side profile you can't really see all the bulging muscles and the strong right arm and hand. This takes on the meaning of thought, calculation, and contemplation. This view shows David calculating and judging the distance to Goliath, this is his thinking side. Mike did this to show the two sides of the human life the strength and the thinking sides. Most people look at him and try to find flaws which I find stupid why can't people just enjoy a near perfect piece of art that most people will deem the best sculpture ever. If you do go see it there is one thing you will notice his hands are very large and look very strong. This was originally thought to have been from original foreshortening because it was going up on the back of the Duomo. (Foreshortening is when and artist will change the dimensions of the body to make it look normal once placed up higher it is kinda cool). Recently someone has combated that theory saying, "Mike found out that the statue wasn't going up on the Duomo 2 years before he finished it. Don't you think the world's greatest sculpture might have been able to change the hands to fit its new location?" This guy was a linguist not any sort of art historian, so he attacked it from a different angle. He took the name David from old Hebrew and translated it into Latin, "mani forzi" this means strong hands, and so this could be the reason. The statue is just magnificent, one thing I almost forgot the David has an abnormally wide stance because Mike had to work around the huge vein in the stone that Augosto had exposed. The rest of the day I took some time to wonder around the city I really like this place and I wish I didn't have to leave. For lunch Ti and I went to get lamprodoto from a small little place right next to Dante's house (the fake one) this was the best lamprodoto that I have had very good not to chewy, not to salty, but just right. The rest of the night I studied for my quiz tomorrow.
Day 36 (Th) I went into CAPA early to study for my quiz but I spent most of my time looking at espn. Penn State looks like they are going to have a good recruiting class for '09. The quiz was fairly easy and it took me no time at all so I went with Jerry to get lunch because I had about an hour to get lunch before class started again. We went to a little pizza place that was tucked away in the back streets we both got a stuffed flat bread, it tasted like a ham and cheese hot pocket but better and it was huge and only cost 2 euro. When class resumed we finished up the food topic. After school I headed back to the apt. with the guys Jerry and I bought snorkels. We got ready and headed to a Mexican restaurant for Dru so he could get something spicy. It wasn't bad but once again I didn't come to Italy to eat Mexican food. I can't remember what we did the rest of the day but we went out to the bars where our friend works.
Day 37 (F) We went with Jerry to see the David and Ti wrote down ideas for his paper. We spent 2 hours in the academia which about an hour and a half was spent in front of the David. I love it, it is just amazing. We then walked over to the train station to get tickets for our trip to cinque terre on Sunday. When we got there we ran into Jerry's Italian professor and his wife, we have all gotten to know him he is very nice we talked to him for about thirty minutes. Then we decided that the line was to long to wait for tickets so we tried to get tickets for the calcio storico game on Saturday only two problems first the ticket office was closed and second they had a sign that said that the game was sold out. So we headed back to armadietto di carne to get ready for people to come over and to go see the Italian soccer game hopefully they can win this game. We went to the aperativo at Kisch again I had a drink that my mom would love, Tiger's Milk, it had milk, chocolate powder, Kalhua, and Bailey's Irish Cream. We watched the game at the Lion's fountain, at half it was all tied up. In the second half the score was 1-1 when there was a penalty in the box and Romania got a penalty kick. Mutu the player that just left Fiorentina for more money was the one that took the kick so everyone hated him, Buffon blocked the kick to keep it tied and the place loved and the game ended 1-1 so for any chance of advancing Italy needs France to lose to Holland. Later that night Holland beat France by three just like Italy so they both have one point. So on Tuesday Italy needs to beat France and needs Holland to tie or beat Romania.
Day 38 (S) We woke up very late and watched 5 South Park's episodes on Jerry's computer. After that Jerry went to the Arno River to play his guitar. Ti napped and I worked on my ekphrasis for class. For my paper I chose to write about Michelangelo's Bacchus. At 3 we meet Jerry over at the train ticket office to buy tickets for the train trip to Cinque Terre. I forgot Dru want with some of the girls to Venice. After that we tried to watch the calcio storico game from the street but you couldn't see anything and it was almost over we did get to see a little of the parade. Then Ti wanted to go get gelato at the best place in Florence according to his book. Funny enough when we got there we have already been there we just forgot about it, I got strawberry, raspberry, and coconut very good. After that we tried to find the theater where our friend Dan from Demis was having his play. It was going to be great put we couldn't find it. So we just went to dinner at the Japanese noodle place. On the way back home we stopped at a bookstore that had books in English. No that is not a typo I went to a bookstore. I got a book with 10 cases of Sherlock Holmes, for the trip tomorrow and my flights home.
