The Bahblog

Although we were just in Florence this past summer and went to most of the museums, we both really wanted to return to the Accademia and the Uffizi. Our time was a bit more flexible this time, so we did online reservations as opposed to the Firenze Card.

We started our day on Thursday with the Accademia. The highlight of the Accademia is Michaelangelo's David, but I like to prolong the suspense so we started our visit by looking at the music portion of the museum. We saw the extensive string collection acquired by the Medicis as well as some early pianos.

David is at the end of a long hallway that is lined with Michaelangelo's unfinished Prisoners. Although the Prisoners are unfinished, it's absolutely wonderful to study them and gain somewhat of an understanding of the sculpting process. They are also all at various stages of completion and you get a feel of the long and tedious process Michaelangelo followed.

The star of the show, David, looks tall and proud standing in a dome that was built especially for him, framed by sunlight. The statue itself is massive, 17 feet tall.

From the front, David looks tall and confident. When you walk around to the side, you can see a bit of hesitation in his eyes. The current belief is that the statue is supposed to represent David as he's staring down Goliath, before the kill.

The detail in the statue is exquisite, you can see his carved muscles, his ribs, and even the veins in his arms. His curly hair completes his disproportionate head.

I spent about 15 minutes just gawking at David and Nate was able to sneak in a shot of me doing so (I was too distracted to notice). The size! The detail! It's all so wonderful to take in.

After seeing David we toured the part of the museum that has sculptures done by students. It's a bit of a let-down after seeing David, but these sculptures are well-done and probably deserve a bit more credit. There also seemed to be some type of restoration or 3-D modeling process going on as many of the sculptures were covered in black dots. Or perhaps there was a smallpox outbreak in that part of the museum.

We grabbed sandwiches for lunch at All'Antico Vinaio and ate them on the steps of a nearby church.

While we were eating, some Eastern European women came up to us and asked us in very broken English "where's David?". Nate took out his phone and showed them exactly how to walk to Accademia. They responded very exasperated and said "no MUSEUM, we want copy." So Nate instead directed them to the copy of David in a nearby courtyard. Why pay money to see the real thing when you can see the copy for free?

After chuckling about this for a while, we went to the Uffizi Gallery.

We started our self-led tour (with a little help from Rick Steves) on the second floor with medieval altarpiece paintings of the Virgin Mary and Christ. The paintings started as very 2-D and we saw the birth of 3-D paintings on a 2-D surface (and the movement towards painting something OTHER than the Virgin Mary and Christ).

We then moved onto Early Renaissance and Renaissance and saw the birth of both humanistic features and the emphasis of beauty over realism. A highlight was Botticelli's "Spring" and "Birth of Venus."

From here we moved into the High Renaissance, where the highlight was Michaelangelo's "Holy Family." This is his only surviving completed painting.

The hallway of the Uffizi is lined with statues and the paintings of nobleman. There is also a fantastic view of the Arno from the windows.

It was a very cultured day, but I'm sure in the eyes of the Eastern European women we just wasted a ton of money to view paintings and statues. I'd say it was worth it.