Words Fail Me

Throughout Northern Italy, I kept running across paintings of Madonna and Child in the most ridiculous poses…

“What is this?  Cashmere?  This cashmere?  So soft!”

“Yo.  Ma.  Make me spend one more night in a manger and I’m gonna garotte you with your own veil.  Capische?”

“Look, I don’t like this any more than you do!  But you’re the one who decided to pick up a jellyfish!  So hold your hand still so we can get this over with!”

“This looks suspiciously like my nose.  This whole time, you haven’t been ‘getting’ my nose at all, have you?  I have never felt more betrayed.”

“Shhh.  Shush.  Stop…talking…stop talking.  Shush.”

My answer to the question, “How was your vacation in Italy?”

An admittedly terrible picture from the roof of the Uffizi looking out at the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio with the dome of Il Duomo in the distance.

The Piazza della Signoria was the heart of the Republic of Florence.  When Charles VIII of France invaded Florence in 1494, Piero the Unfortunate and the rest of the ruling Medici family were forced into exile.  For the next several years, an ultraconservative Dominican friar & prophet named Girolamo Savonarola ruled the Republic.  His moralistic reforms—like replacing Carnival with the infamous “bonfire of the vanities” in this very piazza—eventually came to an end when he refused to join Pope Alexander VI‘s Holy League and was excommunicated. On 23 May 1498, Savonarola and two other Dominicans were condemned, hanged, & burned in the piazza.

Niccolò Machiavelli, then only in his late twenties, witnessed the execution.  Just two months later, he was appointed the second chancery and faithfully served the Republic until the House of Medici returned to power in 1512.  He was imprisonment & torture the next year.  Ostracized, Machiavelli retired to his farm in nearby Sant’Andrea in Percussina where he wrote The Prince in the futile hope of winning the favor of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici.

In 1565, the Fountain of Neptune was commissioned by Cosimo I de’ Medici (from a different branch of the Medicis.)  Neptune’s face is supposedly modeled on the Duke’s.This Roman-style Equestrian Monument of Cosimo I was commissioned by Cosimo’s son, Ferdinando I.Florence’s “town hall” is the the Palazzo Vechio.  As seen here from down the street by the Piazzale degli Uffiz, the “Old Palace” literally towers over the piazza.After its unveiling in 1505, Michelangelo’s David stood to one side of the palace’s entrance (until 1873 when it was moved to Galleria dell’Accademia and replaced with a replica.)  On the other side of the entrance stands Baccio Bandinelli‘s statue of Hercules & Cacus (the giant, fire-breathing son of Vulcan.)The Loggia dei Lanzi is a covered pavilion with a high arched ceiling showcasing statues like Perseus with the Head of Medusa……and The Rape of the Sabine Women.A few steps away from the loggia is a delightful bronze boar fountain nicknamed Il Porcellino (Italian for “piglet”).  Tradition has it that rubbing his snout with ensure that you return to Florence someday.

The Monument of Piazza Mentana celebrating the troops of Giuseppe Garibaldi against the Franco-Papal troops in the 1867 Battle of Mentana near Rome.

The Ponte Vecchio across the Arno River and the Vasari Corridor along its northern bank.

The shops along the bridge made me think of Patrick Süskind‘s novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer.Looking back toward the bridge through the arches of the Vasari Corridor.From the south bank, looking across the Arno at where the Vasari Corridor ends and the Galleria degli Uffizi begins.

View of the row of (unkempt) Italian cypresses against the Tuscan sky from my hotel room’s little private garden.

I circumnavigated (but didn’t enter) the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore.  Yet another Gothic cathedral.

A sound policy.

When staying at nicer hotels, I inevitably find myself speaking in the register of a Victorian gentleman:  “Could I trouble you to call me a taxi? I should like to go in to the city.”

From my hotel, I ventured out on foot into the village of Bagno a Ripoli in search of some food & wine to stock my kitchenette.  After seeing so much rain & flooding, the colors of this odd plant looked positively vibrant.

I also saw more of the (more sophisticated) version of the flood barrier I had seen at the homes & shops back in Venice:  a short wall sealed in with some sort of foam.