When the Inside doesn't match the Outside

Yesterday morning was interesting in that I started off waiting at the wrong church for our morning history lesson. It turns out there are 5 churches within 3 blocks of where I am staying. Once at Basilica San Lorenzo, a very modest building from the outside, we headed into the museum in its basement. Although dark, there were many fascinating things to be found including the grave of Donatello, the family tree of the Medici's and a large pillar serving as the Tomb of Cosimo the Elder. One of the big guys of the Medici family, who's legacy is apparently strong enough to hold up the entire church.

The significance of the Medici's is found everywhere you look from the tomb monuments to the commissioned architecture and the elaborate décor, all done in marble of course. As you walk by the elaborate works of artists such as Michelangelo, Donatello, Vasari and Brunelleschi you begin to think of the works as shadows themselves, in that they serve as traces of the great minds that once occupied the space you are in. Think in this way would imply that our shadows are our legacies.

Back then it would seem that people wanted their shadows to be grand, but in a time where we need to reduce our consumption of resources, is it ethical to design such opulent legacies / shadows? Does this mean that today's artists and designers will always live in the shadows of such Masters in that they were of a time where economic responsibility and the depletion of resources were of little concern?

As we walked through the baptistery we learned that some of the marble can no longer be found as it was used all up during those times. I also learned that when we are able to see an artist's corrections within a drawing it is referred to as "penti menti", sort of translated as visual regrets. Again, this idea sort of related to shadows for me as we can see traces of the artists process or movement within the work.

After our tour we went to a lovely patio for lunch where I had the most exquisite mussels. Here we learned more about one another's personal shadows over bread, water and wine.

From there I headed to the market to get some fresh basil for the tomatoes I bought yesterday and then packed up some things to take to the studio before heading to the train station to meet Geoff.

After walking around the Duomo to share in its magnificence, we enjoyed sharing fresh stone oven pizza, wine and gelato before retreating to the apartment for some much need sleep. Of course I woke up at midnight and began to think / reflect / critique the project I had started, and so began my four hours of lying awake listening to the sounds of Florence at night while pondering my thesis. I wonder what revelations today will bring?

Cultural Mashup inside Gothic Church!

Today started off with a jolt of adrenalin as I woke up only 35 minutes before I needed to be across the city for our second art history lecture! Upon arriving at the Santa Croce Cathedral I was greeted by an amazing sculpture of Dante towering over me. We entered into the church to find more exquisite stained glass, grave markers of the rich and influential beneath our feet and shrines carefully plotted around the room. Between the paintings, crypts, family crests, decorative accents and sculptural arrangements it was the beginning of our visual and historical overload for today. It became clear very shortly into the tour that Ranciere was right when all of the art movements have always existed just in different forms. We could see modernism, surrealism, minimalism and abstraction all at work as we moved from one work to the next.

Conversations about personal beliefs arose during the day and the learning curve was high for most of us. Giotto gained a whole lot of respect from me today and I learned that Michelangelo had his face punched in by an artistic rival very early in his life that left him with breathing problems his whole life. And I thought critiques were rough!

Despite the churches humble beginnings, patrons of the churches were starting to make their way into the religious paintings and sure enough, the full half front of the nave was reserved for the banking / commerce families who helped pay for the building and upkeep of the cathedral. As we moved throughout the site we were able to see many damaged frescoes on the walls. At one point, many of the paintings on the wall were painted over in favour of a more minimal and less opulent aesthetic. I began to think of these remnants, sometimes just the underpaintings, as shadows. Often dark brown or raw umber in colour, the organic plaster fragments were quite figurative in form.

My most favourite relics seen today were wonderful cartoons rubbed onto fresco panels that were unpainted. The quality and rendering of line makes me want to draw large figurative contour drawings back in the studio, but I haven’t been able to arrive at how that would fit into my research. Ha! Just had an idea.

I think the biggest surprise today was coming across a Henry Moore today in the outdoor courtyard of Santa Croce. “Warrior with Shield” gleaned regardless of the lack of sun, simply due to its simplistic rendering and powerful attention to the surface of the sculpture. The marks somewhat reminded me of the crude rendering of Michelangelo’s intended pieta, that he violently destroyed while working on it.

As it was another rainy day, architectural spaces with their shadows began to stick out for me. I know Gaston Bachelard would have been pointing out each and every one of them today if he were on the tour. The good news is that I am not short of ideas. The bad news is that we are busy touring until next Sunday and I am not sure how I will get any substantial work done. Also, it turns out the webcam I ordered for part of my planned works has not arrived on time so my honey, Geoff, won’t be able to bring it with him tomorrow. He arrives tomorrow!

Other good news is that I am starting to get the hang of the Italian language. Menus in Italian and English menus are helping with this. Also, everyone here is very kind and generous when pronouncing things for us. This happened over lunch when we ducked into a small bistro after hours of walking both north and south of the river.

Tomorrow the group is meeting at Piazza di Madonna degli Aldobrandini where the Medici chapel is located. I am sure it will be a good review of Brunelleschi for me, but really I just want to hang out in the studio and get some playing out of the way before hubby arrives. We have just been notified by OCAD that we need to get our TA requests in, so that will also need to get done this weekend, not to mention me typing up my didactic draft for the next exhibition at Quest Art. My guess is that I will have some time while Geoff catches up on his sleep over the next couple of days. That being said, good night sweet Florence.

Raining & Climbing in Florence!

So my first night in Florence turned out to be quite informative. One, although convenient, the market square may not be the place to stay if you need peace and quiet to sleep. It seemed like the room was going to blow off this city on a Wednesday night until about 2:30 in the morning. I am worried what the weekends will be like. It does turn out that today was a holiday and so people may have went out to take advantage of their ability to sleep in this morning. Let's just say that my husband received an email today requesting earplugs.

Being awake at this time of night allowed me do some reading in preparation for today's history lesson with our on site historian Dr. Katharina Giraldi and to think about what I might do over the next three weeks in the studio. Chalked with leftover paint, brushes, linen and lots of wall space, part of me wants to do a small series of paintings in addition to everything else I have planned, but we will see what actually happens. As I listened to everyone's voices, in a variety of languages; this city seems even more multicultural than Toronto, I again began to think about how sound manoeuvers in and out of the shadows. I wondered as I lay in bed if I wasn't occupying a shadow in that those who I was listening to couldn't see me. Or, am I simply a shadowy figure in that they can't see me? Can semantics and symbolism enter into the same frame of thought? Hmmm. Regardless, I knew I would need to do more sound recordings while I am here.

Able to fall back to sleep until around 8:15 am, I grabbed a half of baguette left over from last night's dinner and hustled to meet my professor Martha Ladly, as well as David Salazar and Annette Mangaard at the Piazza del Duomo. More of a maker than a history buff, I wasn't all that excited until I I walked around a corner with a not so great Styrofoam cup of coffee and saw this! "Oh", I said, like I didn't know it was going to be so darn impressive.

While waiting for others to arrive I walked around the entire outside and pictures as the overcast sky was surely hindering its magnificence. We shortly headed into the Baptistery of San Giovanni, an octagonal domed building just west of the cathedral where Christians were at one time submerged in water to be baptised. Beyond an ornate ceiling and the doors of Ghiberti on the outside, it was fascinating to learn that people were buried right in the walls of the building as well as in the ground surrounding the structure.

As suspected there were going to be plenty of shadows to collect within the various architecture and museums we would be visiting while we are here. I would imagine doing a series of shadows simply based on Jesus on a cross would be extremely haunting and speak to the dark underbelly of religion throughout history. I did photograph a few more shadows of crosses throughout the day so we will see if this series might come to light in the days ahead.

We then made our way to the Opera Di Santa Maria Del Fiore Museum. This is where all the originals are now located. Carelfully rendered replicas now adorn the outside of all the various buildings we would visit today. It is a good thing the marble originals are safe and sound in the centre as people have written all over the walls of the stairwell up to the inside viewing area of the dome as well as on the marble columns outside on the viewing deck outside the lantern of Brunelleschi’s Dome. What is wrong with people? Are they trying to leave their mark like the great sculptors and architects of Italy? I’m thinking they might need to do a little more than that to get noticed around here.

For more pictures from the day visit my Facebook page.