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It would be very odd to visit Florence and not stop by to see its most famous son, the statue of David created by Michelangelo. Doing that was the major focus of our Thursday in Florence.
It was a bit more of a hassle than we expected. Despite being the off season, Florence had an enormous number of visitors like us…all of whom, apparently, also wanted to see David. We ended up buying tickets from a quasi-official scalping agency1 that advertised their product as “skip the line” tickets. That was true, but only in the sense we didn’t have to wait in line to buy tickets. There were long lines of people waiting to use tickets.
Not understanding the instructions for picking up our tickets, we opted to arrive way ahead of time. But since Florence has museums literally all over the place, our time wasn’t wasted. We were able to find a nearby gallery to check out.
The Medici Riccardi Palace was relatively small but had quite a few beautiful statues, some of whom were willing to pose with Barbara.
It also had a neat small chapel, and a modest sized meeting room that featured some interesting stuff.
But the pièce de résistance — well, technically the pezzo di resistenza — was a brightly lit and beautifully decorated room that was just the right size to hold city council meetings.
After enjoying the Medici Riccardi Palace, it was finally time to meet David. We had to wait in several lines after picking up our tickets from the agency. Why several? Well, the agent wasn’t fluent in English and had a lot of English speakers asking him “where do I go?” so he got flustered and just waved everyone towards the nearest line. Which turned out to be the wrong one. Fortunately, we were able to find a museum employee who got us into the correct line.
The first thing you encounter in the Galleria dell’Accademia di Firenze is a large room filled with medieval and Renaissance art. I was once again struck by how vivid these tempuras were, even though they were nearly 700 years old.
The Rape of the Sabine Women was also in attendance. I think this is the “real” one — there are lots of copies of it all over Florence, and probably Italy as well.
Once you exit this first room, you turn the corner and there he is.
There are a number of other works by Michelangelo in the hallway leading to David. Most are part of a funerary collection.
After studying David for a while I realized his hands and arms were somewhat out of proportion. It turns out Michelangelo did this deliberately, so that when you viewed the statue from up close (and it was towering over you) the proportions would look right.
It’s amazing the details great artists have to keep in mind to create their visions.
By the way, there’s an interesting backstory to David. For example, his pose was in part driven by the fact the marble Michelangelo was working with was flawed. You should check out the “secrets of Michelangelo’s David” online.
There’s quite a bit of additional artwork, and statuary, in the gallery, once you move past David. But the piece which struck me the most was this one of Mary.
It depicts her just having been told by some angel that she’s going to bear Jesus. The emotion she expresses is unique among depictions of her2…and very human.
Can you imagine what must’ve been running through a young woman’s mind after being hit with that bombshell? I never thought about it…but clearly this artist did. Which is really clever, IMHO.
The gallery also contains a room full of busts and statues, all dating from the 19th century. The busts, at least, are all the work of one artist, who was apparently the go-to guy in Florence if you wanted a bust of yourself made.
There was also a statue of a guy with a peculiar, half-smiling, appraising look on his face. I thought I recognized him…and I was right. It was our old friend Machiavelli.
