run through the museum and tick off the Important Works on my checklist, without taking the time to really look at them? How sad for the earlier me.
I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for looking at famous works from unlikely angles (irreverently wondering, what did they do for underwear?). No, I was not searching for whatever hid behind the fig leaf (not that there were many fig leaves in the Renaissance, those came later), but I thought seeing a piece of sculpture from an unusual direction conveyed a lot about the artist. My brilliant observations: most sculptures with feet had a long middle toe, and the sandals they wore would have been useless on a long march; most of the armor depicted would have impeded engaging in a battle of any sort, or even movement. And I still loved the flowered hat on Donatello’s David ,which, the guidebook reminded me, the artist had modeled upon an antique sculpture of the emperor Hadrian’s pubescent male lover. Another note said that this had been the first free-standing bronze sculpture of the Renaissance. If that was true, then Donatello had done a damn fine job of it. Whatever the inspiration, the statue was a delight, and I spent quite a few minutes admiring the lovely young man from all sides, even taking note of a discovery made since my long-ago art historical days: David had tasteful golden highlights in his hair. Very nice.
Emerging from the relative cool and quiet of the Bargello, we were dismissed to find food and entertain ourselves until our scheduled tour of the Uffizi a couple of hours later. I looked at a pair of the nearest women, Christine and Rebecca, both of whom I’d known slightly in college. We’d spoken now and then at reunions on campus, and I said, “Food?”
They nodded vigorously, and then Rebecca, with a wicked gleam in her eye, replied, “Gelato.”
I grinned at her: a sister under the skin. The heck with art—we were hungry.
It was rapidly becoming clear that if you drop forty women of a certain age into one of the great cities of the world, they will shop—after they’ve found a bathroom. And they will eat, no matter how hard they might diet at home.
The three of us found a small hole-in-the-wall lunch place with no other Americans in it and ate salami sandwiches and scarfed down bottled water. Then we set off on a gelato quest, led in theory by Rebecca, who had fond memories of an incredible gelateria somewhere in the small streets to the east of the Duomo. Finding it proved to be a challenge. Let it be said that having a purpose, whether it is tracking down Michelangelo’s David or the perfect gelato, is a good thing, because often it takes you places you might not otherwise go (if you don’t get run down by a moped on the street). On the other hand, if you and your companions are directionally challenged, you may see the same place more than once as you wander through the twisting streets. Even asking for directions in our broken Italian didn’t help, and we kept finding ourselves going in circles when we tried to follow what we thought were the directions we’d been given. But in the end we found a magnificent gelateria called Vivoli, which lived up to its reputation. We spent an appropriate amount of time deciding how much to ask for and which flavors, then sat on a bench across the street from it and concentrated on the gelato. It was worth the hunt. And then it was time to go find our museum-bound group once again. At least now we knew the way.
Touring the Uffizi is like jumping into the ocean. You know there’s a lot there, but you also know you’re never going to see most of it—you’re only dipping a toe in. It is vast, but you can’t just hug the shore. There are incredible artworks clustered there, if you can find them. And if you can even focus your eyes after the first fifty or so rooms. The only moment that really stood out for me was finding an empty seat facing both The Birth of Venus and Primavera by Botticelli, and
I’ve always had a sneaking fondness for looking at famous works from unlikely angles (irreverently wondering, what did they do for underwear?). No, I was not searching for whatever hid behind the fig leaf (not that there were many fig leaves in the Renaissance, those came later), but I thought seeing a piece of sculpture from an unusual direction conveyed a lot about the artist. My brilliant observations: most sculptures with feet had a long middle toe, and the sandals they wore would have been useless on a long march; most of the armor depicted would have impeded engaging in a battle of any sort, or even movement. And I still loved the flowered hat on Donatello’s David ,which, the guidebook reminded me, the artist had modeled upon an antique sculpture of the emperor Hadrian’s pubescent male lover. Another note said that this had been the first free-standing bronze sculpture of the Renaissance. If that was true, then Donatello had done a damn fine job of it. Whatever the inspiration, the statue was a delight, and I spent quite a few minutes admiring the lovely young man from all sides, even taking note of a discovery made since my long-ago art historical days: David had tasteful golden highlights in his hair. Very nice.
Emerging from the relative cool and quiet of the Bargello, we were dismissed to find food and entertain ourselves until our scheduled tour of the Uffizi a couple of hours later. I looked at a pair of the nearest women, Christine and Rebecca, both of whom I’d known slightly in college. We’d spoken now and then at reunions on campus, and I said, “Food?”
They nodded vigorously, and then Rebecca, with a wicked gleam in her eye, replied, “Gelato.”
I grinned at her: a sister under the skin. The heck with art—we were hungry.
It was rapidly becoming clear that if you drop forty women of a certain age into one of the great cities of the world, they will shop—after they’ve found a bathroom. And they will eat, no matter how hard they might diet at home.
The three of us found a small hole-in-the-wall lunch place with no other Americans in it and ate salami sandwiches and scarfed down bottled water. Then we set off on a gelato quest, led in theory by Rebecca, who had fond memories of an incredible gelateria somewhere in the small streets to the east of the Duomo. Finding it proved to be a challenge. Let it be said that having a purpose, whether it is tracking down Michelangelo’s David or the perfect gelato, is a good thing, because often it takes you places you might not otherwise go (if you don’t get run down by a moped on the street). On the other hand, if you and your companions are directionally challenged, you may see the same place more than once as you wander through the twisting streets. Even asking for directions in our broken Italian didn’t help, and we kept finding ourselves going in circles when we tried to follow what we thought were the directions we’d been given. But in the end we found a magnificent gelateria called Vivoli, which lived up to its reputation. We spent an appropriate amount of time deciding how much to ask for and which flavors, then sat on a bench across the street from it and concentrated on the gelato. It was worth the hunt. And then it was time to go find our museum-bound group once again. At least now we knew the way.
Touring the Uffizi is like jumping into the ocean. You know there’s a lot there, but you also know you’re never going to see most of it—you’re only dipping a toe in. It is vast, but you can’t just hug the shore. There are incredible artworks clustered there, if you can find them. And if you can even focus your eyes after the first fifty or so rooms. The only moment that really stood out for me was finding an empty seat facing both The Birth of Venus and Primavera by Botticelli, and
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