Hey - I'm Not Done After All!

I doubt if any of you will be as thrilled as I am at what I have to report.  I found my "lost Wednesday" pictures!  And, I'm so glad I did.  I don't remember what all I said about losing them on that Wednesday's post - I probably explained that they were all the statues of Orsanmichele that I had taken specifically so my son could see them, and that I had also visited the Museo Dell'Opera and the Museo Bargello that day and was thrilled with them because they both had a number of items I specifically wanted to see - mostly involving my dear friend, Brunelleschi.  I could and did retake the Orsanmichele statues (and that's good cause the second set is better than that first set), but I couldn't bring myself to spend the money and the time to "redo" the two museums.

So, to find these pictures after I got back to the States was a real nice conclusion to a real nice trip and I decided I would do another post just to share them with you all.  My son keeps telling me I need to do a "now I'm home and here's my summing up" and, actually, I had a few things that I thought of while traveling  back that I thought might be nice for a closing post, but right now I can't really remember what they were, so this will be just the pictures.

This is the truly gorgeous altar inside Orsanmichelle where we were not allowed to take photos, so I had to sneak one.  That's one reason why it's so dark and then so light.  I sat in a pew, put the camera down in my lap, and pointed it up at the altar and got this picture which for me is better than nothing.

This is the courtyard of the Museo Bargello.  This is the museum that started out as a prison.

and I had a really hard time figuring out what this was but my son and I looked it up on the Gioogle satellite map and it is the Badia Fiorentina (badia translates to abbey) and is pretty much right across the street from the Bargello (which is the arch showing in the foreground of the picture)

And you all can probably guess who this is - Filippo Brunelleschi himself!

and this is out of order because it is at the Museo dell'Opera, but it's the death mask of Brun and makes me think the sculptor of the bust above captured a pretty good likeness.

One thing I really wanted to see at the Bargello were the two baptistery door panels submitted as entries in the competition by Ghiberti (the winner) and Brunelleschi (the loser).  The panel had to illustrate the story of God instructing Abraham to sacrifice his son.  This is Brunelleschi's entry.

And this is Ghiberti's entry.  And much as it hurt me to do it, I had to admit that at least in my very humble, non-artistic opinion, Gilberti's was the better of the two.  Probably though, that was better than coming away thinking Brun had been robbed. :)

There were other things at the Bargello besides Brunelleschi "stuff".  This is Donatello's statue of David (all these sculptors seemed to find David an irrestible subject).  The hat seems a little saucy to me...

And this is Verrocchio's statue of David which I preferred over Donatello's and actually over the huge one by

 Michaelangelo.

This was a large Della Robia nativity.  I don't remember for sure what my guide book said about it, but I would think it might have been an altar piece.

Speaking of guide books, the one I just mentioned wasn't actually mine - it was one Antonio gave me to use while I was there.  It was a Rick Steves guide to Florence and Tuscany and at first I really didn't care for it because of the way he had it set up.  But my own guide book wasn't working too well, so I tried a little harder with the RS one and ended up really glad I had.  In his book, for each major museum, cathedral, whatever, he takes you on a tour of the most important pieces in that building and for someone like myself who knows nothing about art and what it all means (I'm one of those "I don't know about art but I know what I like" people), this was really helpful.  I got a lot more out of the frescoes, especially, because frescoes are usually telling a story and, on my own, I would usually have been unable to tell what the story was.  So if you're ever planning a trip that will involve wandering through museums, I'd recommend that you look at his books when you look at guide books.

The next pictures are from my visit to the Museo Dell'Opera...

This piece really flabbergasted me when I came across it because to me it looks so extremely modernistic. This is a statue of Mary Magdelene by Donatello which means it was created in the 15th century and it was difficult for me to get a good picture because it is dark to begin with and then so textured that there is a lot of shadow.

This is a close up and unfortunately her face is still quite shadowed...

This is Brun's model (I mean he actually made it!) of the cupola without the lantern on top. He shows two of the three tribunes that the cupola rests on.

And this is Brun's model of the lantern...It was so thrilling to see these and realize they were made so long ago and today thousands of visitors still flock to Florence to see the finished product.

This fairly unclear picture and the next one are pictures of some of the actual tools used to build the cupola and also the hoist that Brun invented to get supplies up to the higher and higher levels as work progressed.

And so that was my "lost Wednesday" and I'm certainly happy I found it.