Up, dressed and standing at entrance to the Gallery of the Accademia for opening at 09:00 hrs. This museum houses famous paintings and sculptures from the Gothic to Baroque periods, including many by Michelangelo. It’s most prized piece is of course the statue ‘David’ by this same master craftsman, which defies any and all combinations of superlatives to adequately capture its perfection and pose. Equally interesting are his unfinished sculptures on display, which provide a fascinating insight to his amazing ability to visualize a 3D image superimposed on an amorphous lump of marble. Michelangelo’s 2D paintings are of course masterpieces in their own right, and his mastery of both canvas and stone qualified him as a master architect also, skills which were essential to completing his later and most famous work of all - the roof of the Sistine Chapel.
This is not to say his works fully eclipse the others on display at the Accadamia. Far from it. The two of us spent 3 hours viewing the total collection, many dating back 700 years or more, with the vast majority painstakingly restored in the past ten years to their former vivid brilliance, using a marriage of sophisticated scientific and artistic techniques. The gallery has also been able to put all of them into context by providing a detailed description and provenance for each, adding to the impression created.
Duly dazzled, we then headed over to the Uffizi Gallery, the most famous in Florence, and world renowned. A great many of the works housed here are the legacy left by the last of the Medici family. Alas, we had to queue for an hour just to get in! The works here encompass such famous artists as Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Beato Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Piero della Francesca, Raphael, Caravaggio, Rubens, Rembrandt, Durer, Goya and others. Again, many have been painstakingly restored in recent years to reveal their original exquisite quality, with each one accompanied by a small plaque describing the contents and provenance.
3 hours later we found ourselves at the exit suffering cultural overload and, having spent a total of 7 hours on our feet, quite exhausted. Undeterred, we then headed over to the Basilica of Santa Croce, not only famed for its ‘Crucifix’ (by Cimabue), frescoes (by Giotto) and alter, but also as the final resting place for several Italian legends, including Michelangelo, and one of my personal heroes, Galileo. The tombs and grandiose setting admirably project the inestimable contributions made by each to advance our modern civilization.
Finally, at 18:00 hrs, 9 hours after entering Accademia, we plodded back to the Hotel thoroughly knackered, but very privileged to have seen an important historical record plotting the rekindling of imagination and general enquiry from the stupefying ignorance that dominated The Dark Ages.
And more significantly a growing awareness of our empty stomachs! Man does not survive on thought alone…..
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