Art in Florence

Florence is a veritable Disneyland of Renaissance art, with commensurate gelaterias and boutiques scattered among the rides. As with Disneyland, one doesn’t want to miss an attraction, which inevitably leaves the visitor exhausted by the experience, even if one has five days, as we just did, to see it all. Although this was my third trip to Florence, the other visits were so long ago and so far apart that I felt the need to check off all the major sites. Should I ever return, I would try to see less and study more deeply – although how is one to skip David, or the Uffizi, or the Brancacci Chapel?

Nothing can duplicate the excitement of seeing something in person for the first time: the memory of encountering San Giorgio Maggiore in 1967 as the vaporetto rounded into Venice harbor is my quintessential memory of this sort. That pleasure was largely missing from my Florence impressions this time around; furthermore, I had the impression, whether correct or not, that the sites I visited were far less crowded 30 and 40 years ago. I recollected my time at San Marco convent as a lonely pilgrimage in 1981; in 2016 it was just another museum.

For some of the reasons above, my favorite “aha” moment this trip came when I entered the Chapel of the Magi in the Medici-Riccardi Palace. I was variously alone or with one or three other tourists as I looked at Benozzo Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi from 1459. The chapel was small, the frescoes were close, and I had not seen them on previous trips. I had known them well, however, since a professor had spent an entire lecture on them, to my recollection, in Fine Arts 13 at Harvard (I can’t imagine what other course I took covered Renaissance art), and I could now see why. Gozzoli was a relatively obscure artist to history, but this painting encapsulated so much of its time and place. First of all, it is beautiful. Then, it is luxurious, befitting the wealth of 15th-century Florence. The Magi and their retinue are shown as gorgeous, fair-haired ideal youth – and how much of Renaissance art from Donatello through Michelangelo celebrates young men! – while the trailing procession and spectators are realistic representations of the Medici and other prominent citizens. The composition features the latest in artistic tools – perspective and foreshortening – and there are brilliant details, such as a goshawk standing over an eviscerated hare. In short, although the subject – the Magi – is a religious one, its presentation epitomizes the humanism and worldliness of the Florentine Renaissance. Gone is the Gothic, gone are the Middle Ages.

I was pleased but not surprised to learn after-the-fact that Gozzoli is also believed to have painted the crowd scene in Cosimo de Medici’s private cell in what is now the Museum of San Marco, which we visited to see the works by Fra Angelico. Never has there been art as pure. Fra Angelico’s frescoes are simple and direct, however, while the scene painted by Gozzoli when he was Angelico’s assistant in 1443 is a precursor to his Magi.

Also in San Marco is a Last Supper by Domenico Ghirlandaio, who ended by being the artist I most wanted to study. He seemed to show up everywhere and always looked good: in the Accademia, Sta Maria Novella, Sassetti Chapel in  Sta Trinita. His work was decorative and realistic in just the right proportion. The background figures of two men seen from behind looking over a balcony wall in the Tornabuoni Chapel is perhaps my favorite single image in Florence.

One guidebook to the Art of Florence said that no matter how many times the author saw Michelangelo’s David her breath was, every time, taken away, and I couldn’t help but agree. Next to the Mona Lisa, David is probably the most overexposed image in art – he was on iced tea spoons in our house growing up – but I smiled and gasped when I saw him at the end of the corridor in the Accademia. He also withstood, indeed required, closeups from every angle. Simply awesome. The Rondanini Pieta, fifty years after David, is a more contemplative work. Whereas David urges you to walk around and engage him, the Pieta asks you to sit down quietly and look inward, whether it be spirituality or mortality on your mind. Fortunately, the room in the newly renovate Duomo Museum that houses the Pieta, all by itself, was empty for us.

While Donatello is a major presence at the Duomo Museum, where we spent a captivated 2.5 hours, it is at the Bargello that he becomes the star of Florence sculpture, second only to Michelangelo. It is hard to comprehend how innovative his statues of David and St. George were; but seeing the Donatellos, Verrochios, Desiderios all together, along with Brunelleschi and Ghiberti’s auditions for the Baptistery doors makes you realize what a ferment there was among sculptors in Florence in the early 15th century. The series of eight figures in niches at Orsanmichele, now displayed in an upstairs loft on Mondays, reinforces this lesson.

Painting is an even longer story, and the six hours we spent at the Uffizi (including a two-hour lunch with Eike Schmidt and Robert Bartoli) was a cursory view at best. My favorite room came first, where Giotto’s full-bodied Maesta presented such a vivid contrast to the flatter versions by Duccio and Cimabue hanging to either side. So many other iconic works are present – Piero, Fillipo, Raphael, van der Goes, Botticelli, Titian, et al. – that I need not enumerate or rank. I do want to comment on how tastefully, and sparingly, they are displayed. There is no crowding, and one gets the feeling that every painting has been selected for a reason.

Of course, the opposite is true of the Pitti Palace, which can almost be described as the storeroom for the Uffizi. (When I complained to Eike and Roberta about the mass and indiscrimate displays at the Pitti, they assured me nothing would ever change, that the historic display was the point.) Out of the crowd, however, Raphael stood out, both with a Madonna and Child with Infant St. John and the splendid Doni portraits.

The last painting I should single out for its impact is Masaccio’s Crucifixion. It appears to occupy a niche in the side wall at the Church of Santa Maria Novella, but on closer inspection we find that it is a flat fresco, done with architectural trompe-l’oeil that is breathtaking now, let alone for 1426.

It was also recommended that I take in the Pietre Dure Museum, and I’m glad I did. It presented the art of inlaid decorative stone in chronological order, with tidy displays and informative panels – a digestible mouthful in a city of art excess.

To be sure, I didn’t like all the art I saw in Florence. I was disappointed that the two major Botticelli paintings at the Uffizi – Primavera and Venus – had glass barriers that, along with the crowds, marred any attempt at meaningful communion. The always praised Titian had a painting of Mary Magdalene at the Pitti that was the ugliest thing I saw all week. And everything I saw by Uccello made me question his stature in art history – until I saw a 1st-century work from Pompei that eerily foreshadowed his San Romano battle scenes, but that is a story for another day.