In every age mankind attempts to fabricate great works at once magnificent and impossible. In deserts sands from mountains of stone a pyramid, from flying buttresses alone a wall of light. A chapel ceiling screaming one man’s ecstasy[…] miracles them all, china’s endless wall, Stonehenge, the Parthenon, the Duomo, the aqueducts of Rome – Titanic, the Musical
As usual the bus is less than half full at the actual meet time. We don’t depart until 9, but we’re supposed to meet at quarter to the hour. That never really works out, partly because it’s early in the morning and we’re all sluggish from the previous day, which is, inevitably, always a late one somehow.
As is also usual, I slipped in my headphones and slept on the bus. When I awoke an hour and a half later, Florence was waiting for us.
Florence is the one major art historical centre I had not made it to yet. The one that was still glimmering at the top of the bucket list. So when the crew transfer was offered for only ten dollars I didn’t even hesitate, you couldn’t have kept me off that bus.
The thing with a city like Florence is trying to figure out where to start. The city has so much to offer at every turn, and it’s easier than you would think to get lost. Ultimately I joined forces with the piano bar entertainer and one of the cast members in an attempt to gain entry to the Accadamia Gallery – which we weren’t so certain about managing since only one of us had secured a ticket in advance (in my defense I really wasn’t certain I was going on this tour until day before yesterday and by that point I figured the tickets for today would be gone) but as always we underestimated the entrepreneurship of Italy. While we were waiting in what was going to be an hour and a half long line, authorized tour guides plied the line up – offering the opportunity to bypass the line for a five euro additional fee (the tickets are 15 euros so it’s not that big a step up). After a brief amount of debating to make sure it wasn’t too good to be true, we jumped at it.
We were inside within five minutes.
Standing inside the gallery my knees honestly started to shake. This, above perhaps all else, is my church. The dusty dry murmur of history, the whispers and the voices of the way things were. The sheer scale of mankind’s ability to create beauty instead of pain, something that is so often forgotten throughout the years as they wash away the memory of everything except the battles and the blood. But marking art is like making love; getting it right takes time – and that is something we also seem to have forgotten. I’ve nothing against modern art, and there are some great modern artists out there, but nothing like this. Nothing even remotely close to this. Walking into that gallery and seeing the lushness and the detail of every image you cast your eye on, I wanted to weep. I suspect that somewhere in my heart I may have.
And they you turn the corner and suddenly towering over you, staring at you with a placid unseeing yet somehow challenging gaze – is Michelangelo’s David.
I have never been a fan of Michelangelo’s David, much preferring the less masculine and more realistic (and slightly smaller) Donatello (at least I think its Donatello, correct me if I’m wrong here Silv) version. David was, after all, supposed to be a boy of perhaps twelve or so. That said, seeing the David in person – knowing that that’s the real thing, that Michelangelo brought that marble to life against all odds, that is an inspiring experience.
I found myself wondering what he’s seen in his long life. What has he witnessed? What would he say if he could speak?
Beyond the great hall housing David we found our way into a smaller anti-chamber housing dozens of full sized plaster casts. Models for their marble counterparts that are scattered in museums and churches throughout the world. These have always fascinated me; they have no irises and as such their blank stares should be unsettling, but it’s the opposite. Every f ace has an expression, the curve of a smile, the curl of a ringlet framing a face, it all puts personality on those faces, you feel as if they could speak at any moment. Like when I looked at David I found myself wondering what they would say. What would they think of us as we pass them by?
There are paintings here of course; though the years have erased the artists from my memory I know I studied most of them at one point or another. Grainy images on overlarge screens in the early hours of the morning, when Silver and I used to scribble notes and observations on each other’s notebooks under the watchful eyes of our long suffering professor; I could never have imagined then what it would feel like to stand in the presence of the originals.
Tucked down a hallway off the main gallery is the museum of musical instruments, you would easily miss it if you weren’t looking, but fortunately I didn’t. And my two worlds; performance and art history – clash in a brilliant eruption of harmony. I knew to look for it despite not doing any reading before hand, despite having no real idea that it was there, I knew it in my bones the second I saw that there were strings on display, but I almost had myself convinced that it was impossible. There was no way that one could be here, and that I hadn’t somehow known about it. And lo, there it was; even not being a strings player, never having touched a violin in my life, my breath caught at the sight of a 17th century Stradivarius tucked safely behind glass. I honestly couldn’t really believe what I was looking at. More than the David, more than almost anything else, this touches a chord inside me that resonates through my ribcage and threatens to spill out of my eyes. The cast member I was with came up behind me and asked what I was looking at, and my voice came out little more than a whisper.
That’s a Strad.
A what?
A Strad. A Stradivarius. It’s the most famous violin in the world.
Despite how long it’s been since a bow kissed those strings, it somehow still seems to vibrate with the notes it once played. Some people I’m sure look at it and see only the dollar value – Strads are almost priceless – but all I could see in that instrument was soul.
The small display of brass instruments again makes me wish that my father were here – though I doubt he would appreciate me dragging him from painting to painting, there are some things that I reach out to hold his hand for.
Not for the first time there are many people I wish were with me. Only one or two of which would really understand the effect this kind of place has on me, and one I know would take much of their joy from watching me take mine,
Welcome to my world, come on, I’ll introduce you!
Eventually our wanderings take us to the smaller second floor where gold leafed triptychs of saints and virgins stare out from every wall. Creating images like this is a lost art, as are the skills to make the palates that constructed them. We can create as many replicas as we like, but they will always lack something behind the painted eyes.
Once we emerge blinking into the watery Italian sunlight it seems that only a few steps take us to the Duomo. Huge and intricate and rearing against the sapphire Italian sky it stops your breath the first time you see it. I remember studying its beaten bronze doors, never once dreaming I’d be standing within arm’s reach of them (although the doors in place now are replicas, the real ones were safely removed to a nearby museum years ago).
Once inside the portion of the cathedral that’s open to the public (neither us were strong enough to brave the stairs up to the top of the dome) I was once again struck by what Catherdrals are: mankind’s light in the dark, the screaming of an age against the dragons of the world:
Look at us! Look how strong we are! Look how much beauty we can create. How could you think of bringing us down?
Humanity dancing madly and precariously on the edge of insignificance.
My fingers trembled as I lit my traditional candle – something I have done in nearly every cathedral or church I’ve visited around the world, the world is always in need of more light.
Our time nearly at an end we drifted briefly to the main square where the carefully crafted replicas of many of the statues we had seen in the Galleria stand guard around the edges of the vast open space. The square is also home to the world famous (and spectacular) Uffizi Gallery, and while everything in me screams to get in that line and get inside (the Gallery houses everything from Caravaggio to Titian to Botticelli, the art historian in me was chomping at the bit) – I knew we didn’t have time; the Uffizi, like the Louvre, takes a full day to even scratch the surface, and I couldn’t bring myself to start to get to know her unless I could finish the job. One day, I swear I’ll come back here just to explore it.
Finally, pleasantly tired and nearly the deadline for catching the crew bus back ‘home’, the tail end of the day found most of us sitting on the steps of the church in the piazza that serves as the final resting place for Michelangelo, Galileo and too many others to list. Yet another thing I’ll have to come back to, because we simply didn’t have any time left to go inside. Instead we perched on the stairs, listening to the buskers and eating peach gelato while we waited for the rest of the group to find us before beginning the sleepy bus ride home.
There are days when this job of mine is the lion that threatens to devour me whole, and then there are days when you think that if it brings you one more ounce of happiness your heart will simply burst.
This, was one of those.