Accademia Tour

After a school principal was fired for allowing pictures of Michelangelo's David to be shown in a Christian school in Florida, suddenly everyone wants to see David, which meant when I went to order tickets a week before our trip, there were none to be had, just like when I tried to book tickets to climb to the top of the Duomo. 

A loophole to sold out tickets is pay extra and book a tour. We booked a tour that included both the Accademia and Uffizi, with a stroll in-between. Viator.com offers tours for one or the other that are shorter and cheaper. I could have booked a tour for just the Accademia and bought tickets to the Uffizi, but I also knew we would get more out of a tour of the museum if we had a knowledgeable guide. Ashley highly recommended we visit both museums (which she has done on Free Museum Sundays). 

Oh, to be traveling in Europe as an adult with a credit card.

In all honesty, we were better off with a tour. While we enjoy works of art, but would not have appreciated the details we learned without a guide. I took nine pages of notes and a couple of hundred pages. If you are not that interested in art, now would be a good time to skip ahead to a different blog post.

Even with our Skip the Line tickets via www.viator.com, we still had a 30 minute wait to get into the Accademia. Welcome to Spring Break!

Fabrizio, our guide, kept a nice balance of sharing some history with us, and letting us just rest as we waited.

The Accademia began its life as a hospital. In the 1700s it was restructured as a museum. In 1873, they built the new wing with the domed area to showcase Michelangelo's David. Prior to this, David stood in front of the Old Palace, where he was subjected to graffiti, and climate issues.

An Aside: on November 4, 1966 Florence had a major flood. In 1366, during the Middle Ages, there was another big flood.

Another Aside: Firenzia was founded by the Romans in the 1st Century AD to provide a community for the veterans returning from the Roman Legions -- after 25 years of service they were given land and a home. Firenzia was formed in honor of Flora, the Roman Goddess of flowers and vegetation.

12:47! Time to enter with our 12:15 timed tickets!

Fabrizio told us the structure is similar to that of a church, complete with an aisle
to walk down to get closer to David, and a light shining from above. The wings coming off from where he is located makes the room shaped like a cross and gives a religious meaning to the architecture.

Michelangelo's stamp on the
back of one of his sculptures

As you can see in the picture, there are other works of art in this room besides David at the end of the hall. Many of the sculptures were also created by Michelangelo. We talked about some of them first. The Prisoners or Slaves statues are in various states of rough vs. finished. When first commissioned, there were supposed to be 30 statutes, but popes die and priorities change, and in the end only eight were made. What is fascinating about these sculptures is you can still see the chisel marks made by Michelangelo as each prisoner is emerging from his piece of marble - the contrast of raw vs. finished. Michelangelo was (modestly) quoted as saying all he did "was take away the excess material" when creating artwork from marble.

We were shown a Pieta that was found in April 1940 and attributed to Michelangelo. Further research shows it was likely made by one of his students, and not by him.

David stands 5.2 meters tall (17 feet), and weighs 5,000 kilograms (12,500 pounds). Finally it was time to join the crowd in front of David and study him from all angles. We could see where an American Arab attacked his left foot in 1991. Look at how he included the staff for stability. How the base is newer than the statue. Note that his right hand is oversized, an optical illusion to make him look even taller. Look into his eye and see his self-confidence and faith the moment he sees Goliath. David is a symbol of Florence, a representative of their good looking men (I believe our guide said he is from Florence).

In 1942 the dome David sits under was reinforced in preparation of war, a wise preparation since Florence was heavily bombed from 1943-44.

Two other sculptors tried to create art from this piece of marble, but deemed it damaged. Michelangelo worked on it from 1501-1504.

Michelangelo took a Jewish hero and turned him into a classical hero by making him completely naked -- something not done in Jewish art (or at least not in Jewish art of his time).

Some pictures of David:

Michelangelo was born in 1475. His father wanted him to become a state official, like he was, instead he became an artist.

He died in 1564. A death mask was made. It shows his flat nose -- a result of making a snide comment to a classmate.

In the next room is a model of Giambologna's Rape of the Sabine Woman. Yes, a model. Do you know where the original 16th century artwork is located?

Outside, next to the Old Palace in Florence. Yes, OUTDOORS! Near the replica of the David statue. Where someone tried to climb it one night early in the pandemic.

The statue represents the era in early Roman history when the city was made up of mostly men. Sabine women were invited to "the Rave party of the day." Romans attacked a women while her father (the man at the bottom of the sculpture) stood helpless. The vertical statue has no exact correct angle to look at.

The Accademia does have some paintings, but we only focused on the sculptures.

Back past David, and down the hall to his right (our left) to see a room of sculptures. The space feels like an attic of artwork you know you like, but you just don't know the best way to display it, so you put it in a space to figure out the best plan for it. Only, it keeps sitting in the same space for decades because you haven't come up with  solution.

It is Gian Lorenzo Bertini's Hall of Sculptures.

The most famous piece in the room is a Bartolini sculpture of a woman bitten by a snake. The final piece is in the Louvre in Paris. The tsar wanted a copy; his is now in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. I don't think we saw it on our tour.

As there is a sudden shift in my notes, I suspect we went to the exit from this room. 

We had a quick-paced stroll from the Accademia to the Uffizi, so quick I went into mom-mode and made sure everyone stayed together. We had a small group of nine people -- a family of six (including a college junior studying abroad in Barcelona, her parents, and siblings) and another college student who booked the same tour as her friends, but was placed in our group instead of with them because they were seen as several groups of one, instead of one group of four or five. I knew the mom would keep an eye on her children, but didn't have the same confidence Fabrizio would keep us all together.

We walked past the Duomo -- which can seat 20,000 people. It was started on September 8, 1296, and completed in 1436 after a local goldsmith by the name of Filippo Bruneschelli figured out how to make a dome that large. Unfortunately he destroyed his notes and 500+ years later they have not figured out how he did it. (Sculpture of Bruneschelli)

The Duomo has a white, red, and green façade representing the three theological virtues: faith, charity, and hope.

The Baptistry was guilt in 1000 AD, or maybe the 4th century AD. There is no definitive answer. In the 800s, this was a residential area where the wealthy lived. In the 1800s, there was an archeological dig. Turns out our guide is also an archeologist. 

The façade was added in the 1800s. Near the top are a row of statues. Cosimo Medici's face is in the most prominent statue. 

Alas, this was not a tour of the Duomo. There are so many details I know I did not appreciate. To me, it was a pretty white, red, and green church. Then again, so is St. Croce (which we did not go inside of).

With the baptistry in the front, its imposing size, and the sheer masses of tourists, it was a daunting task to take a good picture of the front. Despite walking in front of it almost every day, several times each day, after I came home I realized I barely took any pictures of the cathedral.

We stopped at the 1873 coffee shop across from the cathedral so Fabriozzio could get a cappuccino. The rest of us felt oblgated to buy a warm drink. By the time we all ordered and picked up our drinks (which were too hot to consume), Fabrizzio drank his out of a ceramic cup as a true Italian, and us Americans had ours the American way -- out of a "take away" cup. This cultural difference is evident in the lack of trash seen in the city. You rarely see someone walking with a To Go cup, and when you do, they are almost always American. Same with water bottles and other throw away items we are used to seeing everyone at home.

Our stroll took us past the Old Palace, which meant we saw the original Rape of the Sabine Woman and the copy of the David, as well as a statue of Medusa, the fountain of Neptune, a statue of Cosimo Medicini that is normally of him on a horse, but is currently being restored -- to the enjoyment of locals who have never seen him off of his horse, and the frustration of tour guides who want to show us the Florence we expect to see.

I think this post is long enough. At this point, we had to wait to enter the Uffizi. The wait was less than the time we waited to get into the Accademia. Our guide pointed to the various statues of famous Italians that surround the square. Between the people and the construction, it was hard to appreciate the statues. 

He pointed to Amerigo Vespucci -- the Italian map maker for whom America is named after, and Francesco who originated the theory that blood circulates in our bodies. He is a distant cousin to Francesco. He noted some of his family is still in medicine.