People with cameras and windows with views in Florence’s famous Uffizi galleries. x Caravaggio’s Head of Medusa in Room 90 of the Uffizi, caught in what I’d like to imagine is the horror of being perceived. Photography is decapitation again and again. x The hallways and sightlines of the Uffizi. x
The biggest attraction in the area we were staying was the grand Duomo di Firenze, or the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower. On a whim, I decided I’d visit a couple times in a single day to capture how the light would change the vibes. This is what it looks like in the morning. x The Piazza del Duomo in the afternoon. x Santa Maria del Fiore in the early evening hours. x
More views from Vinci. x Portals. x “I became fascinated not only by his art, but by his insatiable curiosity. He refused to stay within a single discipline, moving effortlessly between painting, engineering, anatomy, architecture, and science. Somewhere in my ten-year-old mind I decided that if I wanted to become an artist, I needed to go to Italy. Maybe even live there. I wanted to speak the language and learn the way Leonardo learned.” @christine.bingham.art on christinebinghamart.substack.com x
While we were in Florence, we took the opportunity to spend a day in Vinci, the birthplace of Italy’s canonical Renaissance Man and the town’s most famous “da,” Maestro Leonardo. There was something quite cute about the town’s embrace of all things Leo, and while some aspects of its three museums dedicated to his life and work felt a little Disneyfied, the overall effect showed a town that took art and education seriously. x We’d been warned that Leonardo’s childhood home was a long walk just outside of the main part of Vinci, with a steep incline and little shade, … Continue reading “Vinci: The Vitruvian Man and Da Vincian Geometries” →
Another series showing the passage of time. After visiting the Uffizi, we passed by Palazzo Strozzi to get tickets for the Rothko exhibit later that evening. You can see how dramatically different @superflexstudio’s artwork look in the inner courtyard at those two times of the day. I’ll be posting more from both galleries soon. x This one’s for Christine for teasing me about butts in the Met. It also marks the moment when the skies cleared, and the city started to shake off its dreary overcoat. x Golden hour with Florence’s golden boy. x
My first impressions of Florence were not great. Not only was it the flashpoint of train disruptions for three days in a row, but actually stepping out into the fabled city when we first arrived there on that Tuesday felt a little weird too; it wasn’t exactly hot, but it wasn’t exactly cool either, and the clouds hung low, muting all the colors and making everything look kinda dirty and drab. And the people. Oh, so many people. It felt like there were way more people here than in Rome, all stuffed into the same few blocks as everyone else. … Continue reading “First Impressions of Florence (Not Great)” →
While we were still in Umbria, we took a day trip out to Assisi, the home of Saint Francis. Our main motivation was to meet up with Christine’s host family from when she came here as a WWOOFer, working on a farm for little bit while we still lived in Lebanon and she had to leave the country anyway to renew her visa. But she also really just wanted to see Assisi. I had zero expectations and was quite taken by the beauty of the area. We spent most of our time having a delightful pranzo with the older couple, … Continue reading “Assisi, and a Pasta Lunch About Empire” →
One of the coolest things about Perugia is its extensive underground city, with Etruscan wells and Roman acropoli all stacked up on top of each other. This here is the Rocca Paolina, a Renaissance fortress built by Pope Paul III to flex his papal power in the region, that just happens to have a subterranean component because Il Papa had much of the area demolished to build the thing, turning ancient streets into underground passageways. And now, much of these are freely accessible from the Mini Metro station, which totally boggled my mind. x This series of photos represents one … Continue reading “Perugia’s Underground City” →
After Rome, we went north to Perugia, the little Umbrian city that Christine had fond and formative experiences in before we met; it was quite touching to walk down the winding memory lanes in this medieval town with her, and since I had no points of reference or narratives of my own for this place, I found myself drawn to the Escher-like tangle of the urban fabric itself. There was something oddly satisfying about the way the layers of history here fit together all higgledy-piggledy like a complex contraption of stone and light. Walking around these narrow streets, I wondered … Continue reading “A Trevi-Certified Promise (On to Perugia)” →
Checking out this and that in Rome’s Monti neighborhood, where the ancient and the hip are in dialogue, like in Federico Russo’s artwork. x “We felt permission to be fully ourselves. To express what we thought and felt without apology. To embrace our interests without self-consciousness. To exist with our little quirks without feeling out of place.” @christine.bingham.art just wrote a great summary of our shared reflections on Italy’s mysterious “italianissimo” for us—check it out on: christinebinghamart.substack.com x “Unexpected itineraries…” x It’s hard not to notice that we had the most luck on our trip with the sites that Christine … Continue reading “Roma Cristiana: Unexpected Itineraries in Monti” →