The day began incredibly early, as we had to meet at Piazza Indipendenza at 8:00 am. As that's about a twenty five minute walk for me, I had to get up at like, 3 am (this is only a slight exaggeration). We all clambered onto a bus there and drove for about an hour to the town of Vinci, where our most famous Leonardo was born. There we visited the Museo Leonardiano, or the Leonardian Museum. I find that name rather funny. The majority of the exhibits there were miniature reconstructions of Leonardo's inventions from his drawings. There were drawings and machinery made by other smart men as well, but they were basically all for building cathedrals, making textiles, or hammering gold into gold leaf.
These are some constructs for building cathedrals -- basically they're very complicated wooden gears and pulleys to move big big stones.
Check out this nifty clock! I can't remember if Leonardo designed it or not! But it's pretty nifty!
Vitruvian Man sculpture. You know, tons of people actually drew their own Vitruvian Men, but Leonardo's is the only famous one.
After Vinci, we took the bus out to Anchiano, where Leonardo's birth house is. When we got there, though, it turned out that someone was having their wedding there, strangely enough. We sort of hovered awkwardly on the sidelines, all 46 of us, until my professor bullied someone into letting us see the interior of the house. We were there for about half an hour too long because of the wait, which was rather annoying, and as cool as it was to see the House Where Leonardo Was Actually Born, we could have just looked at the outside and gotten the same experience. Still, there was a lovely view from the mountain atop which the house was perched, as you can see in this fantastic photo.
After we left Leonardo's boyhood home, we went to the Medici villa of Poggio a Caiano, the country home most associated with Lorenzo the Magnificent and his Golden Age of Florence. This was a very beautiful house, and we got to have about 10 minutes of lunch in front of it, which was nice. Very much like the Palazzo Vecchio, this place was positively covered in beautiful art -- paintings and frescoes galore, as well as some nice sculpture. Of course, it was acquired by Vittorio Emanuele in the 19th century, and he added quite a lot of decoration, so nothing was quite in its original state. I also couldn't take any photos of the interior, but let me just say: it was pretty badass.
The view from the terrace in front of the villa, the villa itself, and the stream in the back of the house. Someone wrote a fable about a nymph named Ambra who lived in that stream.
To address the title of this post I have to say that I was doing a lot of yawning while we were inside, but simply because I was very very tired, not because I was bored. My professor is a very talkative woman who probably has not forgotten anything in her entire life, and so we heard possibly the entire history of every single piece of art we came across. It took a while.
Poggio a Caiano also has a pretty horrible story behind it: Duke Francesco I and his wife Bianca Capello were most likely murdered there in October of 1587. Nobody likes the Medicis very much, or at least not enough to allow them to live past their 30's. Examination of Francesco's body recently has shown that he was most likely poisoned with arsenic, and as Bianca died the day after him, she probably was too. Not so pleasant.
We had a nice jaunt around the villa at 1:30, then finished our lunch and peeked at the garden, then went back inside to see the huge collection of still lifes -- or nature morte -- on the third floor of the villa. We left at 3:00 for our next stop, and you can imagine by this time that we were all really tired.
AFTER Poggio a Caiano, we went to Castello, another of the Medici villas. We had a nice walk around the garden there, because the house isn't open to visitors, at least I assume it isn't otherwise our professor would have used any means possible to get us in to see the Very Interesting Things. There is a cool grotto and waterworks in the garden, but as they are under renovation, and have been for the past ten years, we didn't get to see them. I was okay with this though, because I'd already seen a very fantastic grotto and waterworks at the Peterhof Palace in St. Petersburg two years ago. From what I could see of the grotto here, it was much the same. I know this sounds a little jaded, but I was bone tired and had already seen many wonderful works of art.
Despite my slight grumpiness, the garden at Castello really was beautiful.
AFTER Castello, we walked about 20 minutes to see Petraia, another of the Medici villas. They had many many villas. We waited around for a while until we could get in to see the house. It is at this point that I have to address a flaw in my personality that I don't especially like, but as it came up during this trip I feel I should probably talk about it.
I have made a few friends here already, some nice people who are fun and easy going and get my jokes. As they are friendly people, they are fun and easy going and get the jokes of several other people. These included two girls, who I will describe thusly. They've got big eyes, big mouths, big hair, big voices, and other features that are large. This will sound mean, but these two girls did not strike me as the sharpest tools in the shed. They're dumb. And loud. And really, really disrespectful of the beautiful places we visited. They took pictures where we were strictly told not to, held up the group by buying ridiculous tourist junk, and stole fruit and flowers from the gardens. At one point I just turned to one of them, we shall call her Big Girl B, and said "Stop that. You can't do that." And, because I am a huge nerd and goodie two shoes, I said "Haven't you ever heard of 'take only pictures, leave only footprints'?" She of course looked at me with her big ole eyes like I was a dumbass, but damnit, I hate it when people act like this. She and her compatriot, Big Girl A, are the reason why people hate tourists, and one reason why I feel like four months is a long, long time.
Anyway, Petraia was gorgeous, and because I am a goodie two shoes I didn't take any pictures inside. Let me just say, it was fabulous and I wished that I could live there*. The garden was beautiful too, and there was a wonderful fountain statue made by Giambologna**, who is considered to be the second Michelangelo. The fountain is an allegorical representation of Florence emerging from the Arno (the big river), wringing her hair out. In the days when the fountain worked, water dripped from the end of it, and it was quite lovely.
Florence in all her bronze-y majesty and two shots of the garden. The sunlight was lovely at 5 pm. That was something to see, especially because you could see the dome of the Duomo in the distance from this garden. MAN.
After that, we got to go home. I was so tired after that long day that I went to bed at 10:30, which is quite early for me. It was a pretty nice trip, but...
I'm sitting here, covered in scabs from mosquito bites, thinking about the strange homework I have to do***, wondering why the brand new computer that I love is giving me a blue screen every hour or so****, wishing I could use the washing machine (I am 3rd in line after my two room mates, and we all have to use the little drying rack in the kitchen), hating that I'm 6 hours ahead and approximately 4,158 miles away from all the people I am missing, and hating myself a bit for not being happy.
*Except I don't want to live there because I'd still be all alone.
**He also made the beautiful statue that's in front of the Palazzo Vecchio, The Rape of the Sabine Woman. It's gorgeous.
***My Italian Fashion teacher is making me a. weave fabric and b. design an entire collection. Well, I'm stumped.
****And neither I nor the most computer loving of boyfriends can discern what the problem is.
No comments:
Post a Comment