David

Hey all,

I have never been that interested in sculpture – have seen countless photos of David and pretty much just thought “Yep – it's a statue” - I wanted to go to the Medici Chapel more for the building than the sculptures in it, but like I mentioned before, they were amazing. Same thing happened today with David, but more so – you can appreciate the genius of his painting to a degree in a book or on a screen, but sculpture loses a whole dimension when reproduced in 2D – this is an obvious point and I am a bit embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me before – but then you see David and, again, it really is just that good. Had more life than the actual human beings you see dressed up as statues on the street – it felt like he was right on the edge of moving – it would not have shocked me overly much if he did. A colleague from work back home emailed me and said the same thing – that she had always been a bit whatever about it, until she saw it. Someone else emailed and told me how affected she had been by all the unfinished slaves – they are wonderful, unfinished, I suppose, but in the sense that one of the sculptures in the Medici Chapel is “unfinished” – they are the better for it I think – if you are going to sculpt slaves it kind of makes sense to have them caught forever struggling to get out of the rock that they are trapped in.

Anyway, after the Galeria Accademia I tried to walk to this big copper dome thing I have seen before and wanted to get to – it was right at the end of this street I came across and I thought I would make it but the street kind of dog-legged a bit and then I was trapped in alleys three floors high on either side and had no idea where the dome was any more, so never got there – but did find another little church – a lovely place, that was obviously still used more as a church than a photo-op, even though all the frescos and paintings would be in museums back home – it had this shaft of light coming through a window and landing right at the foot of the cross behind the altar, which was a nice moment.

Finally got home – Skype to K, homework, work-out (no monstrous bambini this time), then went for what turned out to be about a 5-6 hour walk – along the river for a while and then up to this church which is above the Piazza with the replica David, where I went to a couple of weeks ago and took some photos. Another 15 minutes or so up the hill there is a beautiful church, though really dark inside – finally found some actual candles to light rather than plug in – and a lovely place in front to sit for an hour or so and just admire the view – not quite as spectacular as the Piazza around the corner beneath it (you don't get any nice shots of the river) – but less people and just a lovely city to look at as the sun goes down.

Photos – the shaft of light on the cross – pretty happy with myself that I caught it – only took four goes balancing the camera on a pew so the flash didn't ruin the effect. Worth clicking on that one to see at full size. Then a bit of grass by the river – about 800 metres or so to the right is the Ponte Vecchio – loaded up with jewellery stores stacked up on either side and God knows how much money. Across the river is some exclusive something or other. If you look at the base of the tree in the foreground you can see a cardboard box someone has been sleeping on – there were quite a few of them here in this kind of off limits bit of grass. Another shot just outside the old city wall – again, if you look at the base of the tree to the right of the shot you can see where someone has stashed all their sleeping boxes. They don't have the dole here. Another just outside the wall – ancient wall, push-bikes padlocked to the fence in front of it, cars. Then two of a room in the church – I had this entire room to myself. If you click on the second of those two you can see this creepy black devil thing having some kind of interaction with one of the good-guys in white. No idea of the significance of this. The view from in front of the church, and the church itself – not a great shot of the church but interesting. You can see how the central bit is basically held up by the two sections on either side that are stepped down from it – this was before they had figured out the flying buttress but they are on the way – it was just a matter of someone going: “Hey – those side sections – they don't really need a roof, or walls for that matter – all they really need is the structural columns and then the struts to attach those columns to the wall.” Then they could build huge churches with huge windows and thin walls that no longer fell over, and flood them with light. You can see on the upper right wall of the old church the reason it is so dark inside – this is about as big a window as they were game to build.

All for today – Cheers, B.