Plans

Since I haven't written lately, I have to gloss most of what has been happening.  I am currently finishing two research papers, and I have one more left.  These are due next week, so I have spent most of the past two weeks working.  We finalized the plans for the church apartments today, and I am now managing them.  I will post a link to their website soon once I fix a few things on the site.  Activity for the Bronzino Conference should pick up as grants come due this summer, and the archaeological dig in Gaiole begins on May 15th.  After the dig, friends are coming to visit in early July.  Then it's Paris before house-sitting in Chiati during the ferragosto, when I plan to write my Master's thesis.  September brings more visiting friends and thesis work.  I head back to South Carolina for a week or so in late October to celebrate a friend's wedding.

Classes are nearly finished, though documents extends well into May, and I am glad about both.  Florence is beautiful, and when I am not writing away, I spend most of my time strolling and people-watching with friends or reading in the Boboli Gardens.  The girls have rediscovered their spring wardrobe, and life is good.  I have been studying at the Biblioteca Oblate, which has a open loggia on its roof that overlooks the cupola of Santa Maria del Fiore and gets lots of sun.  It's warm enough to start eating gelato, and I have grown to like particularly the amareno and ricotta and fig flavors.  I am growing my beard and gave myself a haircut today.  I was relatively successful.

Nukes

Regarding the nuclear disarmament talks in Russia, nuclear weapons should be better recognized for their contribution to world peace.  The Cold War would have been much hotter if the looming threat of nuclear war didn't exist.  It's that threat that prevents world powers from amassing troops for invasion, unless, of course, the country to be invaded does not have nukes of their own.  Regardless, conflict isn't going anywhere; it only must be more precise or covert.

Galleria Palatine

Over the past three weeks, my cohorts and I have met with the directors of the Uffizi, the San Marco Museum, and the Palatine Gallery at the Palazzo Pitti, where they gave us tours and explained the philosophy behind the museums and their organization.  Since these buildings were never originally conceived as public museums, their architecture and any decor or works left in situ present a singificant and obvious connection with the buildings' past.  In these museums, the amalgamation and display of their works become a work in itself.  Every museum creates a unique experience with its space, its collected works, and the classification, arrangement, and overall organization of its collection (issues with which modern theory has tremendous problems).  A museum in itself is open to examination as a form of art.

The Palatine Gallery was particularly interesting, as it was originally a private Baroque gallery whose current display remains true to its past.  There is hardly a foot of space between the pictures, which, stacked in heavy, gilded frames, reach from eye-level to the carved, golden ceiling.  Many of them are attached to the wall so that they may swing outwards in order to catch the sunlight, the only healthy source of illumination before the dawn of electricity.  Panels and canvases have been expanded or cut down to fit the measurements of frames or wall space; time periods are blended together to better express certain sentiments in different rooms; and the collection's greatest works are scattered so haphazardly that it can be hard to find them.  Without some form of guide, the Gallery, dominated by tastes and pholosophies of display of past centuries, would make little sense, but that fact lends it charm.

Otherwise, on my way back from the New Sacristy this morning, I saw Converse All-Star wedges.  What a stupid idea for a shoe.  I bet it will make millions, like Uggs or leggings.

New flatmate moving in tonight.  We're all making dinner once the vicar cleans me feet.  I'll be working for the majority of the weekend, except for Easter Sunday, when I have church and then Mexican Brunch with my fellow graduate students and TAs.  I refuse to eat Mexican Brunch on Easter, so I bought quarter a lamb today at the Mercato Centrale.  I am going to roast that puppy in a mustard, rosemary crust.  Isn't funny how all blogs devolve into food?

Back to Bronzino.

La costa di Jersey

Jersey Shore just debuted in Italy; this should be fun explaining this nugget of Americana. It was the first show I have seen here that hasn't been dubbed, only subtitled. Some bilingual genius in Italy's dubbing headquarters must have realized the impossibility dubbing Jersey Shore. It is trash in pure form. Nothing can be added or subtracted or it would lose its superlative quality.

Otherwise, cranking away on papers and quenching a wintery thirst for sunlight. How could anyone say that April is the cruelest month?

Un film

Silvia and I saw É Complicato (It's Complicated) last night.  No man should ever voluntarily see a romantic comedy or convince himself that the genre can be saved by excellent actors.  A romantic comedy is like having a crazy girlfriend: it involves wasting money and being uncomfortable as someone pleads for you to adopt their pink, petal-strewn vision of a mangled reality.  However, the movie redeemed itself insofar as it was dubbed in Italian, making it in excellent lesson in listening and comprehension.  Unfortunately, I understood it all, and now I know how to say vibrator in Italian.

I'm off to the Biblioteca Oblate to read about the Anglo-American ex-pat community in the late 19th century and early 20th century.

Uffizi & il corridoio di Vasari

On Monday afternoon, my cohorts and I met with Signore Natali for a private tour of the Uffizi.  The director discussed the reasoning behind the museum's display choices, the meaning of many of the pictures, and politics of running museums in Italy, which, as one would expect, are a goat rodeo.  The government dictates museum policy from Rome, essentially stripping directors of the majority of the power.  Museums can never let out certain paintings for exhibitions or other events, and the list of such works is constantly growing.  This is frustrating and a bit insulting for other museums and nations.  Moreover, Italy's major museums are swamped by tourists to the point that people cannot consider and appreciate works in a peaceful environment.  There are many works kept in museum storage that need to be restored.  Some are still untreated since the flood of 1966, and they may never be because of the expenses of time and money.  In fact, the restoration studios in Florence are no longer offering full-time contracts while letting many of their senior restorers retire without refilling these positions.  The economy is not in a position to support the arts, and a large percentage of restorations are being funded by the American organization Friends of Florence, based out of Palm Springs.  I believe that this city would be crippled without foreign dollars.

However, walking through the empty Uffizi and listening to the director speak about the works he loves dearly, especially the Leonardos, was wonderful.  Later, he opened the Vasari corridor to us, and we took it from the Uffizi to the Palazzo Pitti.  Inside are portraits and self-portraits by celebrated artists that reach back to the Renaissance.  The corridor is normally closed to the public, and it was a rare opportunity to access it.

Urbino, Piero, Laurana, e Federigo

Great weekend: Arezzo, San Sepulchro, Urbino, Monterchi, and Remini to see most of Piero della Francesco's works.  I gained a new appreciation for Piero della Francesca.  His art is far before its time: he dabbles with form and abstraction in a manner that does not emerge until the 19th century.  In my opinion, Piero explores these questions of vision and representation more subtly and beautifully than modern artists who exclusively focus on them.  Not discounting his other works, I particularly enjoyed seeing The Resurrection of Christ in San Sepulcher and The Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle in Arezzo.

In Urbino, we saw the Flagellation of Christ, likely Piero's most famous work, but the palace itself impressed me the most.  The structural archictect, Luciana Laurana, created the palazzo with such proportions that each room and hall has a great sense of space, airiness, and light.  There is also speculation that he painted the Ideal City panel, which I believe, but I doubt that he did it alone.  At any rate, the panel shows his calm, rational approach to architecture.  Outside of the palace, in the courtyards and gardens, Laurana used evening-colored sandstone (which is very similar in color to the stone at Sewanee) and white marble, which create a much stronger sense of warmth than the coolness of the pietra serena used in Florence and the travertine in Rome.

It is said that Duke Federigo hold audience with anyone and never needed bodyguards.  His citizens loved him, and he could walk through the city alone without being disturbed.  Federigo created a court composed of many of the leading intellectuals and artists of his time.  Kenneth Clark, a famous English art historian, said that in the late 15th century, Urbino was the most civilized place on Earth.  The sense still lingers in the ducal palace.