Florence Cultural Heritage Week

Yesterday afternoon I suddenly realised that it was Cultural Heritage Week and all the state museums were free. As I had just received my Codice Fiscale from the Italian government, I felt I ought to join in the hunt for culture which all of us are expected to discover this week. I live bang in the middle of everything so I decided to walk north instead of west, east and south directions I had been investigating recently. This took me to the Galleria dell’Accademia. To my amazement, the entrance was completely free of anybody waiting and I simply walked straight in. The waiting is probably due to the fact that there is usually only one person selling tickets. So I usually have to wait even though my ticket will be free.

The Galleria dell’Accademia is, like all the other galleries, stuffed full of precious masterpieces. It’s obscene that there is so much great work here!! It’s difficult to appreciate so much in such a limited amount of space. The later sculpture gallery has pieces almost touching each other.

It’s Michelangelo’s work that most of us have come to see. The unfinished works have always fascinated artists from Vasari onwards. “Water draining out of a bath” is Vasari’s account of the way Michelangelo gradually “releases” his figures from the marble”. Others comment on the “struggle” to release the figures from the stone. I’ve always thought that they were simply unfinished work by the master and nothing else. But when you look at them passively without interpretation, you do feel some energy coming out of the unfinished work which is very different from the finished pieces.

At the end of the large gallery, ‘the ‘ David, which we all know and have come to see, stands surrounded by a few admirers who simply stand gazing then sit down almost hypnotised by the view they have seen so often in books.

It’s magnificent. It’s big. This David has only a slingshot and very long fingers. It’s quite a shock to behold such a sight.

There’s also a tiny musical instrument gallery showing a few of the early Cristofori instruments which lead to his invention of the piano in Florence. The original Cristofori “piano e forte” action is displayed along with the first ‘upright’ piano – a grand piano simply turned up into the air!!!

The gallery is next to the university and near the Chiesa San Marco. The roof of this church seems held up by scaffolding but it is the most elegant scaffolding I have ever seen.. The poles are painted with a nice gleaming dark antique navy blue whilst the fittings holding the structure together are painted in gold!!

This morning I awake determined to do the government proud and seek out even more cultural heritage. This will be a complete day of culture – not that any others haven’t been similar of course!

I have to buy some bread and fish in the Central Market so I decide to visit the Medici Chapel nearby. This is a section of San Lorenzo. But the Capella del Principe is a shock. It is SO sumptuous and, for me, completely ‘over the top’ . The dark hues of the adornments emphasise this for me. The Sagrestia Nuova is very different. It’s smaller for a start. Two similar tombs by Michelangelo face each other across an area which feels more like a room than a Sacristy. They are not too overbearing in this small space. The subject of each tomb sits at the top – one is portrayed as a general with figures representing day and night below (‘Night’ is a lady with a shining body signifying moonlight, Isn’t that nice?) – the other for a duke, known as the ‘thoughtful ‘(Pensieroso), has the character thinking (surprise, surprise!!!) but still dressed in the headgear and some robes of a general. This time we see dawn and dusk below him.

I view some of the ‘treasure’ in a small room which has one of those huge thick steel doors I’ve only seen in Hollywood films about bank robberies. The richness of these items is beyond belief. I suppose it employed artists of distinction but it often disturbs me a little as it emphasizes the extreme wealth of those who commissioned all this work (as if the whole of Florence didn’t do this!!!!)

I remember doing some work on the King’s Music Collection (so-called from the early Hannover Kings) in the North Library of the British Museum in London (Many years ago!!!). I was studying a piece by J.C. Bach; the “English Bach’. (He was called ‘John Bach’ – sounds Welsh to me – and he lived in Soho Square with Karl Abel. Mozart learned a lot from him on a visit there and one of ‘Mozart’s early symphonies’ was a note-for-note copy of an Abel symphony with clarinets added) When I was laying the leather-bound volumes out on the table (there was no score) a piece of embroidered material fell out of one of the volumes. It was a programme of a royal concert at Windsor. But every word of the programme had been embroidered on the material. It was a work of art with elaborate decorations added. I couldn’t imagine how long it must have taken to do the work on that list of music. As I had been living on bakedbeans for the previous three years (It’s OK. I didn’t know about vitamins then; otherwise I would have died I’m sure. But I did have very low cholesterol as a result) and, for some reason, I felt for the person who did that work. This is the same feeling I had when I gazed at a little of the Medici ‘treasure’.

Fleeing from all that, I go to the market where, much to the delight of the lady from Balzano (if you come up the right aisle) or Bozen, Sud Tyrol, (if you arrive from the left) I buy a segment of her dark bread, This is very bitter bread but I know it will go well with the wild boar thing, the salami, and the wine which I have been ordered to drink with it. I also buy far too much fish. The salami is delicious but I am still a little doubtful about the wild boar thing. I sneak slices of translucent Reggione into my lunch; everything in the world is lovely and world peace is assured.

Later in the afternoon I decide that Palazzo Pitti is my next excursion. Free entrance should mean no waiting there either. Wrong!!! There is an enormous line stretching about 50 metres into the outer courtyard and it is pouring with rain. The covered section has a barrier which forces the people to line up almost in single file. Guardians sit watching all this and do not notice me walking in the exit backwards. But I come out again and decide there are far too many people there. I leave a very crowded palace in the rain.

I cross back to the north side of the river via the Ponte Vecchio and wander almost randomly through the streets until I reach a large building with “Entrance Free this week” written on a sign outside. It’s the Bargello! On the ground floor is one of Michelangelo’s early works – Bacchus looking very drunk with a satyr more sensibly eating grapes with some considerably evident delight.

Upstairs, once again there are heaps of stuff and I am drunk yet again with a superfluity of art, You never see just one of something in collections like this . You see hundreds of everything. There are what I call ceramic artworks, ivory carving, small beautiful metal pieces. medallions,some beautiful early Persian carpets … and so on.

Probably the best known item here is Donatello’s ‘David’ with his foot over the head of Goliath but holding a sword. I must say that I also like the ‘David’ by Verrocchio. This ‘David’ looks almost nonchalant with a smaller sword and a much more weary head of Goliath.

It is still raining when I leave the Bargello but, as my apartment is only three minutes walk away, this is not a worry, My only problem is to decide whether to go to the concert of ‘I Soloisti Fiorentini’ or just go downstairs to the concert next door in ‘my’ chapel.

I decide on ‘I Soloisti Fiorentini’ and set off twenty minutes before the performance but I cannot find the venue! (I’m not going to write down the venue here because you’ll just google it and say “Deh!! Isn’t he stupid!!). I’m on my way back to my local concert when I spot someone in a little hole in the wall of Orsanmichele. I ask him what he is doing and he tells me that he is selling tickets for a performance. “But Orsanmichele is locked’ I say.”That’s correect. It’s in the building over the road”. I’m a sucker for anything so I buy a ticket out of curiosity.

The sign on the building across the road is translated I suppose as the Dante Institute. Their bit for the Cultural Heritage Week is to put on a concert of music that Dante might have heard had he not been lusting after Beatrice. It’s being given by the Quintetto Polifonico Italiano Clemente Terni in the Palagio dell’ Arte della Lana, Sala Francesco Mazzoni.

I arrive about ten minutes late to find about twenty people sitting a large high room with decaying frescos everywhere. We wait about half an hour before some incredibly important people come in and start giving speeches explaining why they are so important.

At last they sit down and the television camera that had been taking the speeches disappears. The singers are at last allowed on to the stage where they give a wonderful performance of early music of which I have never heard the like. It is sung with so much expression.!! The most curious thing is that after singing music with essentially just one thread of melody, they sing a homophonic encore.

I notice five bouquets by the side of the stage. Only incredibly important academics would leave the performers’ bouquets in a bucket by the side of the stage. But nobody appears to give them their bouquets; even after the encore. As I left, I noticed that they were still there.