More fieldtrips than classes?
We spend the first few days of the week in the classroom talking about Firenze. The last few days of the week we spend looking at what we've been talking about. Here are some of the buildings we have been studying.
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Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge)
The Ponte Vecchio is the only bridge that wasn't bombed during WWII. The jewelry shops that can now be found on the bridge use to be the place where butchers and tanners worked. The Medici family didn't like the smells or business of the butchers and tanners on the bridge so they made them move and allowed jewelers to move onto the bridge. There is a private enclosed path that travels from the Palazzo Vecchio, over Ponte Vecchio, to Palazzo Pitti that was build by the Medici family. The reason for the path was protection to the fortified Palazzo Pitti. |
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Santa Croce (my favorite church in Firenze)
All sorts of cool dead people burried here. Michalangelo, Glilao, Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Machevellie all have relics in Santa Croce. Original church of St Francis of Assisi (Franciscan), they belive in the stripping of worldly goods and complete devotion to god. Santa Croce has a lot of early work done by Giotto (Nicole, Phil and Haily know what I'm talking about) and the Pazzi chapel is right off the first cloister to the south of the trancept. A scence from the movie Hanable was also filmed in this cloister. Amazing how much has happended in one place. |
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Michelangelo's New Sacristan at San Lorenzo
I could talk about this place forever but the new sacristan was commissioned to Michelangelo by Pope Leo the ten who was a Medici. the plan was to have four Medici buried here and Michelangelo was to design the place. This is where night, day, and dawn, dusk are located for the art historian that follow Michelangelo. It is amazing to learn about how he designed the space to move people visually. The statues that are in the room all point to one point where people would sit during the funeral service and everything that you see, walls, freezes, columns, windows, and the dome are all made to move your eye through the space up to the lantern of the dome where divine light enters the space. One of the building techniques that Michelangelo used was to build full scale models and drawing so that he could get a feel of what he wanted to do. One of these full size drawings can still be seen in the sacristan. It is believed that builders could take actual sized dimensions off of the drawing while they were building the room. Sorry Mom and Dad that I didn't know this when we went there. |
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Pallazo Rucellai
My school. The fun fact about this place is that the Rucellai family still lives up on the top floor of the building. The facade of the school was designed by Alberti and can be broken down into a rhythm of A A B A A B A A B A. What the Rucellai family did was slowly buy apartments around theirs and when they had enough to build their palace, they had Alberti design a facade and Loggia. The loggia is to the right and provides a public space in town. The loggia was also used for many of the Rucellai marriages. If you notice, the far right side of the palace isn't finished. The story goes that one of the Rucellai's was putting on the facade on all of the houses so that the family would have a palace. One of the uncles to the Rucellai that was building the facade would not sell his house to him so he couldn't finish the original facade design. What ended up happening was that they left the eighth bay off of the facade yet finished it enough to show that in the future, when the stubborn uncle died, the facade would be finished. |
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Santa Maria Novella
Facade designed by Leon Batisa Alberti for this Dominican church, Santa Maria Novella acts as one of the religious focal points in Firenze. The facade of this building has been influenced by other important buildings around Firenze. The Baptistry, located in Palazza de Flori has influenced Santa Maria Novella through the flattness of the facade and color pattern, and San Miniato in the overall form of the facade. Compairing these three buildings, it is easy to see the influence the Baptistry and San Miniato has had on Alberti's design at Santa Maria Novella. |
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Duomo
Once again, another building that I could talk along time about. What is important to know is that while this church was being built, Siena, Firenze's rival town was also building a new duomo. Word got back to Firenze that Siena's duomo was going to be bigger than the original design that Firenze was currently building. Mid-way through construction, Firenze desided to enlarge the floor print of the duomo considerably leaving a span where the transept and nave cross that would be unable to cover using conventional methods. The duomo continued to be built at the larger size with the understanding that they would confront the spanning problem when they got there. This is why Brunelleschi had such a daunting task as the copola. Oddly enough, Siena's Duomo (the one which forced the enlargement of Firenze's duomo) was never completly built due to insufficient funding. |
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San Miniato
San Miniato overlooks the city of Firenze on the hillside south of town. This church is the oldest and first church in Firenze to contain relics dating to the beginning of the 11th century. The great story behind San Miniato is that when Miniato was beheaded for being a Christian it has been said that Miniato got up, picked up his head and walked up to the church where he felt he should be buried. I couldn't tell you what relics are in the crypt of San Miniato but I hope that it isn't a decaying head |
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