Florence Day 2 - All the Museums

After getting our bearings during our first day in Florence, it was time to hit the museum circuit.

Our first stop was the Uffizi which focuses (generally) on paintings during the Renaissance period. Now, I'm going to try and throw some art history your way as I understand it... so take this with a grain of salt, but you should know that Rick (Steves) taught me everything I know.

Basically, Florence was a very successful city in the late 1300s and a handful of events in that decade had precipitated changes towards a society of humanism (basically a "we can do it!" attitude) and artistic realism.  Large amounts of wealth in the city also led to people looking for leisure items, in particular the Medici family.  So your art went from things like this in 13th century (don't remember what it's called):

You can see that it's:  

1.  Super religious.  

2.  Not very detailed.  

3.  Has little depth (no background, foreground, etc.)

To paintings that looked like this in the 1400s (this is La Primavera by Botticelli)

This painting is supposedly an allegory to the coming of Spring.  So here things are a lot less religious and even have some mythology/sexuality thrown in (Venus is in this painting and the three women's intertwined fingers on the left had some dirty meaning according to Rick).  One of the more important parts is that the figures are anatomically accurate.  More details here if you want to hear from a pro.

In general, we liked the Uffizi.  There wasn't one piece of art that really stuck out, but our tour did a good job of demonstrating the difference in the times (the start of the Renaissance) and got us talking about what art means to society (which was continued over wine).  

We did get to look at a lot of art from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and these jokes are officially not old yet (will keep you updated).

After the Uffizi, we grabbed some lunch (pizza? probably) and went to the Galileo History of Science Museum.  I will admit, I was pumped for science museum and... a little disappointed when it became clear this was history of science museum.  Nonetheless, we saw some very cool old maps (cartography) and instrumentation tools (history of forceps was not my (anybody's?) favorite)

Our last museum for the day was the Accademia which is code for the "the place David is".  Michelangelo sculpted David in the early 1500s and at 14 feet tall, all the hype was warranted for David.  It's hard to explain why David seemed inspirational, but I think Michelangelo nailed it.

We finished our day with an upscale (for-us) dinner at Antica Trattoria da Tito.  A very worthwhile restaurant with great (loud) music in Florence.  Here's Shannon digging into the best gnocchi of our lives.