Merry Christmas to all my faithful readers! I remember joking that I had enough blogging material from our European trip to last until the end of the year, but now I think I might even run over...I mean, I'm not even to the Danube River cruise yet! At any rate, thanks for your patience, and I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas day with friends and family.
More free Florence sights!
All concentrated in one great urban space, the Piazza della Signoria.
Most of what I'm going to show you about this square is old and classical, but I do need to comment on the big, very contemporary piece at the center of the photo above. We didn't know it at the time, but it had only just arrived in the Piazza a couple of weeks before we did. It's a temporary work by a Swiss sculptor and is called Big Clay #4.
We thought it perhaps looked like a pile of something other than clay, but it is interesting. Plus, it provides welcome seating for tired tourist feet.
And you can eat there, which you can't do, as I embarrassingly discovered after not paying attention to the signs, in the shadier and more comfortable Loggia dei Lanzi.
This is where most of my favorite sculptures were located.
Like the amazing Rape of the Sabine Women...
The beauty of these sculptural displays (in addition to their being free!) is that it's easy to walk all around them and see them from every angle...
As disturbing as the subject matter is, you have to admire the artistry that created these figures that seem to move. There's even a bronze bas-relief of the same subject on one of the columns leading into the Loggia; lots of motion here, too:
I loved getting to see another favorite in three dimensions: Cellini's Perseus. First, you can get an idea of the piece's display context here...
...and then from the other side...
In the background of the second Perseus shot, you can see another famous piece, Hercules and Cacus, which is outside of the Loggia...
For some reason, I didn't get a close-up of Hercules' more famous partner on this side of the Piazza (which is a copy of the original; you can see a much bigger copy here)...
Two more dramatic scenes that are quite beautiful finish out my brief review of this wonderful space...
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| Menelaus Carrying the Body of Patroclus |
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| Abduction of Polissena |
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| another look at Polissena... they did go in for abduction themes, didn't they? |
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| Tuscan Man |
2 comments:
The sculptures are beautiful, but sheesh, so very disturbing, especially for women.
It really is something you just sort of have to block out, and enjoy them as art.
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