Without Baedeker Continued

I felt a lot like Lucy Honeychurch when we went into Santa Croce without any guide to what was there to see.  Sometimes I think that I get so guidebook dependent that I fail to truly enjoy just being in a place, so I did not read up on Santa Croce except that I knew that the Pazzi Chapel is reputed to be designed by Brunelleschi, the same man who designed the Duomo.  

"Of course, it must be a wonderful building.  But how like a barn!  And how very cold!  Of course, it contained frescoes by Giotto, in the presence of whose tactile values she was capable of feeling what was proper.  But who was to tell her which they were?  She walked about disdainfully, unwilling to be enthusiastic over monuments of uncertain authorship or date.  There was no one even to tell her which, of all the sepulchral slabs that paved the nave and transcripts, was the one that was really beautiful, the one that had been most praised by Mr. Ruskin.  Then the pernicious charm of Italy worked on her, and, instead of acquiring information, she began to be happy."

It's easy to surrender to that charm and just let things be.  And I have to say that the cold of the church was quite welcome because summer has decided to come to Florence - hot and humid.  And since we are in school all morning, we cannot do things in the cool of the day unless we wait until evening; that limits our time too much, so we are out in the afternoon sun.  Today the nave is filled with scaffolding and men are going up and down in elevators, drilling and cutting things with power tools.  But, isn't that part of the contemporary scene in every major city where they are trying to preserve the old by using new tools and techniques?  We see it all over Florence.  In the Bargello, they are scanning the Donatello's bronze David as he lies face down in a tent erected in the center of the room, so that he can be properly cleaned without destroying the good patina with the bad.

In the Bargello, we saw much wonderful sculpture and many gorgeous Della Robbia's.  Before I came on this trip, If you had asked me if I liked Della Robbia, I would have said, "No."  I don't tend to like what I think of as Italian heaviness in claywork.  But when I see the terra cotta reliefs, it is the color that blows me away - often an intense sky blue -  and the way he has captured the expressions of the subjects.  In italian, there are three words for blue - "azzurro" - the color of the sea,  "cielo" - the color of the sky, and "blu" - a deep blue.  When you are here, the need for more than one word to describe what we label "blue," is obvious.  No pictures were allowed, and though no one was around, we decided to respect the rule.

Ciao for now.