26 Sept - The David

Somehow it must be in their blood. I spotted a cabbie speeding down the street as he hollered with visible contempt into the cell phone he held in one hand while the other hand was busy waving frantically through the air. Minor deet but let me point out that no limb was anywhere near the steering wheel. Speaking animatedly with one's hands: nature or nurture?





What an achievement to jam so many serious works of art and architecture into a few square kilometres. There simply wasn't enough time to visit the Uffizi but the Galleria dell'Academia was a must. David with his gorgeous oversized hands, arms and head...Michaelangelo was no hack, he knew exactly what he was doing. The sculpture was originally commissioned at the height of the Renaissance to stand tall outside the Duomo where it could be spotted from afar. Michaelangelo knew he needed to make David's head and limbs disproportionately large so as to be visible from a distance. Anyway, these are the hands that grabbed Goliath by the Adam's apple, crumpled him into a little ball and spit him out in the gutter. It's only fitting those hands should be big, almost unwieldy.







In my humble opinion, the uncontested crown jewel of Firenze has got to be the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, better known as Il Duomo. The huge cathedral is an astounding work with the exterior built of a stunning pastiche of green, pink and white marble along with an enormous assortment of fantastically ornate tools from the Gothic vocabulary of architecture. Started in the late 13th C, its construction spans fully 6 centuries, as hard as it is to fathom. The two sets of bronze doors alone took Ghiberti over 50 years to complete, a feat that earned him kudos from a fellow artist known to be very stingy with his praise: Michaelangelo was quoted as saying they were so exquisite they could serve as the Gates of Paradise.