Firenze - Blast from the Past

The first Italian city I set foot on was Firenze (Florence). What began as a journey towards the cradle of the Renaissance movement fascinatingly became a surreal trip down memory lane: readings, lectures and exams in school as well as late-night conversations over barako coffee and some bibingka (native dessert) with my Mom and Tita Luchi (a bonafide artist) on related topics. I couldn’t help acquiring a newfound appreciation for my teachers in art, literature, history, even music and Christian Life (religion)...more distinctly Miss Windor’s almost nagging reference to the “grandeur of Rome!" Back then, my classmates and I annoyingly thought, "what the fuss was all about!" It was only years after did I actually wholeheartedly agree with my high school English teacher on this count, as I walked through Firenze and watched storybooks, encyclopedia and still slide shows from a distant past come alive!

The Uffizi Gallery had my mouth gaping from start to finish. From Byzantine paintings of Madonnas and Children to influential works of Filippo Lippi (siya pala si Fra Lippo Lippi…all this time I thought that was just the name of an 80’s band!) to the ‘greater’ (or more famous…amongst trying-to-be-art-enthusiasts like yours truly) masterpieces of Botticelli, El Greco, Da Vinci, Raphael and, of course, Michaelangelo! Several of my companions and I had become instant fans of Michaelangelo after seeing his major works in Florence and Rome.

I was fortunate enough to have prebooked a guided tour of The Uffizi which allowed me to bypass queues that took hours to get into the museum. When we reached the Botticelli room, curiously there were long benches in the middle of the room. I suddenly understood why when I stood in front of “The Birth of Venus” and later on “La Primavera” My knees turned into jello when I saw these great pieces that I literally sank into a bench as I quietly admired the paintings. They had the same effect on my other tour groupmates. Our tour guide said, “Oh, don’t worry. We get that a lot. I think that’s why they have these benches. Take your time.”

My next and greater heart-stopping episode was at the Galleria dell'Accademia. By this time, I had rejoined Trang, Noy and Noi. Just when we thought we were getting the hang of and have had enough of Florentine artworks, we enter this room that had us screeching to a full stop. As in we halted for probably a good 5-10 minutes, 50 meters away from the legendary Michaelangelo sculpture of “David!” It’s not like we agreed “Ok let’s stop right here.” No, its perfectly imperfect beauty (David’s head and hands are disproportionately bigger than the rest of his body) simply demanded for a respectful, speechless pause. As we slowly approached this amazing piece of marble, we saw a number of “draft Davids” on both sides of the corridor.

I kept asking my friends, “How long will it take you to create something like that (the ‘final’ David) from a single slab of marble?!?” Initially, none of them would answer. Eventually, Trang exasperatedly said, “Forever!!!”

Me? Never. And Michaelangelo? Well, it only took him 2 years to sculpt David into perfection.

(Also check out Trang's blog on the same, entitled "David")