July 30, 2013
Sleep
was great last night – all this traveling is exhausting!
We
walked down the hill to the Galleria dell’Accademia where I had made
reservations to see Michelangelo’s David.
The line wasn’t long thanks to the reservation, but I was very sad to
not be able to take pictures of all of the wonderful pieces in the museum!
When we
finally made it to David, I was really impressed. He was much bigger and more
majestic than I anticipated. We watched
a couple videos about David including how Michelangelo was not initially
commissioned to make the statue. At
least two other sculptures were commissioned to make the piece for the church
and they all abandoned the project before spending much time on it. Michelangelo normally went to the marble
quarries and selected his own marble, but he agreed to make this piece, despite
it having already been started. It took
him 4 years instead of the 2 years that were given to him to complete the
piece. It was finished in 1504. When it was done, they had to destroy the
arches to the courtyard where it was built so that the 40 men could push the
statue out to the plaza where it would sit.
The
original David, in the museum has been restored. Blemishes, holes, and cracks have been
matched in colour and filled with plaster in order to strengthen the weak
points as well as improve its artistic integrity.
We also
walked through the area where plaster castings are stored for famous marble
statues. It was interesting to learn the
laborious process to make a marble statue.
First the sculpture makes it in clay.
Then it is molded with plaster.
After this initial mold is separated and pieced together, then it is
remoulded with more plaster from inside the first mould. Then this mould (which now looks like the original
clay sculpture) is cleaned and measured.
The measurements are taken using nails and dimensions between points to
ensure the distances and basically the mould’s topography is translated onto
the marble. It is pretty scientific,
which impressed me.
We were
going to make another attempt to visit the Cathedral, but the line to enter it
was around the entire building, which is a little bit crazy! Instead we found this cute little bakery
where they were selling meringues the size of my head. Literally.
So I had to have one and I could not even finish it with Shawn’s
help!
Now
that we knew that the replica David was located outside of the Uffizi, we
walked back there to take more pictures.
Hard to miss, really…
Currently
it is a million degrees out…we are sitting on the shaded balcony at the hostel,
looking at the Florence skyline and listening to the cicadas chirping
away! We are going to have pasta here at
the hostel tonight before making our “night walk” up to the quieter viewpoint
we found last night.
A very
nice, relaxing day!
-Allison
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