I didn't get to go anywhere the past weekend (because of my tight budget for this month), but I did get to catch up on much needed studying and general down time. Besides, it's always a treat to walk around Florence and appreciate the fact that I'm living in such an architecturally varied and historically significant city. I took this time to explore the indoor market near San Lorenzo, where I bought both dried coconut and fresh foccacia bread and Milanese salami slices for my lunch that weekend. The outdoor market was really interesting too- all of the leather goods and inexpensive scarves to be bought! If I wasn't concerned with the bella figura before, I sure am now.
This week's tour took us to the Cathedral Museum (or, better understood, the place to check out the history of the Duomo). Here we learned about the original façade of the Duomo (the present one is actually only a couple of centuries old!), which was begun by Arnolfo di Cambio in 1296, but due to civil war between Black and White factions and Arnolfo's death, was never finished as intended. It was only until around 1887 that Emilio de Fabris completed it as a much newer plan dictated.
Inside the museum, we witnessed a surprising amount of sculpture from the façade. From the central tympanum, we saw Madonna and Child with Santa Reparata (both by Arnolfo) and St. Zenobius (Anonymous). Additionally, the left and right tympanums gave us Dormition of the Virgin and Virgin of the Nativity, both by Arnolfo. Donatello's St. John the Evangelist and Nanni di Bianco's St. Luke were extracted from the façade as well.
We also learned here that Giotto had originally been in charge of the Campanile's (or Bell Tower's) construction, but only finished the base in result of his death in 1337. Andrea Pisano continued the construction, adding pilasters and statue niches to the tower, followed by Francesco Talenti who finally completed the project, though altering the design from a pointed spire to a flat top. The beginning row of panels on the bell tower were made by Pisano and are Gothic, while the ending five panels on the first row were made by Luca della Robbia and are Early Renaissance. The second row of panels are a compilation by Pisano and Orcagna displaying the planets, virtues, liberal arts and sacraments.
Brunelleschi's Dome (the cupola of the Duomo) is made up of two shells bound together by eight buttresses and sixteen intermediate ribs."The Opera de Duomo, who oversaw the construction, held a contest to see who could solve the riddle of how to put a top on the cathedral. They received several entries with creative ideas that included filling the center of the cathedral with dirt and building the dome on top of that, to placing supports within the cathedral, but it was Brunelleschi who went to the Opera with drawings, but a secretive plan where he said he could build the dome without supports, but he wouldn't elaborate." (obscure.org)At the time, such a feat of engineering was revolutionary and it wasn't until much later that we discovered the secret to Brunelleschi's design (chiefly, the support of wooden ribbing and herringbone brick patterning to hold up the massive dome). His dome was the first freestanding one in Western Europe.
It was also in the Cathedral Museum that we saw Donatello's Mary Magdalen, Prophets, Zuccone and Cantoria. Donatello's occasional penchant for being untraditional can be best seen in Mary Magdalen and Zuccone. In both he throws out aesthetic appeal in exchange for a focus on the psychological aspect of the figure.
Bibliography
[obscure.org] http://www.obscure.org/~perky/uofr/fall2002/ISYS203U/Duomo_Site/construction.html
No comments:
Post a Comment