Musing with Max: L'arte di Firenze

When I was a kid and my aunt went on her 3 month whirlwind tour of Europe she returned with a book on every museum she had visited. She brought three solely on the David. I became obsessed. I pored over these pages with the closeups of all the different parts of that most perfect of statues. The curls in his beautiful hair, his perfect not quite aquiline nose, beautiful full lips, his too large hand with every vein and knuckle carved so perfectly human. The fingernails, his feet, his toes, the perfect body and tilt. The look in his eyes. How could a mere human (although Michelangelo doesn't fall into the mere category) carve something so magnificent with a hammer and chisel out of a big giant slab of marble? Regardless of everything else he did, this was his grand masterpiece! (And if you'd like to find out more you can find out here in this brilliant piece recently in the New York Times Magazine). So with all of the art that there is in Florence, and there's a LOT, if there was one piece I had to see was the David. In person, as close as I could possibly get without the alarms going off. Before we left for Italy we bought "skip the line tickets" for our first morning there for "Accademia dell'arte" where the David resides. This allowed us entry one hour before opening and the tour crowds with their umbrella yielding guides. We were to meet our tour operator in front of the "reserved" entrance at 10:00 AM to get our tickets. We walked over, a ten minute walk, (why is everything in Italy a ten minute walk? I could live with that!) found the woman in the yellow vest got our tickets and were told to go to the end of the line to the right, this was the "skip the line" line. Huh?

The line against the wall is the regular line, we're in the middle of the street and believe me I monitored our progress as to who got in first! It took 45 minutes and we did! Breezed through security (that was part of our exorbitant ticket price) and walked in. Where is he?????? He is not in the main room when you walk in, we looked at each other, FIND HIM, NOW!!!!! We moved into the room on our left and suddenly, in the distance, standing on a pedestal (well-deserved) with a skylight above him bringing in the natural light stands pure perfection.

There are few people around him, other reserved entry holders, and I'm able to get close,

and walk around and stare in complete awe of this phenomenal piece of work. And up close I can see all that detail I had obsessed over in those beautiful books and he's absolutely gorgeous! I walked around and around, luckily was allowed to take pictures. (Because of phones they've changed this rule, you couldn't before, NO FLASH, NO SELFIE STICKS). I sat here there and everywhere and just stared. I don't remember how long but I finally tore myself away,

after all there are other works in this museum! Mostly religious and other unfinished Michelangelo works,

which pale in comparison, but they are unfinished. There's also a beautiful section on musical instruments in this very small and intimate museum. Hard to concentrate on anything else though so we're finished with art for today.

We'll just traverse through the nooks and crannies....