Day 12: Part 1

Howdy,

I woke up this morning with a sore throat, feeling exhausted. I looked down at the sheet that covers my mattress and it was all bunched up underneath me...I guess I didn't sleep so well. All morning I was just a zombie. I felt physically and emotionally drained and it was apparent in the way I looked. Geoff kept cracking dumb jokes to cheer me up, and I really appreciated that. He made a good dent.

We had to walk clear across the city to the monastery of San Marco to meet Dr. Zaho at 9am. Once everyone was there we walked around the side of it to a small little cloister that was once attached to a church. It was called Chiostro Dello Scalzo, and it was here that Chelsea gave her presentation. It was a relatively small space filled with a monochromatic fresco cycle about the life of John the Baptist. There was also a bust of a man that looked remarkably like Bill Murray. The frescoes were beautiful, and there was really cool skull imagery everywhere; on the bases of the columns and at the top of the fresco cycle all the way around. At some point I realized I really needed to use the bathroom, because I had been drinking water all morning to rid myself of this sore throat. So we left the cool space and headed to the monastery where we could use the bathroom before looking at a series of devotional images in their cells.

After we got our tickets and had ALL used the bathroom (that took a while with 12 girls and only 2 stalls), we headed up a staircase to see a series of devotional frescoes by Fra Angelico in the dormitory cells. The first fresco, an Annunciation scene, is visible as soon as you walk up the staircase. It was there to remind the monks why they were there. This is definitely my favorite image of the Annunciation. It's simple and clean and the wings of the archangel Gabriel glitter in the sunlight. After discussing this piece, we made our way through the halls to look at the images in each individual cell. Of those, the Mocking of Christ is my favorite. It shows an image of Christ seated and blindfolded, holding a stick and an orb, being beaten and spit on by floating heads and hands. He looks calm while taking this beating and accepts it gracefully. Though I'm not religious, I found it inspiring.

Next we walked through the library of the monastery, now just a hall with a few cases featuring illuminated manuscripts. Some of the illustrations were gilded with gold and had large floral expressions on them, while others had tightly drawn geometric designs. All we magnificent. We then went down to the gift shop to look at the Last Supper scene by Ghirlandaio that's on that wall. It looks almost identical to the second Last Supper scene we saw. Next we walked through a few rooms showing pieces by Fra Angelico and other artists from the same period. Once we were done with that, we left and walked down the street to the Cenacolo of Saint Apollonia.

The Cenacola of Saint Apollonia, like Chiostro Dello Scalzo, was completely empty when we entered. This place bears a Last Supper scene by Andrea del Castagno. It's amazing. It has these incredible faux marble panels painted in behind Jesus and his apostles, with a black and white checkerboard ceiling and a funky red and white floor. It's just so different from the others we've seen. And Judas looks so creepy with a very devil-ish long chin and crooked nose. I love it.

At this point, the group split up to get our own respective lunches around town. Katia and I made the trek back to the apartment so I could get some much needed medicine. My throat was hurting worse than before and it was a bit of a pain to talk. So we made our way back to Via dei Macci and stopped at the Forno, the bakery around the corner, the grab lunch. I got a small pizza and a chocolate chip muffin. I heated up the pizza in the oven when I got home and it was delicious. We had maybe 30 minutes to eat and relax a little bit. I took some medicine and we left yet again.

On both the walks to and from the apartment, Katia and I had a fair number of fancy cars speed past us and a lot of people excited to take pictures of them. We haven't figured out what's really going on yet, but I think there's a car show in town or something.

This time we were reunited with everyone in front of Palazzo Medici, the palace that the Medici family had built just a stone's throw from the Duomo in 1444. We went in, talked about the courtyard a bit, then headed for the Medici family's personal chapel. Per museum regulations, we only got 7 minutes in there despite the fact that it's a small room covered floor to ceiling in a very detailed fresco cycle. Well, I guess when I put it that way it makes it sound necessary to push us out fast. But whatever. It was a beautiful fresco cycle by Benozzo Gozzoli (say that out loud, it's fun) depicting the Journey of the Magi. This scene wraps around the entire room with each magi on a respective wall with the fourth wall dedicated to the altar, an image of the Virgin adoring the newborn Jesus. So in a really cool way, the three magis were visually heading toward that scene.

When we got shooed out of there, we walked through a few cool looking rooms and ended up in a gorgeous room that looked very Baroque, though I don't know any details because we just walked in and sat down to stare at everything while a woman explained the decor to a tour group in Italian. Naturally I tuned out her voice and just looked at all the fine details around me. Where to begin. There was gold detailing all over the white walls; faces protruding underneath the wall lamps, gold garland above that, and just gold stuff everywhere. I don't know how to explain it. There were also four big mirrors with painted images of cherubs doing an assortment of things. On the first one, there was a big bouquet and a cherub holding a goat. The second had a fountain, the third had a big gold mirror, and the forth had long grasses and birds. Don't worry, I took pictures with every one of them. The ceiling was the most stunning part of the room, though. It was curved and entirely covered with beautiful frescoes chronicling the passage of man through life. It used countless mythological references to tell the story. There was honestly too much going on in it for me to understand or even notice everything. It was fantastic.

After that wonderful space, we walked down to the courtyard again and went into a room off of it. This room was filled with these weird interactive machines that teach you more about the Gozzoli frescoes in the chapel. You stan on this square in the center and point at what you want to know more about in a scene and it (if you're good at it) zooms in on the section and tells you all about it. It was tough though. It doesn't register a pointing finger very well, but we heard a lesson or two.

When I was done in there I walked to an outdoor courtyard to get a glimpse of the Dali exhibition happening in another wing of the palace. They had two of his large sculptures in this courtyard, one of which I made a ceramic version of in high school. So that was awesome and rather unexpected. Then I went to the bathroom to laugh at the toilets because Chelsea didn't know how to use it. Seriously, it's just this thing on the floor and it looks like you're meant to kneel on it. What the heck. I took a picture in hopes that someone can look at it and tell me what the deal is.

Then it was time to break again. I felt awful at the time and Katia had a friend to meet who came here from Venice so we went back to the apartment. On our walk home, we noticed a lot of police in riot gear near the Duomo and a helicopter overhead. We wondered what was going on but continued walking. We made it to the square in front of our grocery store only to discover a whole bunch of Italian punks protesting something with giant homemade banners. We walked through them and made it to the street, where there were even more police in riot gear. It was wild. We still have no idea what they were protesting though. When we got home Katia left to find her friend so I've been sitting alone in my room with an old favorite mix of mine playing, writing this blog post out so I don't have to stay up late doing it. Zoe just gave me some cough drop things before going out to the gelato festival, so I might try those out too. It's evident that I still feel pretty sick when I tell you that I turned down a gelato festival. But we have to meet in the place where the festival is taking place in a little over an hour to see an exhibition at a museum that has free entry tonight. Ugh. Let's hope I make it and get some gelato while I'm there.

I'll probably add a part two to this post when we get home later.