The Uffizi and natural history museum

The next morning we woke early and Amanda starting going through museum schedules. The Uffizi gallery, the largest museum in the city, opened at 8:30 and we knew it would be crowded so we hurried out early. We found a long line and took our place. As we waited the line grew to fill the courtyard and spilled out into the street behind. The front booth had to turn away a continuous stream of confused people who wandered up to ask if they were in the right place.

The courtyard was surrounded by statues of famous Italians and while Amanda waited in line I went around and took some pictures.

Entry was 12.50€ but you could reserve a ticket for the next day for 16.50€. These people got to go in first which only added to the confusion of people standing in line.

The Uffizi collection was interesting but I soon grew tired of seeing the Madonna clutching yet another fat baby Jesus or some generic bishop or saint with stigmata standing somewhere with his hands held flat and rays of light shooting out of his head. In the back of the museum they had a room for the foreign paintings and these were like a breath of fresh air after seeing the same catholic scenes played over and over again. Still within the Italian collection there were a few works that stood out from everything else.

The Botticellis were surprisingly interesting. I never liked his paintings from the reproductions I'd seen in books and online but in real life they seemed to pop out of the wall. The weird alien physiology was similar to other contemporary paintings but there was an extra level of detail or life on top of it. It may have been a trick of the extra lights or the carefully cleaned canvas but his paintings were really interesting.

The one painting by Michaelangelo was too crowded to see properly. I wonder if people are drawn to the name or the painting. Were they excited because the painting was superior to everything else in the museum or was it just because everyone was excited to see something created by a recognizable name?

From the little I could see the painting seemed to stand out from the other paintings around it - especially in the definition of the musculature and the bright drapery but I could have been fooled and I wasn't interested enough to wait for ten minutes until a gap in the crowd opened and gave me a chance to see properly.

The ceiling of the Eastern hall was broken into a bunch of large painted panels with scenes of animals, men, monsters, and hybrids. Each panel was unique and we probably could have spent hours dissecting the weird imagery in each but instead I decided I would take a picture of each panel and inspect them later. Unfortunately most of these pictures are too blurry to make out any details but you can see a bunch of them here. Of the handful of panels that weren't blurry, I spent an inordinate amount of time while writing up this journal going through the pictures and cropping out the weird and unsettling imagery.

One room contained a marble statue of a lounging man. The plaque explained this was the famous hermaphroditus - a roman copy of the 2nd century hellanistic original. The statue is so famous every room it is stored in is called the Hermaphroditus room.

It was getting late and we wanted to visit a museum of natural history in the afternoon so we had to cut our tour short. We ran past the Caravaggios including the iconic picture of medusa painted on a shield. After the main galleries and cafeteria there was a small door near the exit which led to a room containing the non-Italian paintings.

I really liked their El Greco (Cardinale Richeleu is up in my banner) and the Goyas were awesome.

The museum had electronic devices that would beep when you got too close to the paintings. They would beep when people pointed, when they turned and their bag crossed the barrier, and they beeped when they held their cameras up for pictures. They beeped so often in crowded rooms it became part of the background noise. It was often hard to tell who was at fault and the museum guards were constantly running laps around the room as buzzers went off.

Again I have too many pictures to form a coherent narrative. Please accept these isolated pictures instead.

General baby what are your orders?

LLLLLLLadies

This weird collection of weird looking people was weird

St. Francis shooting a giant sky vagina out of the sky with his mind beams.

John the Baptist was often illustrated as a monkey man with hair all over his body. He was pretty easy to spot in most paintings.

Joseph looks like he has a headache and wishes everyone would just shut up.

Hey, can I pet your dragon?

At the bottom of this painting you can see five of Christ's disciples. There's James, Peter, Matthew, John, and Maurice. Oh, Maurice what happened this time?

Mary seems pretty skeptical about this whole divine conception thing.

Going to church with rocks in his head.

Nice lamb. Did you see my flying dog?

"Jeez! I mean, are you ok?" "Yeah, I'm chill. Hey can you take the decapitated, glowing, three faced baby out with you? It's harshing my vibe."

"For my next trick I will make this marionette angel dance the watusi!" "Oh wow!"

"Cheating on me? I'm gonna eat this! That'll show him."

Metaphor

No, I'm not trying to show off my junk, I just want you to hand me the glass that's up there.

The natural history museum

We left the Uffizi and ran across the river to the museum of natural history (Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze) although we only saw the "La Specola" section which contains 5000 taxidermied animals (from a collection of 3 million specimens) and a collection of wax anatomical models.

Even with the map we had a hard time finding the place. It was up several flights of stairs and the ticket booth was by the exit rather than the entrance. Though we had the place to ourselves I hurried through the exhibits because we were running out of time and I thought this was only the foyer and there would be much more to see. The museum is much larger than the section we saw but the bit we saw was awesome.

Most of the specimens had been collected 200-400 years previously and were stuffed by people who didn't know what the living animal looked like. Most of the stuffed mammals looked smooth, bulgy and strange.

The stuffed hippo was the best. The taxidermist didn't know how the feet worked and just gave up altogether when it came to it's butt. The hippos anus was mounted on a plaque at it's feet with an apology that they couldn't figure out how to fit it on the animal. The Wikipedia link above says it was one of the Medici's pets who lived in the Boboli Gardens.

To be fair, some of the bird taxidermy was pretty well done.

And they had a section among the primates for Homo Sapiens

After the specimen collection we wandered into the anatomical gallery containing hundreds of models sculpted in wax. For cultural reasons medical students couldn't always dissect real bodies so they studied wax models carefully prepared to be as realistic as possible.

The collection was enormous, creepy, and cool. It was difficult to take pictures without glare from the glass. About a third of the collection seemed to be anatomical studies of pregnant women, showing the uterus and how the baby would be situated inside. It was also one of the few public rooms in the city with aggressive air conditioning. I can't imagine what a disaster it would be if the specimens melted.

Leaving the museum we walked down to the river, avoiding the insane crowds of tourists and bought some gelato and sat in the shade. I wanted peach and a scoop of cheese, almond, and butter flavor but the girl refused to mix those flavors, telling me in very broken English that the second scoop was 'too heavy'.

We saw a rat in the park, hopping about like a squirrel.

After our gelato, we went back to the room for a short nap and then back out for a 9pm dinner. We stopped at a bar around the corner. I ordered a green devil IPA (on tap!) - primarily because Ja said it was impossible to get an IPA in Europe. He was partly right, the beer was completely flat.

In my notebook I have a list of things to remember the next time I visit Italy.

Learn the basics of the language; numbers, yes, no, and thank you.
Go in the off-season.
Stay for at least a week.
Bring a hand held fan if it's hot.
Wear comfortable shoes.
Don't trust white doves because as every other painting in the Uffizi gallery demonstrated, they are the holy ghost and will make you pregnant.