Some entries in my journals during my travel to Florence. They sparked my thoughts when I saw them, so I decided to keep them down in my journal.
Dante Alighieri was banished from Florence in 1302. In 2008, the council of Florence revoked and apologized for his banishment.
Midway upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost. (Inferno Canto 1, Dante Alighieri)In 1481, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola started preaching in Florence. He was an eloquent speaker, and preached that if Florence (which is turning secular at the time) does not repent, evil would consume the city. By amassing a group of supports, he created a theocracy in Florence. Drinking, partying, gambling, flashy fashion and other signs of wrongdoing were pushed well underground. Books, clothes, jewellery, fancy furnishings and art were burned on ‘bonfires of the vanities’. His religious fundamentalism was soon pushed back when the Pope excommunicated him. After weeks at the hands of the city rack-master, he was hanged and burned at the stake as a heretic, along with two supporters, on 22 May 1498.
“Boh!” - an Italian word that can mean any of the following 1. I don’t know. 2. Maybe nobody knows. 3. I’m not really interested in knowing. 4. It doesn’t matter anyway.
How Filippo Brunelleschi built the dome of Florence’s cathedral https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD3fJphus-o
Dolce far niente - an Italian phrase meaning pleasant idleness
Michelangelo created a series of sculptures called the four Prigioni (sinners). He was attempting to depict how sinners would have been like when they reflect on their sins. While they were never finished, he carved his face on one of the sinners.
After Michelangelo’s death in Rome, the Medici family moved his body from Rome to bury in Florence. And when his dead body arrived, thousands of Florentine people came out to pay their final tribe to the Florentine genius.
Da Vinci’s unfinished painting - he gave up on this piece when his commissioner rejected it because it was too radical.
Caravaggio Sacrifice of Isaac
La Commedia Illumina Firenze (1465) by Domenico di Michelino depicts poet Dante Alighieri surrounded by the three afterlife worlds he describes in the Divine Comedy: purgatory is behind him, his right hand points towards hell, and the city of Florence is paradise.”
“Michelangelo was just 21 when a cardinal commissioned him to create the drunken grape-adorned Bacchus.”
Giorgio Vasari published His Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors and Architects, from Cimabue to Our Time in 1550 to tell the stories of the Florentine artist. He recounted visiting Donatello’s studio one day only to find the great sculptor staring at his extremely lifelike statue of the Prophet Habakkuk and imploring it to talk.
