Poca favilla gran fiamma seconda

"Great flame follows a little spark." 
- La Divina Commedia, Dante Alighieri


Day three: done and over with. And actually pretty good! It rained, yet again, but we were early for class and made it to the correct meeting spot, prepared (for the first time) for the rain. We headed into the Duomo to start our lesson.

The correct name is Cattedrale Santa Maria del Fiore, or, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flowers; Jesus being the flower of Mary. Arnolfo di Cambio was the designer, and he was also the one who designed Santa Croce and Palazzo Vecchio. Brunelleschi (with the help of Donatello) competed the dome, some hundred years after the cathedral was done. It had been uncovered for almost 30 years before they figured out what to do with it. The fresco on the dome is a depiction of Dante's Divine Comedy, and there are hints of Dante as well as the levels of his inferno, purgatory and paradise all over.

Il Duomo-- and no, this was not from today.
I wish it had been this nice out.

Inside - weird middle-ages version of a clock

The dome

Hell

Heaven

Purgatory

Quick note - thanks to my infatuation with musicals, I've seen Jesus Christ Superstar about 30 times, plus having the vinyl. Because of this, I knew what those words that the angel is holding up. From Pilot saying "Behold the man, who..." (I don't actually know all the correct words), it says "Ecce, homo." Thanks Andrew Lloyd Weber!

Brunelleschi, who discovered how to cover a dome of this
size and pioneered the dome constructor

Campanile de Giotto- the bell tower
each layer has the steps to perdition, or how
to reach the top- Heaven

After Il Duomo, we took a look at the Battistero di San Giovanni, or the Baptistry of St. John, which is even older than the church we saw yesterday, making it one of (if not the) oldest standing church in Florence. We didn't get the chance to go inside, but we got a breakdown of the building.

The production of the doors of the Baptistry by Lorenzo Ghiberti at the beginning of 1400 has been dubbed for our class as the start of the Renaissance. This is because the figures in doors and the art that followed showed more feeling and emotion than simply a figure that was either distinctly male or female. Before the Renaissance, our life was seen as only the waiting period before we got to Heaven to be able to really live, so none of the artwork had any emotion. 

Anyway, the doors are amazing. They all have a different story, or depict different things. I don't think there's any building I'm going to visit and not able to say it's incredible. I'm excited to be able to go inside, which we'll probably do the same day we climb Il Duomo (SO EXCITED!).

Peter the Baptist baptizing Jesus, fittingly so.

South doors, facing Il Duomo

Ghiberti! None of the artists signed their work until the
Renaissance, so this was his way of signing it.

And then once again, the rain storm hit. But it was good timing! We were on our way to a jewelry shop. But not just any jewelry shop. The man who owned this store would take famous paintings and works of art and recreate the jewelry painted in those pictures. And not just that, but he makes it the very old-fashioned way. It was amazing!

Melting down the metal

Flattening the metal

Lots of metal pieces!

Cut out the shape

Pound it into what you want it to be

Use this to melt pieces together
He was placing the gem setting on there

Finished!

He made a TV necklace?!

Recreation of the floors in Chiesa di San
Miniato that we saw yesterday

Then we got to try it out for ourselves! The Florin once held the most value in Europe, which is how Florence had the wealth to invest in new artists and became the epicenter for the Renaissance. And we got to make some of our own! :)

Pounding it out with a mallet

My Floren! Out of lead, but they were gold way back when

Our class and our Florens, plus our prof and the guy who
owns the store (check out the picture of Paris Hilton behind
him... I guess she invested in some of his jewelry)

That was such an awesome experience.

After this class, I booked it to my batik class and I FINALLY was able to start painting my first scarf! The first project she's having us wax out the outline and then fill it in with paint. Next time I'll be able to dip it. It was so much fun and I can't wait to see how it turns out!

My first batik!

Can you tell what it is yet?!

Buona notte!