My Florence (12): Documenting the crisis
You may be really hungry, but because of the crisis you can’t really feel like eating even if the food is there…
Closed cellars and/or canteens…
Even the Ritz Hotel seems to become smaller and uglier…
Advertisements: Fotovoltaico (see previous post) offers 150 jobs, while even trains are mocking commuters…
Realities of possible worlds…
I have found these pictures in an antique store’s window in Florence, on Via dei Fossi, very close to the the bridge named Ponte alla Carraia (it is not quite on the street, you have to enter some sort of inner yard). After hours of walking in a terrible warm day, in a place tourists rarely find, I started to fell like Gavrilescu must have felt in ‘La ţigănci / With the Gypsy Girls‘ by Mircea Eliade. Everything was upside down, and I let myself moved by a dream which exceeded reality… Could that world be a better one? The floor is yours…
My Florence (6): The other faces
Tourists and rich North-Italians are not the only people of Florence.
Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
Chocolate
Pictures taken at the ‘Fiera del Cioccolato Artigianale’ (Artisan Chocolate Fair), 15 February 2012, Piazza della Repubblica, Florence, Italy. More about the event here. Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
My Florence (5): The Town Seen from Above
One of the best places in Florence to take pictures is Piazzale Michelangelo: the view is incredible great, you just need a good camera (a big zoom is a must, this is why I had to set aside my D7000 with its 16-85 mm and take a point-and-shoot camera with a 15x optical zoom). The pictures were shoot in two sessions over two years (pictures 0, 1, 4, 5, and 7 were shot in May 2010, while pictures 2, 3, 6 and 8 were shot in February 2011). Enjoy!
A wonderful Florentine, general picture:
Below, a picture with Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo (The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore):
We cannot forget about the well-known bridges; in front of the below picture you can see the Ponte Vecchio:
Below, three pictures with the Duomo (The Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore):
And of course here is Palazzo Vecchio, situated in Piazza della Signoria:
A general view of the great Basilica di Santa Croce (but there are also wonderful pictures with its façade, I will be back to this in another post):
Finally, no one can forget about the Great Synagogue of Florence:
Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
My Florence (4): Some Problems in Christian Art History
In Florence I have learned for the first time that angels are actually like normal people – that is, they are either men or women – well, they are of course men:
But this is not all. Even the sweet Lord Jesus has a penis – well, it’s for the first time in my life that I see something like this…
The picture above is from the Accademia di Belle Arti E Liceo Artistico, via Ricasoli, Florence, Italy. What follows is a close up:
And this is the whole picture:
Disclaimer: I am not trying to make fun of Christian religion. I am just asking how come some religious painters and the people that asked for such a picture thought that this image could really be a ‘normal’ one in the Christian art history… Or who knows, maybe there are some differences between Orthodoxy and Catholicism that I am not aware of; however, the way I knew this was that angels (unlike saints) are asexual, spiritual beings. Moreover, representing the baby Jesus naked in an Orthodox Church would be a capital sin…
My Florence (3): Women’s Secret
I was saying in the last post that one of the problems I am struggling with in the case of statues from the Roman and Greek antiquity is that while men’s penises are extremely well represented, the depiction of women’s vulvae is strikingly missing: I was not able to find any such representation in Florence’s statues. Since breasts are of course very well represented, it is strange that at the imaginary level they are more important than the vulvae. If for the Roman and Greek imaginary man’s sexuality was represented by his penis, woman’s sexuality was represented by breasts but not by the vulva.
In some cases, the lack of depiction directly transforms itself in prohibition:
But this was the only case. In rest, the rule is ‘breasts are fine, vulvae are not’. Furthermore, the interesting thing is that there is no case of very big breasts: all the instances I was able to photo depicted quite small breasts:
Two different cases require special attention. The first shows woman’s sexuality as extremely important – but not through depicting the vulva, but on the contrary through multiplying the pair of breasts:
The second case is coming from our days, and shows that in order to emphasize the importance of a piece of cloth, sexuality is extremely important – but as in the Roman and Greek days, women’s sexuality is, again, represented only by breasts:
Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
My Florence (2): The Flags of Our Fathers
The second episode of My Florence is dedicated to The Flags of Our Fathers. Curiously indeed, most of Roman and Greek statues of men must undeniably show the wealth of flesh their models possess. However, there are four problems I am struggling with.
The first problem regards the fact that all the penises I could photo are flaccid, not a single one being erect. Of course, this is not necessarily true for all Italy, since in the ninth picture below you will see a postcard named ‘Piselii Italici’ where at least in four instances the penises are erect; however, I could find no such example in Florence. I would be very interested to know why: were the statues with erect penises destroyed under the Catholic Church’s orders, or simply Roman and Greek sculptors were just not interested in creating works with erect penises? If the latter, why?
Of course, colours and dimensions are different according to the model, the carver and his intention:
The second problem is that, as you can see in the fourth and fifth pictures, some penises are depicted in a very non-realistic, rather mythical manner: they are not only pierced, but their upper bodies are cut and resemble the body of an octopus… Both pictures are taken in the Piazza della Signoria, and the penises belong to two statues (satyrs?) from the Fountain of Neptune in front of the Palazzo Vecchio.
Interestingly enough, the pubic hair has also a remarkable variety of forms and dimensions:
Below, the first and fourth image belong to newer statues, made by contemporary artists; however, they are not that different from the original ones:
Below, the difference is not only in the specific, quite different form, but also in the artists’ choice of colour:
The colour and the material (stone, bronze, metal) are continuously changing. However, it is also interesting that the weight of the body introduces a very amusing stance (see the last/fourth picture below):
And of course, after a last example of an ancient work of art, we can pay attention to more contemporary items like postcards or pants – quite expensive and, to tell you the truth, not very… sexy!
The third problem is rather least interesting, but it says something about the way sexuality has been regarded and depicted over the centuries: very close to one of the bridges (Ponte allla Carraia), there is the statue of a person (probably Amerigo Vespucci from the 14th-15th centuries, but I’m not sure). Strangely enough, even when the depiction of penises was prohibited, the practice still remained, although in more hidden manners: the penis of the statue can be seen very well under the pants (last picture of this post)
Finally, the last problem is related to the depiction of women’s vulvae: I was not able to find any such representation in Florence’s statues. Since the breasts are of course very well represented, it is strange that at the imaginary level they are more important than the vulvae. If for the Roman and Greek imaginary man’s sexuality was represented by his penis, woman’s sexuality was represented by breasts but not by the vulva. I would really like to know why (the woman’s sexuality will be the subject of a special post, on Monday).
Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
My Florence (1): The Mirrored City
Ok, so this is the beginning of a series of photos dedicated to a beautiful town – Florence / Italy. The first episode shows you the mirrored city (in order to get the best of each photo, click on it to enlarge it, then click again to enlarge it even more):
Point & shoot camera (Nikon Coolpix L100) & photos worked in Gimp.
Italian graffiti
Sottopassaggio Piazza Le Cure, Florence, Italy, May 2010 [camera: Nikon Coolpix L100]
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