The Michelangelo Trail by Mary Hoffman

The History Girls blog began nearly four years ago, on 1st July 2011, and had its origin in a desire on my part to let the world know I had written a novel about Michelangelo's sculpture of David. The sitehas grown to be so much more than that but it is quite satisfying to come full circle and write about the new suite of educational materials, based on that novel, that I am going to write for an innovative new company called Time Traveler Tours & Tales.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

The book was a historical novelist's joy to write because it offered the perfect opportunity for fiction. So much was known about this famous figure: we have the contract the sculptor was given, the date he made the first chisel cut, the minutes of the committee meeting to decide where the sculpture was to be displayed (where Leonardo da Vinci was present).

And in the middle a great big hole. Who was the model for this, probably the most famous sculpture in the world? Or was there even a model at all? Maybe this David sprang from the imagination of the sculptor, who, it is worth remembering, was twenty-six years old when he asked the Operai del Duomo for the old block of Carrara marble that two previous artists had abandoned and which just lay about for forty years  in a building behind the Duomo in Florence for people to trip over.

My first visit to Florence was at the end of my first year at university, when I spent a month there. It was probably the most influential four weeks of my life, directing my interests and enthusiasms from then on. I already knew I preferred Michelangelo to Leonardo but this sojourn, in a pensione overlooking Piazza San Lorenzo, confirmed it.

In my new project I'll be devising an app to take readers on a tour of the city visiting "hotspots" connected with the sculpture and the sculptor. And it occurred to me that readers of the History Girls blog might like an expanded version of my list - a sort of "print out and keep" guide to which works of art by Michelangelo you can see in the city I have now visited so many times I have  lost count.

Bronze of Michelangelo's head by Daniele di Volterra

• Casa Buonarroti Michelangelo never lived here but it houses two early works: the bas reliefs of The Madonna of the Stairs and The Battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths.

• The area behind Brunelleschi’s Dome on the Duomo (now the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo). This is where the workshop was where Michelangelo made the David statue. On the day it was moved from there to the Piazza della Signoria the doorway had to be broken down to allow the giant statue to be trundled out. It took three days to move it to its final position.

• Santa Croce church. Michelangelo is buried there (under a hideous tomb by Vasari) and lived near there. His mother is also buried there.

• Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine (Oltr’arno). The frescoes by Masaccio (Big Tom). It was here that Michelangelo’s nose was broken by Pietro Torrigiani when they were both teenagers and protégés of Lorenzo de’ Medici and were sent there to sketch the frescoes. (You can see the broken nose quite clearly in Volterra's bronze above.)

• Piazza della Signoria The David statue was here for hundreds of years. Also this is where Savonarola had his Bonfires of the Vanities and where he was executed.Michelangelo and several of his brothers were followers of Savonarola.

• San Marco convent Michelangelo’s older brother Lionardo was a friar there, as was Savonarola. It houses great art by Fra Angelico, Ghirlandaio etc.

• The Bargello for Davids by Donatello and Verocchio (Leonardo’s teacher) and Michelangelo’s Pitti Tondo, Brutus, Bacchus etc.

Brutus

• Palazzo Medici Riccardi Where Michelangelo lived with Lorenzo de’ Medici.

 

• Santo Spirito, Oltr’arno. Where Michelangelo dissected bodies. His wooden crucifix (the earliest recorded work) is in the Sacristy.

• Piazza Santa Trinita Where Michelangelo had his very public argument with Leonardo. 

• The Medici Chapels behind San Lorenzo church. Michelangelo designed the tombs for two of the de' Medici family. His statues of them are flanked by Dawn and Dusk, Night and Day.

• The Laurentian Library at San Lorenzo. This and the magnificent staircase to it were designed by Michelangelo.

• The Uffizi houses the Sacred Family painting by Michelangelo.

• And of course. The Accademia where the original David now stands. But don't neglect to look at the slaves/prisoners and St. Matthew who line the gallery leading up to David.

Photo credit: Jorg Bittner Unner, Creative Commons

On my first visit to Florence, I and some other students, none of us studying Art, managed to blag our way into the Casa Buonarroti, which was in restauro at the time and saw the two reliefs and the very touching little wooden crucifix, now in Santo Spirito, which was waiting to be authenticated. None of us was in any doubt.

On my last visit, a year ago, Sarah Towle of Time Traveler Tours and Tales and I went to the Medici Chapels at San Lorenzo and looked through the door leading to the underground hiding place that the sculptor used on a visit to the city, long after he had made the David. It is not open to the public but the whitewashed walls are covered with his drawings.

Michelangelo's relationship with Florence was fraught. As a protegé of Lorenzo de' Medici (the "Magnificent"), he was loyal to the family, but after Lorenzo's death became a Republican. Florence itself had an on/off love affair with the powerful de' Medici family, expelling them and welcoming them back more than once.

My relationship with Florence and Michelangelo has undergone no such upheavals. I can't wait to work with Sarah Towle to bring this Renaissance sculpture to life for 21st century children and teenagers. You can read more about the project below.

But in the meantime, if you are going to Florence this summer, do follow the Michelangelo Trail. I'm only sorry I won't be doing it with you!


Time Traveler Tours & Tales Campaign

They Dog Our Footsteps, by Leslie Wilson

When I was in Florence recently - oh, the bliss! and doing the gallery-crawl, as you do! I bought a lovely little book called Dogs In Galleries. I think what sold it to me was the humour of the jacket  - but it did get me looking at representations of dogs in art. The day after I bought the book, I took my husband to Pisa, to see the Campo dei Miracoli, because as far as I am concerned, the Baptistery there is the most beautiful building in the world. But there, as well as a sublime simplicity and beauty of proportion that goes straight to my heart -

I found dogs. More than I expected, too, There was one in a stained-glass window in the Baptistery - here it is -

and even before we had entered the Baptistery, we had found dogs acting as gutter-spouts on the outside of the Cathedral. In the course of the day, we found rather a lot of dogs, and not just hunting dogs, either, as you might expect, but also dogs living indoors with sculpted families, and little lap-dogs too.

This dog - in the cloister - is beneath the table where Tobias, I think, from the Book of Tobit, is restoring his sight to his aged father. There was no label on the bas-relief, but I'm sure I'm right.  There's the Angel on the right. Beneath a table is just where the dog would be, hoping, no doubt, that someone would shortly put something out to eat, and then a bit of it might drop down. People will sometimes tell you that dogs always used to live in kennels outside, but in medieval times,  I was taught at school, they were there, waiting to get the bones people threw down after they'd finished gnawing them for themselves. In other words, they were waste disposal operatives, just as my own dog is, and very useful when there is spilled food to mop up, or when my twin grandsons are eating finger food in their high chairs.

But look at this dog, on one of the doors of Pisa Cathedral. 

It's a scene of the Adoration of the Magi and the dog is looking straight at Jesus, as if the artist, in contradiction to the official doctrine of the Church, had given him a soul. The dog knows that this baby is special, quite different from any other baby, and is gazing at him with joy. I'm not being sentimental here, just considering the import of that fixed canine gaze.

After all, dogs have evolved into a special relationship with us that is perhaps unparalleled in the natural world. They are descendants of wolves, and share, I think 98% of their genetic material with the wolf - but they aren't wolves. 

A wolf may be raised by humans, it may even  become very friendly with humans, but it won't have that instinctive desire to please humans that a puppy has. It remains a wild animal. I recently read a very interesting book by John Bradshaw called In Defence of Dogs. I discovered that studies have been done of feral dog populations that show that dog behaviour is essentially different from wolf behaviour, even if the dogs don't live with humans. The wolves who became dogs, even, Bradshaw says, were probably different from today's wolves, who bitter experience has taught to be extremely shy of human beings. But at some stage - no-one knows exactly when - somewhere - grey wolves approached human camp fires and became hangers-on of the human race.

I watched a television programme once that suggested the socialisation was initially done by children. Having raised one puppy with kids at home, and the second one, our current dog, without resident young of our own, I think this is extremely likely. It is much harder work to bring a puppy up if you don't have children around to help. Admittedly, my young, when the first dog came among us, were over ten, not tinies. However, our current dog, Matilda, adores our young grandsons, and is staggeringly tolerant of crawling babies doing things to her that she would object to, strongly, from adults. We have to keep a sharp eye out, not so that she doesn't hurt the babies (they are twins, a double hazard!) but so that the twins don't hurt her.

But leaving the personal anecdotes aside; dogs must have revolutionised human society, in their many helpful roles as herders, hunting dogs, and guard dogs. If the agricultural revolution led to population explosions, what was the contribution to our ability to feed ourselves of dogs who applied their lupine skills to helping the hunt, and guarded sheep, cows, and goats from their wild cousins? 

When I walk with my own dog, Matilda, I often have the feeling that I have been walking thus, with a dog companion, for thousands of years. There is an antiquity in the relationship that is no sentimentality. And those of us who feel more truly themselves with a dog friend, are surely inheritors of a symbiotic relationship that is part of our humanity. Even those who don't want to have dogs - like my mother-in-law - have china dog ornaments or pictures of dogs on their walls.

Dogs have been buried with their masters and mistresses, mummified - in the Museum in Cairo I saw a mummified Saluki dog, quite recognisable as the kind that run round in the streets of Cairo nowadays. A beloved and skilled hunting dog, maybe. It's amazing to see it.

I leave you with another image from Pisa, of a spaniel doing what spaniels do, wriggling into the undergrowth to come out, covered in grass-seeds, bits of twig and goose-grass no doubt, to flush the game for its master. The posture and activity are so accurately-observed, you can almost hear the dog panting and barking, maybe, and see the tail furiously wagging, because for this animal, business and pleasure are one and the same thing.

All photos by Leslie or David Wilson.