2. Dicembre 2011: It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas

This week has been nonstop work. My brain is exhausted. However, I just finished one of my final projects so I figured I could take a break and write a quick update—inane information about my life that never needed to be posted on the interwebs but oh well.

Yesterday I spent three hours with my Medici class in the Uffizi Museum. We saw some Filippino Lippi, Leonardo Da Vinci and Pollaiolo, but mostly we were looking at Botticelli. I enjoy moving through the Renaissance and watching paintings get more and more colorful. The Botticelli room is so bright! The only painting that I thought was dull was, I’ll be honest, The Birth of Venus. The colors are dull, the body proportions are off, the little guy representing wind is creepy and the toes are just mutilated. It just goes to show that everyone perceives beauty differently. But hey, I agree that Michelangelo’s David is perfect. You can’t have everything, eh?

On a more positive note, Botticelli’s slightly less famous Primavera was absolutely stunning. I love the movement in the painting and how there are so many stories combining into one scene while still keeping a beautiful flow. My favorite is the scene on the right side where Zephyr, the western wind, is grabbing the wood nymph Chloris to make her his bride. The story in Homer’s Odyssey goes that when she marries Zephyr, she is transformed into Flora, the goddess of flowers and spring. Botticelli paints the transformation with flowers coming out of the mouth of Chloris and Flora emerging from those flowers next to Chloris and Zephyr. It’s kind of a frightening story but it’s visualized dynamically by Botticelli. There are also some fun costume notes in the Primavera. Flora’s dress, if you look at it closely, is covered in flowers that have been painted onto the fabric—they are not a woven design. That type of decorative fabric was worn in garments during May Day festivities of the time. The three graces dancing on the left side of the painting are clad in delicate white chemises with intricate pearl fringe which were a typical undergown of the time. Another fun fact—all of the flowers depicted in this painting are symbols of brides, weddings and fertility. How would you like to have the job of studying botany in art? Yikes.

Alright, more updates. I’m working on my final drawing which is a contraposto female pose that is driving me nuts. The model continues to move around and the pose is such that one little movement affects the way that the rest of the body looks. It is the most frustrating work of art that I have ever had to work on and so far I am not happy with it. I have two days left before the art show and I’m hoping that it will be enough for me to grow proud of my finished product.

The final that I just completed was for my Dante class. We had to choose three photos and then connect them to Dante’s Divine Comedy in one way or another. My analysis for every photo is quite complicated but I will try to summarize. The first photo I chose was from my first fashion show (photo taken by the wonderful Diane McClamroch) of a model (Maev Lowe) hanging off of one of the statues of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais. It represents Dante’s excitement in Limbo when surrounded by all of the silent poets stuck in a moment of hopeless longing. Next, I compared the magnificent carvings of humility on the Terrace of Pride in Purgatory with this prideful fountain in San Francisco, called The Hyatt on Union Square Fountain. Finally, I summed up Dante’s entire afterlife with a photo of my half-finished tattoo of the Tree of Life. The red, swollen and painful roots, the twisting trunk which reaches towards the light, bright branches. Anyways, I just wrote a paper on it so I shan’t describe it any further but here are my photos!

This evening Kari and I went to the Mercato di Natale at the Piazza Santa Croce. It was a cute little German Christmas market with delicious foods from various countries, Christmas ornaments, decorations, gifts and plenty of mulled wine. The atmosphere was joyful and everything smelled delicious. It is quite possible that you will see us at this market on every night for the remainder of our time here in Florence. For our first time though, we decided to split a camino dolce, a sweet chimney. It was a mix between a donut, a churro and something else that we couldn’t put our fingers on. They made it by wrapping dough in a spiral around a thick metal pole and frying it. Then they rolled the dough in cinnamon sugar and pulled it off of the pole so that it looked like a smoking chimney. It was delicious.

Did I mention that all of the Christmas lights are up in the city? Some stores are taking the Christmas season a little too far though, if you noticed from the photo above.

We returned home to one of my favorite meals. The first course is bombolini, which is basically pizza dough rolled into balls and fried in peanut oil. They’re like savory popovers and eaten with formaggio e prosciutto. Then, of course, pizza. Yum. The dinnertime conversations lately have been revolving around Daniella wanting to learn English. Tonight we were trying to explain when to use the phrase “I’ll figure it out,” which is much more difficult than you might imagine. In return, they taught us an Italian colloquialism. If someone asks you to do something or suggests something and you want to say no, absolutely not, no way, you say buona notte. Facciamo una passeggiata? –Buona notte! I couldn’t figure out an English equivalent, but Kari hit it right on the dot. When someone suggests something, you smile, roll your eyes and sarcastically say, “Ha, yeah, oook!”

Now, I will actually say Buona Notte and get some sleep before I crank this research paper out!

Ma, che bella luna oggi sera!