The Italian Renaissance walking tour

(This is part of our series of posts from our six-week Road Scholar Independent Living and Learning in Florence trip to Italy in Spring 2025. We have an index to all the posts from that trip here.)

In the afternoon, we met up again with art historian and tour guide Emanuela for a walking tour focusing on the Italian Renaissance and featuring a visit to the Galleria dell’Accademia to see Michelangelo’s David. We were glad the Accademia was included on our tour, because it’s one of those “must-see” attractions that every tourist visits, and as a result tickets were sold out several weeks before we went.

This photo is of my Italian Conversation class at the ABC Machiavelli School on the last day we were all together. Max, on the left, is an 18-year-old from Florida who is taking a gap year in Italy before starting college. (He was going to miss class on Thursday and Friday, my last day, which is why we took the photo today.) Standing to my left is Vincenza, our patient teacher. The very tall guy behind her is Timon from the Netherlands. The other two women are Nancy, who was in our Road Scholar group, and Marie from Nice, France.

Our Italian Renaissance walking tour began in the Piazza della Repubblica, one of the main squares of Florence. Piazza della Repubblica marks the center of the city since Roman times, where the original north-south and east-west roads intersected and where the Roman forum once stood. During medieval times, the area was the location of the city market and the Jewish Ghetto mandated by Cosimo I. The square retained its medieval look until the 18th century, when the town council decided to “clean up” the center and trim back the surrounding 13th-century buildings to widen the square and make the boulevards more closely resemble those of France. Medieval towers, churches, workshops, homes, and original seats of some of the trade guilds were destroyed. Today, Piazza della Repubblica is the home of several historic restaurants and an impromptu stage for street artists and shows, especially after sunset.

Art historian Emanuela, who had given our classroom lecture on the Italian Renaissance the previous day, explains the layout of the city during Renaissance times, using a relief map designe for visually-impaired persons in Piazza della Repubblica. If you look carefully, you can find the piazza on the map–it’s the more gold area at about 8:00 from the Duomo, almost in the center of the photo.

Gourmet pastries in the window of Caffè Gilli, a historic restaurant dating back to 1733, housed in an elegant Art Nouveau building on Piazza della Repubblica. The cake in the center is a Schiacciata Fiorentina, a soft, sweet white cake flavored with orange zest and vanilla traditionally served during Italian Carnival, and at one time also served as a last meal to condemned prisoners.

The residence and offices of the Archbishop of Florence, located across from the Duomo complex.

This fragment of a second-century naval admiral’s sarcophagus was “up-cycled” into the exterior wall of the Baptistery of San Giovanni during its construction. Marble for buildings was expensive, so the builders used whatever scraps they could find when they were available.

More examples of building material “up-cycling”: the dark red porphyry columns that flank the Gates of Paradise on the Baptistery were pillaged by the Florentines during their conquest of Pisa; the Pisans had in turn stolen the rare structures from Egypt. And if you look closely at the white marble between the right side of the door frame and the white column, you can see a fragment of an ancient Roman marble plaque.

Many Renaissance and medieval buildings included grotesque figures, intended to keep evil spirits away.

Finally, we arrived at the Galleria dell’Accademia. This unfired clay sculpture in the Accademia, The Rape of the Sabine Women by Giambologna, was created in 1581 as the preparatory model for the marble sculpture now located in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. The model is one of the oldest 1:1 scale originals in the world.

The daring composition of The Rape of the Sabine Women involves three intertwined, interlocked figures that almost form a single body with a circular spiral motion called a “serpentine figure”. This vortex of bodies and gestures invites the viewer to walk around the sculpture and become involved in that same motion that makes the characters seem alive.

A bronze bust of Michelangelo, created from his death mask at age 89.

Michelangelo began work on four sculptures, called the Prisoners, for the tomb of Pope Julius II in the early 1500s, but left them unfinished when he was summoned to Rome in 1534 to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Unlike most sculptors, Michelangelo didn’t work from models or drawings. Rather, he saw in his head the figure embedded in the block of marble, and chipped away at the stone until the figure was freed. This incomplete sculpture offers a window into his creative process. All four of the Prisoners, along with several other unfinished Michelangelo works, are exhibited in the Accademia.

Approaching the David in the Michelangelo sculpture wing is a bit like approaching the Mona Lisa in the Louvre–except that at 17 feet tall (not including the plinth), David is much bigger.

At the end of 1501, Michelangelo obtained the permission of the Opera del Duomo to work a block of marble which had been abandoned in the courtyard of the Cathedral of Florence to create a figure of the young Biblical hero David that would eventually become the most famous sculpture in the world. When it was completed in 1504, the sculpture was placed in front of Palazzo Vecchio in Piazza Signoria. In 1873, Michelangelo’s David was brought here to the Tribune of the Galleria dell’Accademia, which was built specifically to house it.

After the monumental David was placed in front of Palazzo Vecchio, it became a symbol of liberty and civic pride for the Florentine Republic. Surrounded by hostile enemies, the city identified itself with the young hero who, with the help of God, had defeated a much more powerful foe.

Yes, David has a backside too.

“Nor has there ever been seen a pose so fluent, or a gracefulness equal to this, or feet, hands and head so well related to each other with quality, skill and design”. With these words, Giorgio Vasari attempted to define the reasons behind the marvel that the vision of David provokes in the observer. He continues by stating that the statue so far surpasses ancient and modern statuary in both beauty and technique that one needn’t bother seeing other works in sculpture.

Art scholars have debated whether David is represented before or after his victory over Goliath, although most now believe it’s before. His sling is also barely visible as though to emphasize how David owed his victory not to brutal force, but to his intellect and to his innocence.

Notice the sculptor’s exquisite attention to detail in the veins, muscles and tendons of David’s body, especially his arms.

David attempting (poorly) to imitate the “other” David. I just don’t have the physique. (At least I kept my clothes on, though.)

An enormous collection of plaster cast models by Lorenzo Bartolini, one of the greatest Italian sculptors of the nineteenth century, and those of his pupil Luigi Pampaloni, installed in an arrangement evoking Bartolini’s studio.

The heat, humidity and long days had taken their toll on most of our group, who headed home after our tour, but our Road Scholar classmate Lori joined us for a delicious meal at Ristorante Rosso Crudo, a restaurant Lori had found.

David enjoyed this butter-soft filet with truffle cream sauce.

Cheryl’s rich gnocchi with gorgonzola cream sauce and walnuts was fabulous too. For once, we were all too full for dessert!