Apparently there has been more written about Florence than any other Italian city.
We will now add some more to that vast body of work.
Aside from being famous for it’s stunning cityscape, Florence is also renowned as being the birthplace of the Renaissance.
Some quick art history…the Renaissance is the ‘rebirth’ or ‘reawakening’ of Greek and Roman culture, which by AD1400 had been dozing for almost a thousand years. When Rome fell, the Christians turned their back on the classical culture which they associated with paganism. For the next thousand years, artists focused on God and the afterlife (or depicted the horrors of hell to scare people into behaving), rather than celebrating the finer sides of life enjoyed by the Greeks and Romans. During the Renaissance, classical culture made nearly a complete comeback. Interestingly, a key feature of the Renaissance was the invention (thanks to a door designing contest) of Linear Perspective which for the first time enabled artists to give their work infinite depth.
It is bizarre to think that in year 7 when you are learning to draw buildings or blocks of chocolate you are using a method invented by the fathers of the Renaissance 600 years earlier.
Anyway…we indulged in all things Renaissance by strolling through the world famous Uffizi Gallery where we got to see the spectatcular Prima Vera and The Birth of Venus before checking out the famous doors.
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