20 March 2008
For a whole semester I studied the Florentine Renaissance, the Divina Comedia of Dante, Leon Alberti and Giotto, Leonardo and Michelangelo, Boccaccio and Machiavelli, etc. etc. In the final week, ECLA organized an excursion to Florence to see all the stuff for real, meaning days completely filled with lectures on the art, history and politics at the many attractions of Florence. The first couple of days I was not really feeling it, Florence felt like a zoo, full of tourists who need to see the big names once in their life. The atmosphere in the streets is cramped, suffocating and a constant mirror of your own touristhood. But after some days there was a turning point, with an early train we went to Assisi, a little mediaval town where the Franciscan order originates and the biggest Fransciscan monastery can be found. St. Franciscus preached the purity of faith and a denial of all worldy goods. It sucked me into the right mood. Coming back to Florence my experience was different, I reconstrued my experience of Florence from the artworks, frescoes and unbelievable architecture. Until the constant herds of tourists were not even part of the city anymore and I found my way through the quiet backstreets. The last days become extremely intense with my idea of Florence pulling me into the great artworks. I saw Giotto discovery of the human psyche through the expression of our body and Brunelleschi's insight into the emergence of complexity through his simple architecture. I saw the radiating layers of movements in Leonardo's sketches and Michelangelo's triumphant struggle against matter. I saw the many aesthetic visions interwoven in the desgin of the Cathedral and the conretization of God in the many frescoes that historically branch out in the poetic expressions of Dante's pages. I saw Florence as one ought to see Florence.
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