Italy, Day Three: 10/6/17

We were up early today to see some of the sights of Florence before the weather got too hot and the crowds too busy.  The main visit of the day was to the Bargello, a museum dedicated to Sculpture and 3D arts. Before the Bargello, we took a steady walk from our apartment across the Ponte Vecchio, and into the Piazza della Signoria. Florence is full of these magnificent squares, usually in front of a church or a Palazzo. The Palazzo della Signoria is interesting because of the number of sculptures it contains. Today I’m posting two pictures. The first is Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa. This statue is one of the classics of Renaissance art, the photograph doesn’t do justice to it’s appearance in the flesh. 

We’ve seen dozens of sculptures today, and the one thing that links many of them together is how they were created to symbolise the power of the people that commissioned them. The Medici family were pre-eminent in Florence during the sixteenth century, and most of the scultures in the Piazza Della Signoria were created for them. Today’s other picture is an equestrian statue of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany.