Escape to myself

The church of Santa Croce in the centre of Florence has an important place in the history of art as it contains two seminal fresco cycles painted for the chapels of the wealthy Bardi and Peruzzi families. Giotto is important to the Renaissance as he was one of the first artists to attempt to portray real drama and emotion in his compositions and to get away from the stilted generic work of the Gothic. Painted in about 1312 they are about individual people. I hope that I can see his work in Padua when I visit. It’s a long awaited chance to see his work which I learned about in my first year at Iniversity almost 50 years ago. I’m s been a long time coming. Santa Croce is a beautiful, if austere space and contains the burials of several important figures of the Florentine renaissance; Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli and also the composer Rossini. It’s a welcome change from so much Baroque There are also works by Donatello and others anyway enough about Art in this post. I’ll try for something different soon to keep everyone interested.

Next post will be a wander around the streets of Florence with some lesser known corners and a gelato.