A Season of Wonderlust: Backtracking to Firenze - Museo Galileo, Uffizi, the Arno

Firenze has art, science, and the same sort of mind-blowing churches that every major city in Italy boasts. Firenze also has the Arno river, and amazing sunsets.

I already talked a bit about what I did not like about Firenze, so I want to balance that out, starting with the Museo Galileo.

Wonder, investigation, invention. Fortitude and sacrilege, purity of purpose and commercial cynicism. Artistry and calculation.

The world we inhabit contains world after world - some which we discover, some which we create, some into which we step intentionally and some which can only be accessed by tripping and falling on our faces into a fragrant flowerbed of discovery. All of the worlds pollinate one another. Science is one such world (which of course contains yet more worlds), toiling in the fields to reap knowledge of those connective tendrils - or scattering careless seeds from which future fruit may grow and be discovered.

This is my inadequate tribute to science, which I love for its imagination even more than for its productivity. I especially love those who persisted in their conviction in the face of overwhelming, ostracizing, sometimes death-dealing opposition. (Such a testament was revealed to me a week later in Roma, at Campo de Fiori, where a monument to philosopher Giordano Bruno stands - but I will return to that in a later post).

Enough from me - enjoy a few of the sweets I tasted as I wandered through Museo Galileo’s garden of ingenuity and passion, before we move onto the Uffizi.

Calculating Machine, Anon, Italian, 17th century

Thermometers

Galileo's Telescope, 1609-1610

Polyhedral Dials, Stefano Buonsignori, 16th century

Astrolabe, Egnazio Dante or Giovanni Battista Guisti, 1500s

Mathematical Treatise, Antonio Santucci, 1593

Mathematical Compendium, Hans Christoph Schissler Jr, 16th century

(perhaps at this point I should admit that I have no idea what the function is of most of these devices. I need to investigate after my trip is over)

Nautical Atlas, Giovanni Oliva, 1616

Lens-grinding lathe, Andrea Fratti, 18th cen

Armillary Sphere, Antonio Santucci, 1588-1593

(Please note that this thing is about as tall as me)

World Map, Fra' Mauro, 1457-1459

The Uffizi.

I first began to really appreciate sculpture when I witnessed a traveling exhibit of Roman busts, in a museum near Oklahoma City, OK. This appreciation, like the cathedrals with their infinite columns, their sinuous bannisters, their spires and statues reaching to tickle the bellies of nebulae, has soared into the heavens.

As with most things in life, however, the intimate nudge moves me far further than any momentous shove, and here we come to the Uffizi (which, ironically, is meant to be yet another juggernaut of human audacity but in which I nevertheless discovered moments of blessed quiet).

Sleeping Ariadne, dated to the 2nd century AD, demonstrates this subtlety.

What I photographed is mostly a restoration, but I like to believe that it appears now exactly how it appeared then. Ariadne reclines carelessly, distracted. Has she, in fact, been sitting here for countless hours? Is there really a sculptor, sweating down his nose, rubbing his aching fingers, tossing one dull or broken chisel after another over his shoulder? None of this concerns her.

Yet it is this very indifference which the artist adores, which he seeks to memorialize, right down to the meaningless wrinkles in her robes, the accidents of gravity that revealed her navel and breast.

Is he done yet? she wonders, or maybe she has closed her eyes to solve some mathematical problem that has dogged her for weeks, to reminisce about a garden she visited, or to plan what she will say this evening when she delivers a speech to a gathering of friends. Maybe she is simply collecting the energy and will to rise off of the couch, and walk out of the room.

Another sculpture which I loved just as much is The Hermaphrodite. I feel I could write an entire blog post just about this sculpture, the many ways in which it moved me and the rabbit warrens of thought that it evoked. For now, I will simply challenge my readers to a little bit of homework: look up and listen to the song, “The Origin of Love,” from the musical, Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Let us honor the moment, though, and return our attention to The Hermaphrodite. Here, we are drawn actively into an accidental, shared moment. An exchange of curiosity, desire, desperate longing and internal conflict occurs. Do you feel yourself participating in this wrestling match of identity, the need to be seen and hidden at the same time, the twisted position of the person’s body as they look both at you and away from you, reveal their body while also hiding it? Do you look? Do you look away? Do you come closer, or do you retreat?