The Uffizi

We spent the morning exploring the Uffizi Gallery, one of the most famous art museums in Florence and also its most visited.  It is absolutely vast, and holds a collection of priceless works, mostly from the Italian Renaissance.  The museum complex was begun in 1560 by the Medici family, the wealthiest family in the world at the time.

To be honest, it was almost too much to take in, with room after room of huge, priceless statues and works of art. 

Even the ceilings were covered with frescoes!  An art historian could have spent all year in the museum admiring in detail the art collected there, and I almost felt guilty that we spent only one morning, walking by (and beneath) masterpiece after masterpiece.

We saw countless works from Michelangelo, and also Caravaggio’s famous Medusa.  You can buy note cards in the museum gift shop depicting this lovely work of art.

We were walking through one room, and I spotted a beautiful painting that I recalled from a very long time ago.  It was called Ecce Homo (Behold the Man) by the 19th century Italian painter Antonio Ciseri, and it depicts Pilate presenting Jesus to the crowds just before washing his hands of him.  The details are remarkably poignant - a group of woman on the right turning away in sorrow, Roman soldiers on the left preparing to take him to Golgotha.  "I know this painting!" I told Martha.  "It was in my childhood Bible!"  And sure enough, upon returning home I found it right there, in John 19 between page 854 and 855, presented to me in 1958 to mark my graduation from the Park Street Congregational Church Primary Department to the Junior Department.  I was nine years old, a child who could never have imagined at the time traveling to Florence and seeing the original more than six decades later.

Our exploration of Florence continued that afternoon, and we decided to eat lunch at a place Martha had read about called Tijuana Grill.  I did not think that we would be eating any Mexican food in Italy; in my post of October 28 I described having lunch at the Charlotte airport at Tequileria, “probably our last Mexican food for a long time.”  But this Florentine take on Mexican food was actually so good that we visited it twice.  We were talking to somebody about where we were from, and a couple who heard us came up to our table and said they were from Maggie Valley, NC.  Small world!  I discovered for the second or third time, though, that Italian beer is not very good, and I never ordered it again.  But the margaritas were excellent!