Assisi

Italy is an interesting country. The cities of Venice and Florence are truly unique cities that have a sense of history and art all around them. The Italian countryside has a beauty about it that is captivating and intriguing. There are wide flat plains as well as deep valleys with little towns scattered among the hills and mountains. Assisi is one of the larger towns which has in recent times stretched down all the way down to take up a part of the plains in front of it.

The view from the town of Assisi

Assisi is best known for being the home of the Franciscan order of monks, officially the Order of Friars Minor. St. Francis was born to a rich family of cloth merchants and led a carefree early life. According to the legend he was praying in the Church of San Damiano (just outside the actual city) when the icon of Christ spoke to him and instructed to “go and repair My house”. St. Francis at first thought this to mean the actual physical church which had fallen into ruin and only later realized that he had been instructed to rebuild the Church spiritually. He then renounced his family and his inheritance and led a life of poverty and service to the needy and later founded the Order of Friars Minor.

The main attraction of Assisi is unsurprisingly the Basilica of St. Francis which is actually two churches – one on top of the other. St. Francis is buried underneath the lower church and his tomb is open to the public. In fact, the upper church was built because so many pilgrims came to see the tomb that it became impossible to actually conduct services in the lower church. That’s rather sad since there are some exquisite works of art in the lower church, even though the entrance to it is rather dark and much has not survived the passage of time. Still the frescoes on the walls are beautiful and moving and they make use of the curved roof to project images such as the crucified Christ and angels such that they actually appear to be looking down on us. It’s easy to see how pilgrimages can inspire religious experiences.

The upper church is newer and brighter and once again beautifully decorated. Parts of the frescoes especially those of the evangelist on the roof have had to be reconstructed after they were brought down by an earthquake in 1996. The frescoes along the walls depict the life of Christ on one side and the life of St. Francis on the other. St. Francis tried to live his life as Jesus did and is often referred to as “another Christ”. In fact towards the end of his life he made a 40 day pilgrimage and during that it is said that he received the stigmata — the wounds of Christ. But in his modesty he never revealed them and they were only found after he died. The lower church also had similar frescoes but many of them are now in bad condition.

Though the Basilica may be the biggest draw, it is certainly not the only church in the town. Another prominent church is that of St. Claire — a female saint who lived at the same time as St. Francis, was one of his disciples and lived her life in much the same way. Today the church of St. Claire houses the icon of Christ that was in the Church of San Damiano which was said to have spoken to Francis.

Spending so much time learning about Renaissance art and history and being constantly surrounded by the art and architecture of the period it can be easy to forget that Italian history did not stop with the Renaissance. On the way back from the church of St. Claire our guide Marco (who was the most intense tour guide I have ever seen) pointed out a little shop and told us how during World War II that shop had been where fake passports had been made for the Jewish residents of the town so that they could escape out of the country. Being a person born toward the end of the 20th Century World War II seems so far and distant until I see something like that which makes it so much more real.

Like every other city we’ve been to Assisi was a great learning experience. When driving away from the city I happened to turn back and look back up and see the whole town perched on its hill. It seemed almost like something out a fairytale — almost too beautiful and perfect to be true. When people think of small cozy towns nestled into the Italian countryside, they probably think of Assisi.

Il Duomo

Alongside innovations in art, literature and learning in general the Renaissance also the time of great advances in architecture. In particular the building of arches and domes was revived and one of the best examples of this revival is the dome of the Cathedral in Florence. Duomo is actually the generic Italian word for a cathedral church and doesn’t actually refer to the dome. The Italian of dome is cuppola. Here you can see the Cathedral of Florence with its dome rising up behind it.

The Cathedral and it's Dome

The Cathedral itself is amazing and is very beautiful on the inside. The outer facade is much more modern and is not really as intricate as the works on the inside. The dome itself is a masterpiece in its own right. It was designed by Brunelleschi who studied the dome of the Pantheon in Rome whose construction techniques had long been forgotten. The dome is marvelous because it it completely free standing. There are no pillars or other supports underneath it to hold it in place. It is actually two concentric domes and there is a narrow passage in between them that workmen used for getting up and is now open to the public. We got a chance to climb up this narrow stairwell all the way to the top.

Looking up from inside the dome

The passage iteslf is tiny, just barely wide even for one person. There are over 500 steps — definitely not for the claustrophobic or weak of heart. At one point who are actually back inside the cathedral and very close to the beautiful images painted on the roof of the dome. They are all scenes from Dante’s Divine Comedy and since we had been reading the Divine Comedy we recognized some of the scenes painted. Dante and his works permeate Italian (and particularly Florentine) culture and history and the inside of the dome is one of the many ways in which that influence gets expressed.

Impressive though the inside of the dome may be, it is the view from the top that is most captivating. After walking up the long narrow staircase, squeezing to let people pass you the exit  onto the top is really quite sudden.One moment you’re in this dark, narrow space and the next you’ve emerged into the bright sunlight and a wonderful view of all of Florence stretches ahead in front of you.

And the view really is quite magnificent. We had been staying just on the edge of the city and walking about everywhere so we didn’t really get a sense of how big the city was until we got to the top of the dome and looked all around us. We spent well over an hour at the top of the dome taking pictures and there are a lot of them that I could put up, but I’m going to go with one which I think gives a pretty good idea of the city of Florence.

The view of Florence from atop the Duomo

Along the left edge you can see the belltower which is right next to the Duomo and is almost as high as the dome, but not quite. At the bottom you can just see the tip of the Baptistry, another magnificent building which faces the Duomo. And in front stretches out the city of Florence. The line of trees that you can see in the middle flanks the Arno river that goes through the city and in the distance you can see some of the hills that surround Florence. And of course the sky is a beautiful shade of blue with just a few white clouds off in the distance. Florence is a really lovely city and when you’re standing atop the dome you can almost believe that time has passed this city by and the Renaissance never really ended.

Michaelangelo’s David

I’ve been asked what my favorite thing to see in Italy was. That’s a hard question because there was so much to see and a lot of it was really impressive. But one of the things that did impress me a lot was Michaelangelo’s David. We’ve all seen pictures and images and it’s become in many ways an icon of the Renaissance, but looking at it close up in real life is quite a different experience. There’s a difference in seeing something on a small book page and in seeing it in 14-foot white marble.

Since we couldn’t take pictures inside the Accademia (where the David is located) the above image from Wikipedia will have to do. As I was saying, there’s a lot you don’t see in a picture. You don’t see the exquisitely small details like the veins in the arms or the fact that even the finger and toenails are accurate. All this even when Michaelangelo knew that the statue would be on top of the Duomo and none of these details would be visible from afar. You also notice that his hands and feet are unusually large for the same reason.

Looking at the David, I saw a work of art but I also saw a glimpse of Michaelangelo’s passion, commitment and expertise. It’s easy to look at pieces like that the David and not really think about the artist behind it. But it’s worth remembering that these works that we venerate and love are the result of hundreds, maybe even thousands of hours of human labor. And you can’t fake dedication like that. I can imagine the love of his art that must have driven Michaelangelo to make something so exquisite.

Being an engineer, I can relate to Michaelangelo in some way. often when making a design I have a certain specification to follow but I often find myself going above and beyond what is needed to build something that doesn’t just work, but works well. Of course, I haven’t made anything remotely close to the David, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling a sort of kinship with Michaelangelo and his contemporaries. In an age where so much emphasis is placed on speed and deadlines at the cost of everything else, it’s good to look on works like the David and be reminded that there is something to be said for quality and the pursuit of excellence.

Back in the US of A

I’m back. After 3 weeks touring across Italy looking at wonderful art and walking for hours and hours a day, it’s good to be back at Lafayette. After Florence we made our way to Assisi and then to Rome. Assisi looks like a place straight out of the Lord of the Rings and when you walk through Rome you walk through thousands of years of history. There is a lot to say about both these places (and a lot more to show) but that’ll have to wait until after I get settled back in and pull all 3GB of photos off my memory cards.

There is a lot that I’ve learned on this trip and a lot of new friends and experiences. In many ways, going to Italy was one of the best decisions of my life. The second last day we went to the Trevi Fountain in Rome and I threw a coin in. Apparently if you throw a coin in and make a wish, someday you’ll come back to Rome. But I can safely say that even if I didn’t throw in that coin, I would have been making my way back. Every place I’ve been to, including the small towns of Gubbio and Montefalco could easily take a lifetime to explore.

I never quite appreciated the importance of travel until this trip (even though I’ve been all over the place). But I agree wholeheartedly with Professor Pribic that travel is important. It opens the mind and teaches you a lot about new people, new places, new cultures and it teaches you so much about yourself. Personally, I knew that learning about Italy and art would be an interesting experience and was reading to learn a lot. What I wasn’t ready for was the change in myself that the trip would inspire. I feel braver and more open to trying new things. When you start college they tell you how much you’ll learn and change over the next four years. The last three weeks was the whole college experience accelerated many times.

Though I’m back on campus and getting ready to start my research work for the rest of summer, I still have a lot of thinking (and a lot of writing) to do about Italy and my experiences. The Italy trip will be staying with me for a while and that’s a good thing.

A Firenz

It’s been a while. I blame the crappy hotel wireless that I had to pay for. Anyways, Florence. It’s another amazing city. Not quite as unreal as Venice, but definitely not your run-of-the-mill metropolitan city. Every street has a piece of history on it and you can turn a completely unassuming street corner and find yourself face-to-face with a work of art. Whether it be the Piazza del Signorio (with the replica of David) or the breathtaking Basilica with its famous dome, this city has art built into it at a very deep level. It is really quite amazing and I could easily imagine myself spending a whole year just getting a basic idea of what amazing stuff is where.

The days and nights spent here have been amazing so far. The mornings are packed with looking at art and learning so much about them. I don’t think I’ve ever learned so fast about anything in my life. It would have been impossible without the two awesome professors who are here with us. They’ve spent significant amounts of time here before and have a really good feel for the city and what it has to offer. Whether it be where to find the best art, the best food, the cheapest shopping or the most flavors of gelato, the professors have been amazing.

Of all I’ve seen, gazing upon the David has been almost a spiritual experience. Seeing the thought and detail Michaelangelo put into this work is breathtaking. I could easily write a whole book on how it makes me feel and how it relates to my life. But that will have to wait.

But with the art-seeing in the morning and the shopping/exploring/partying in the afternoons and evenings, that leaves precious little time for journaling and sleeping. I’ve never slept so little for so long in my life, but I certainly do not regret it (though physically it does take a toll). I’ll certainly have more stories to tell, but they will have to wait. I’m sitting in the hotel lobby which is getting progressively louder and I have a paper to write for tomorrow. I have one more day in Florence and I plan to enjoy it.

So it’s not built on water after all

It turns out that Venice is not built on top of water after all. We met with this very nice tour guide today called Fiona who’s from Venice but spoke perfect British English (and German) and she told us about the history of Venice and then led us around the city. Venice is composed of  number of small islands and city is built by placing wood and stone on top of those islands to make them better suited for carrying buildings. Ironically enough, the part of Venice that was once the highest point in the city, the Piazza San Marco (St. Mark’s Square) is now the lowest inhabited part of the city and regularly gets flooded.

After another full day of walking around Venice, I can safely say that it is one of the most amazing cities on the planet. Florence may be considered the birthplace of the Renaissance but Venice is truly amazing. It’s really wonderful when you find yourself walking through these narrow streets and suddenly you’re in an open courtyard (a campo) surrounded by beautiful buildings and architecture from different periods. And that is just the beginning of it.

Throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance period Venice has been a center of both trade and military activity (especially naval conquests throughout the Mediterranean). The results of this are obvious everywhere, especially in the art and architecture. When visiting the largest Franciscan church in Italy, the Santa Maria dei Frari, it is possible to get a glimpse of the evolution of Venetian art and architecture gathered under a single roof, albeit a rather large roof constructed over 150 years. The church looks large, but very unassuming from the outside and gives absolutely no indication of the wealth of art and history that it holds within.

In many ways this is perhaps similar to Franciscan ethos of service without pomp and grandeur, reserving wealth and richness for the inside rather than external display. However, the wealth and splendor on display on the inside does make one question why an order of friars vowed to poverty would accept such immensely expensive additions to their church, even if technically they owned none of it. At the same time, it’s probably a testament to the fact that the world is so much complicated than simply right and wrong and that sometimes you simply have to accept the system and bend it to your purpose than fight against it.

I’m currently fighting against my camera and trying to figure out whether to keep a paper journal or just spend money and print out my blog posts later. Tomorrow is yet another jam packed day with a boat tour out to more Venetian islands and a Vivaldi concert in the evening. The day after we leave Venice for Florence and I don’t know what the Internet situation will be then. It might be a few days till my next post so till then I’ll keep journaling, reading, writing and paying attention to two awesome professor and a bunch of interesting fellow students.

They built a city, on water

I’ve been in Venice for a good  6 hours now. It’s been an interesting set of experiences so far, including stepping out of the airport and on to a boat to get to the hotel and walking about a city that is so completely different from any other major city I’ve ever been in (and I’ve been in a fair few).

Venice really is a city of canals, a city essentially built on water. But you quickly get used to it. After the initial shock/amazement of seeing buildings practically rising out of the water, it doesn’t take too long to get used to the sight of small boats winding their through canals or crossing a bridge every few dozen steps.  In some ways Venice reminds me of Calcutta where I’ve spent most of my life. There are lots of tiny little alleys and lanes with lots of old buildings with different architectural styles. However, unlike Calcutta there has been no large scale modernization and the more modern buildings and marketplaces fit in really well with the rest of the city. We haven’t really had a chance to see the churches or other culturally relevant parts of the city but we have a few more days to get on with that.

The outside of San Marco

I’ve already had a small glimpse of Italian cuisine. We had a light lunch of meat and cheese appetizers, spaghetti and risotto and it was all quite delicious. The recommended €15 bottle of red wine (a Merlot) went with the meal quite well. Now I am certainly not a connoisseur of wine by any stretch of the imagination, but I’d like to think that I’m developing a palette (and I’ll certainly have good teachers in Italy’s wine country). For dinner we’ve been promised an assorted seafood dish that is reportedly a Venetian specialty which I’m looking forward to. Coming from Calcutta, I’ve grown up with good sea food all my life and is something I almost never get in Easton, Pennsylvania.

Merlot in Venice

It’s been a rather long and fun-filled day and a half with not much sleep. My roommate is currently fast asleep and I will have to wake him up before dinner. I’m tempted to do the same, expect I know that I wouldn’t be able to get up in time.  So tonight will likely be a quiet night with some reading and pen-and-paper journaling (plus some emailing home to let my parents know I’m alright). Tomorrow promises to be an even more interesting day as we really dive into our course material and take a proper tour of Venice and the various interesting places.

Packing and other necessities

I do not like packing. I don’t mind having things organized and neat, but I don’t like putting a bunch of stuff into a small space where I may not be able to get to things easily. Enough complaining. I’m packed and as always my suitcase is a bit heavier than I would like it to be. But I’ve managed to pack clothes, notebooks, pens, stationary, shoes and a number of other random things, enough to last my three weeks in Italy. I like to travel light, especially when I actually have to carry stuff myself. So my carry on luggage is as light as I can make it, containing only the bare essentials and everything else goes in the suitcase. Depending on how much I have to lug my suitcase I could move things into my backpack if need be.

I’ve also gone shopping a bit today for various things. I got a Moleskin notebook, my first. I’m not sure if I think it’s a good investment. I like the look and feel of it and it’s clearly well made. The paper is thicker than normal and the paper is stitched, not stapled, to the cover. The line spacing is narrow and I’m not sure if that’s going to make writing harder. I guess I’ll found out once I start writing. I got a pack of three for $16.95 and that’s pretty steep for 120 pages in each book. I also got a smaller pocket notebook for taking notes on the fly. Besides that I picked up a plug adapter (I’m not taking any electronics besides my netbook which has a power brick).

In conclusion I dislike packing, but I’m packed anyway. Now back to waiting for laundry to finish so that I can wrap up things up for the night.

The reading list

Like basically all college courses my course in Italy has a reading list. There are four books on the list: one is a guidebook to the area we’ll be in, one is a book on Renaissance Florence and two Italian classics from the Renaissance period that we’ll be studying.

The guide book is called Tuscany, Umbria and the Marches. To tell the truth, I haven’t bought this book. From the reviews on Amazon it seems like a well recommended book, but I’m only going to read it during the trip and that too probably sporadically. Since there are going to be about 20 other people on the trip (about half of whom I already know) I’m going to be borrowing it whenever I decide to look something up.

The art book is called Renaissance Florence: The Invention of a New Art and is the most expensive of the lot. But that’s understandable considering there are a number of high quality pictures spread throughout the book. This book I have bought, partially because I like books that are well made and put together such as this one. I haven’t read or seriously looked through it yet but I am looking forward to it.

The two classics are Boccacio’s Decameron and Dante’s Inferno, the first part of his Divine Comedy. The actual books are written in Italian and we’re going to be reading English translations. The chief translator for both of them is Mark Musa and they are both supposed to be the best translations available. I’m half-way through the introduction to the Inferno (which itself is 52 pages long and written by Musa). The introduction is basically a summary of Dante’s life, times and works and there is a lot of information packed into those pages. Though it’s well written, I do wish that it was broken into sections so that I had some idea of where the text was going. Oh well, I guess the introduction isn’t the most important part of a book so I shouldn’t read too much into it.

I’m looking forward to reading the books but I’m not the biggest fan of the classics, I’m more into books with an involved plotline moving at a good pace. However, I think that the books will offer insights in to the culture and ideas of the era which will be useful when I’m actually studying the art and trying to understand the artists themselves. We’re leaving on Wednesday evening and I hope to have at least one of the classics completed before then. Unfortunately I’ll be busy moving and packing until then so that’s not going to be very easy to do, but I’m certainly going to try.

INDS 220 Florence: Birthplace of the Renaissance

This on-site course explores the brilliant artistic and literary culture of Florence during the late Middle Ages and Renaissance. Its primary text is the city and its monuments: its buildings, from church to palace; its art, including masterpieces by Giotto, Donatello, Botticelli, and Michaelangelo; and its literature, including such classics as Dante’s Inferno, Petrarch’s sonnets, and Boccaccio’s Decameron. Visits to Pisa, Siena, Assisi, and Rome enhance understanding of this extraordinary age.

Hello all. I’m heading off to Italy for 18 days leaving the 26th of May and coming back on the 13th of June. The last time I was in Europe was some 5 years ago (Ireland) and though I had a great time and a wonderful experience, it wasn’t the most intellectually fulfilling experience I’ve ever had. But this is the first time that I’m going abroad with a definite purpose to learn something and moreover the trip it is going to be led by two very awesome professors who are leaders in their fields (of Art History and International Affairs).

To say that I’m excited would be a gross understatement. I’m really looking forward to this trip for a number of different reasons (not the least of which is the chance to get away from campus for 3 weeks). It’s going to be a great chance to explore a new country, learn about an entirely different subject (Art History) and share some great experiences with friends. And of course, since this blog is here, I’ll be recording as much as I can right here.