Monday, May 25

Monday, May 25

Today we took a class tour to the monastery and the cemetery here in Florence.  This cemetery is very significant in the city of Florence due to the fact it’s mostly reserved for politicians, wealthy people, writers and famous soccer players. A very interesting thing that grabs my attention was that the writer of Pinocchio is buried at this cemetery.  Here was also the St.Miniato church, which was one of the oldest churches in Florence built in 1018. They used somewhat the same technique used in Siena with the mixture of different colors of marble. This church also had three medieval sculptures in which every decoration had a symbolic meaning. For example eagle that was on top of the church was the guild that supervised the construction of some important monuments in the city. This church was also significant because it was constructed in three different levels and also it’s very dark due to the construction of the walls being to thick. The floor in this church was a special feature it had. The floor had the wheel of the zodiac, and in the middle they had a representation of the sun and each part of the zodiac circle symbolized a part of the body. Inside this church we also came across a fresco similar to the one we saw in Siena that had the nine virtues. During this time also many churches were getting built because they started to hear that the world was coming to an end and they started to build many of them in order to worship many of the saints.  At the church we also came across a sculpture, which represented the symbols of evangelism, but there was an argument to why the ox wasn’t included but it’s believed to be used in the zodiac circle. There was also a painting with Virgin Marie and St.Miniato handing Jesus a crown where there was real gold in the painting and when the light was turned on it made the painting stand out. Since the painting was completed before the Renaissance it has different ideas behind it. In other paintings that we came across some saints were bigger than others which represented they had more power.