Visual overload, and ostentation next to poverty

[ellid]

Today I went to the Uffizi, and my eyeballs nearly went *boom*.

Really.

I've been to great museums before, including the Prado, the National Galley, the Smithsonian, the Met, and the V&A, but nothing, NOTHING compares to the Uffizi for sheer quantity of masterpieces crammed into a very small area. In *one corridor* they have the following:



Giotto's Madonna & Child.
An early work by Duccio.
Simone Lorenzetti's The Annunciation.
Piero della Francesca's Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino.
The Pollaiolos' Labors of Hercules.
Almost everything by Sandro Botticelli that isn't in a church, including The Birth of Venus and La Primavera *in the same room*.
Da Vinci's Annunciation, Adoration of the Shepherds, and the Baptism of Christ he worked on as an apprentice.
Various works by Cranach and his followers, including Adam and Eve and Martin and Katarina Luther.
More Peruginos than I knew existed.
More Giorgiones than I knew existed.
Michaelangelo's Doni Tonda.
Raphael's earliest self-portrait, his portraits of Leo X and Julius II, and several Gonzagas attributed to him, again, all in the same room.
Caravaggio's Bacchus and Medusa Shield.
Titian's Venus of Urbino, Flora, and about a half a dozen other choice works.

Need I continue? Any one or two of these paintings would make a lesser museum. Here, they're par for the course. *Everything* is magnificent. I was not only footsore, I was nearly *blind* by the time I staggered into the cafe and had lunch.

I had planned to do the Pitti Palace afterwards (ha!), but it took me over three hours to do the Uffizi. So I went over to Santa Maria Novella instead.


This is where I saw ostentation contrasted with poverty. Not in the church - this one is comparatively chaste, and is best known for a wonderful Masaccio, The Trinity. No, there's a perfumery about half a block down that is so exclusive and so chichi that they have a library of books on the history of perfume in what had been the monks' former chapel, complete with a 14th century fresco series on the Passion. I have a list of the products offered, and nowhere could I find a price. Classical music played softly over the PA system, the clerks ignored me completely, and even the fine old herbalists' shop used by the monks before the Republic forced the monastery to give up selling their formulae was rather snooty.

They did, however, have a nice collection of old apothecaries' equipment, including mortars, pestles, alembics, thermometers, and I swear to God, a handwritten manuscript on toothache remedies and a printed book on creating a homunculus (complete with an illustration of a fetus in a bottle). This was worth going to see, and I'm glad I went.

The contrast came as I was leaving the church. One thing I've noticed is that there are a fair number of beggars in the historic section. Most simply kneel in an attitude of prayer, a cup in front of them. But this one - she had a toddler with her, and no one was paying the slighest attention to her even though she was *inside the cloister*, where one could not possibly avoid seeing and hearing her.

I was stunned. I'd been led to believe that Italy, like most European countries, has a better social care system than this, so I've basically ignored the other beggars. But a baby...I've *never* seen that before, either in America or Europe.

I can't help wondering if she really needed money, or what. I stopped giving money to beggars soon after I moved to Boston and realized that the vast majority of them spend what they're given on booze or cigarettes or drugs. But this one...

I just don't know.

Comments

[hudebnik.livejournal.com]

Today I went to the Uffizi, and my eyeballs nearly went *boom*.

Yes, that was my reaction when I was there in 1984. I know a lot more about medieval and Renaissance art now than I did then; I presume the effect would be proportionally stronger.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Something like that. I was shocked by the number of these paintings I'd actually studied over the years, and how easily I recognized the artists' respective styles.

OTOH, seeing just how big, or how small, a particular work is a real shock. I'd expected the Battle of San Romano to be much larger, ditto The Birth of Venus, and I wasn't at all prepared by how tiny the Pollaiolo Hercules panels are.

I was delighted to see, however, that the della Francesca portraits of Federigo Montefeltre and Battista Sforza were in their original freestanding frame, with two small panels on the back depicting the Duke and Duchess in triumphal chariots. Nice chance from the usual.

[jadziahp.livejournal.com]

Fact is, we do have a nice social care system. I can tell you more if you want, but rest assured that people were ingnoring the woman because chances are that she is forcing her child in such a situation just to raise more money. We've seen it all by now, including children stolen to be put on the street to beg, and these so called beggars refuse actual jobs because they get more money on the steet than with an actual job. The sad thing is that given the number of these people, those who really are in need, get ignored as well.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

Stealing children to use them as beggars - that's just beyond the pale. So glad I didn't give in and hand her a euro or two.

Thanks.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Gah. I got totally lost in the Uffizi AND the Pitti Palace when I was eight. I'm sure I'd love it if I visited there again as an adult, but it was damn traumatic for me when I was a kid.

[dungeons-master.livejournal.com]

What Jadzia says about the beggars is sadly true.
These are mostly foreigners, who come to our country because our laws allow them special privileges (like not paying for or having fuel for a very low price), don't want to work and spend their days in front of markets and public places with their children, forcing them to beg too, if they're old enough.
Often, if you offer to give them food instead of money, they refuse it and tell you it's money they want. And you won't believe how much they make this way. But you don't see their children with shoes or clean clothes, do you?
A Italian man or woman in need would never use his/her child that way. We're not the best of people, but we do have some dignity left.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought. I haven't given any money to beggars, including this one. I felt really sorry for the child, though....

[owlfish]

Be careful around crowds of kids if they try swarming you. Most kids are just kids, of course, but twice in Florence I've been swarmed by prospective pickpocketing kids (c. 7-8 years old). Luckily, the first time my father had his wits about him and they didn't get further than unzipping my bag, and thus the second time, I was alert enough to keep anything from happening too.

[tena524.livejournal.com]

It's been just about 30 years since I've set foot in the Uffizi, but the impact of seeing the original Birth of Venus is still with me. The gallery it usually hangs in was undergoing some sort of repair at the time, so they had it in another hall, hung on a temporary wall about five feet in front of the regular residents, with all spectators roped away from Venus by a good ten feet. I couldn't tell you what else was in that gallery at the time - chalk it up to distance, teenage inexperience and current progressive senility...

As for the begger with child, I'm reminded of the time my old boss came in one morning, telling us she had seen an apparent homeless man being picked up by a *limo* in Back Bay. The driver seemed to be familiar with the guy, and the so-called homeless man hopped in like he did it every day - as perhaps he did...