Monday. My longest day of classes. I haven’t had Monday classes since the Fall of 2004. Ugh. This was a little hard to realize today. Nevertheless, I’m in love. No, for those reading this, it’s not to a specific girl: I absolutely love my Monday classes.
It may not remain so as the semester continues; we’ll see. The day starts out with an Art History site visit (changes weekly) from 10:45am-1:00pm. We then usually have a lecture from 2:00pm-3:15pm based on what we saw during the morning visit. Today lasted longer than it normally will. We met at 10:45 and, besides a 25 minute lunch break, didn’t end until 3:35. I then have Italian from 4:00-6:00. Oh Italian … more to come at the end.
Today’s site visits were phenomenal. Since it was our first session of class, our professor took us up to the Piazzale Michelangelo, which is on a hill on the opposite side of the city from Fiesole (a former Etruscan town outside of the city that we went to with Dr. Antrim while he was still here — side note: he saw the Grateful Dead perform there in ’85 — how cool is that?!?). At the Piazzale was a church, the Church of San Miniato al Monte. Most of the insides of the churches in Florence are treasures, but this one also had a beautiful outside.
There were a couple of things that happened which made this place extra special. First, the church is Benedictine, so we sat in the sacristy and traced the life of St. Benedict through the frescoes on the ceiling. Incredible! Then, when we were looking into the choir area, one of the monks came out and talked to us, asking our teacher where we were from. When she answered that we were all American students (sono studenti americani), he asked if any of us were from New Orleans. None of us were from the city itself, but it was still incredible to see that it was on their minds. He was a little man with flowing white robes, but the concern was showing on his face when he asked. (I’m kind of at a loss on what to say now — so touching).
After we left, we went to the Museo Archeologico. When we got there we found out that the Roman and Greek sections were closed off due to technical issues. If I could only describe the frustration seeping through my body when I heard that. We went upstairs and saw the Etruscan exhibit, which our professor used to show the inspirations and earlier models that the Renaissance artists used in sculpting. She pointed out where they got the proportions of the body right and where they got it wrong. Then, as we were getting ready to leave, someone from the Museum came in and said that they’d found enough museum staff to let us go up and see the Greek and Roman objects. Phew! I was giddy (a state that sometimes frightens those who haven’t seen me in it before). I was first in line when we got upstairs and it definitely matched up to the expectations. Some of these works I’d seen in books on the classical periods; these were the actual versions right in front of me!
Italian was good, too, but it couldn’t match up to the rest of the day. My one regret is that this is the one day that I didn’t bring my camera (I know, I’ll be kicking myself on this one for months). I’m also probably going to go up to the church again some night in the next couple of weeks and listen to the monks sing the gregorian chants at their evening mass (vespers?).
Wow, I’m worn out just typing that one. Needless to say, at the moment I’m in love with Mondays.
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