Illustrated Essay

Thursday October 19, 1864
Dear Rachel, As you know, I am in Florence, Italy and it´s wonderful. Being here really helped me reinforce some prior knowledge I had about the Renaissance. It was a time period when a rebirth occurred throughout Europe, but started with the city of Florence. The life in Renaissance Florence was very interesting, as these new ideas came up, and there was so much art and literature. Renaissance Art was inspired by Classical Art, and artists showed daily life things and actions. Something important is that while the Medieval Art showed religious figures and stiffness, Renaissance Art showed life like figure and used the act of perspective. I began my trip around the city with the Palazzo Medici. During this time the Medici family took over Florence and ruled it. They spent a lot of money paying for art. Also hosted parties or reunions for artists, where these people talked and shared ideas of new techniques in art such as perspective, and how to use anatomy to paint more life-like figures. Perspective was a big change or advance in Renaissance art, as it increased painter’s knowledge about distance and how to use it in their work. This technique is a system used to create a logic proportion between the background and the characters in the painting. It`s amazing, just imagine a Renaissance Palace full with artists and sculptures. And at the entrance a red carpet makes its way all over to some stairs, that lead to the platform, there two gold chair, in which are seated the Medici couple. I knew that these family was powerful and governed Florence for a really long time, but I didn`t know that they encouraged and bought art from famous artists to support them in their work. I got to visit the Mercato Nuovo as the tour went on. There I could appreciate, and learn a lot of new things that I probably would find boring to read out of a school text book. I learned that Florence was helped a lot in their economy by the industries of woolen cloth. Trading and money was becoming so popular, that many people entered the business of banking. As this industry grew people all over Europe came to Florence to exchange their money for Florins, which was the most powerful money at the time. So the place was crowded and sometimes you could end up being pushed by the crowd or even being robed. How cool could that be? In a market place filled up with the finest scarves, wines and the most peculiar species from India and the Middle East; all those foreign flavors joined up in one stand, with a big fat Muslim salesman, yelling all over, offering the spices. In the other corner there was a money dealer. The next thing I got to see was this huge round dome at the center of the city; it was just such a great piece of architecture made by Brunelleschi; and I would say that it is one of the things people should see before dying. Architects from that time studied Greek and Roman ruins, and were attracted to rounded arches, straight columns and domed roofs. Picture yourself walking down a street when you see this massive construction at the end. As you approach it you see some flayers with the final design, you take one and compare it to the one in front of you. Right away you see that a big semi sphere is missing. Couples of months later you see the structure of the dome, and you understand that Brunelleschi used: eight stone arches that lean against each other, and meet at the top. There were hoops of iron, wood, and brick wrapped around the arches. It was a great advance. Finally to compliment my learning I decided to go to Orsanmichele, because there, occurred a change of the study about science in relationship with the middle ages. When I saw all those sketches from Leonardo`s books I just thought of the amount of curiosity he had for learning. This interest encouraged scientists to analyze the results using math and logic. I can only picture Orsanmichele as a university with different rooms one for each topic like: architecture, engineering and anatomy. I hope that you have learned as much as me with this trip.