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rushthatspeaksI had initially been intending to take a day trip to Bologna on Thanksgiving itself, since Thrud had Thanksgiving-related job things and it would make the day a bit different, but I woke up exhausted and in a significant quantity of pain-- this is not that unusual when I am in Europe, but this time it was the pain of I-carried-how-much-meat-up-those-stairs-yesterday? and I just didn't want to go to Bologna on top of that. So I decided to cross a couple more museums off the list of things I'd kind of like to see in Florence. It's a flexible list, because one is always running across new things; the major ones left for this trip now are climbing the Duomo (because it's there) and going to the pietra dura museum.
But on Thanksgiving I went to the Argenti Museum in the Pitti.
I have now come to a considered and deliberate conclusion: the Pitti Palace is too large. That is why there are six museums in it, plus a garden which has a grotto, a second garden, and another museum inside itself. They had to sub-divide it just because of its size. And each of those six museums is also too large. Usually, upon leaving a museum, I have some kind of impression about the museum as a whole, some single thought or mood that becomes my mental tag for the place. The Uffizi is almost cuddly, the Accademia is pretentious, the Louvre is surreally epic, that kind of thing. So far, both times I have been in the Pitti, my thoughts have distilled down to one clear and simple sentence, and it is unusual because it is not a sentence that traditionally ever crosses my mind at all. Here is my thought about the Pitti: oh God, where's the bar?
Ground floor, last door on the right as you go into the courtyard from the front entrance, diagonally next to the door into the garden. Fortunately it is very well marked, so that after your mind completely snaps from inability to deal with even one more second of this you can still find it. Also fortunately, it is in a nice simple plain white room undecorated in any way and with simple, basic, modern chairs and tables because somebody out there understands. Of course, they are going to rob you blind, but the human down-to-earth honesty of this transaction almost made me weep.
Mind you, the Argenti is enough to drive anyone to hysteria. The official English translation is the Treasure Museum, although Argenti really means silver, and it is All The Precious Medici Stuff. I don't know whether it's the worst museum in Europe or one of the best. It is certainly one of the most terrifying.
It does, unequivocally, have the best fresco cycle ever, period. On one wall, you have barbarians and demons attacking classical civilization. There are hideous winged things chewing on the flanks of unicorns, and the Muses being menaced by big guys with swords, and people setting fire to Greek ruins, and so on. On the next wall, Lorenzo de Medici is welcoming the Muses into Florence, with a graceful outstretched hand. They look tired, but so relieved. Then there's a narrow panel of Truth reassuring Lorenzo that Aristotle and Neo-Platonism are compatible with Christianity. There is no text in the fresco, but damn, that's unmistakably what that is. Lorenzo also has a look of pure intellectual relief-- you can tell he was mildly worried about this. Then you have a wall with Lorenzo enthroned, surrounded by the great artisans of Florence as young men, each holding a model of his greatest work, and it is, of course, the Renaissance roll call. I can't even remember whether the Muses are in that picture, but does it matter? Best fresco cycle.
However, that's not what's on display. What's on display is, for instance, five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical gold platters with scenes from the Gospels on them. Or six hundred cameos with heads of famous women. In one case. Or thirty-five little fiddly ivory things, each carved with extreme delicacy and care to be the most spectacular little fiddly ivory thing it can possibly be. If there were one of it, it would be amazing, but because there's an entire case your brain is unable to comprehend all the little fiddly bits at the same time and decides to step out for a tea break. Or the exact twin of that terrible rock crystal reliquary from San Lorenzo, only it's worse because it has models of Dominican saints around the bottom which means that they look like ebony and ivory penguins. Or the exact twin of that terrible relief of the Duke from San Lorenzo, only it's much, much worse because instead of being made chastely though tastelessly in silver it is made in distressing full-color precious stones, so that the Medici arms are rubies in gold and the Duke's face is rose gold and his doublet is emerald stripes and lapis and it's just blindingly execrable.
There is a room in the Argenti devoted entirely to gadgets made out of deformed pearls. No, really. The artisan would take a deformed pearl and say, clearly God intended this to be the hump of a camel, although in fact God intended no such thing and probably the opposite, and then the artisan would graft a camel's neck and head and legs and tail onto the thing in extremely precious materials and say, oh, look, I have cunningly made it obvious what this particular deformed pearl really looks like. And then one of the Medici daughters would buy it, so that we centuries later could stare at it and say, that is the worst miniature of a camel I have ever, ever seen. There are deformed-pearl babies' cradles. Ships in sail. Insects. Harlequins with pearl legs. Mermaids with pearl tails. The mind begins to bleed.
And then there's what I think of as the display problem. You see, there will be a room, and it will have the aforementioned five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical gold platters with scenes from the Gospels on them hung on three walls, and against the fourth wall there will be a little case containing a cup made from a nautilus shell, which is all mother-of-pearl and amber. So you spend some time with that cup, you really appreciate it, because it is the only object in the room that is not overindulgently hyper-excessively too much, and you get a little dizzy when you try to look directly at the platters.
And then you will step into the next room, and there will be five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical mother-of-pearl cups made from nautilus shells in cases around three of the walls, and against the fourth wall there will be a little case containing a porcelain miniature portrait of an aristocratic relative, and I'm sure you see where this is going. This happens over and over and over in the Argenti. I do not know why they do this except to torment you. The point of this museum is to break you against the wealth and power of the Medici, the sheer weight of how damn much stuff they had, and oh, it certainly does that. If spread out into more reasonable configurations, a lot of this might not hurt at all, although a lot of it would just be terrible anywhere. (Tiny teasets made from amber. Coral crucifixes where the artist intended to use the natural growth of the coral to make the shapes, which works about as well as the deformed-pearl art. Porphyry Roman statues missing their heads, so that there are new Renaissance marble heads on them and the deficiency is glaringly obvious.)
There is an ivory horse carved, freestanding, inside a tiny ivory cage, and the horse and cage are linked by a carved ivory chain.
Okay, I get it, I'm impressed already-- this museum has three separate pope hats! Sewn with gold, embroidered with silver, dripping with diamonds, family arms in platinum chasings-- (when I told Thrud I'd been to the Argenti, afterwards, she looked reflective and said, 'yeah, it's an amazing museum, isn't it, no one should miss it, it's just full of things the human race shouldn't do. It's like, you don't make a sequel to Dude, Where's My Car and you don't do whatever the hell is up with the Argenti, you just don't do that.') A Mesoamerican jade mask looking confused and lonely and out of place, what is that even doing here, and a giant enamel crucifixion set, with about three hundred individual little tiny figures of separate people all of whom are carved in a distinctly anatomically uncanny-valley style, and the only non-historical sittable bench for visitors is in front of this giant furniture object, where I looked at the sign to see what it was and the sign said it was a Bavarian portable writing-desk containing a household devotional altar and, I am not making this up, a spice rack--
oh, God, where's the bar?
So you see. It's deeply hilarious, though it's also kind of torture by museum.
A sitdown and a drink and a nice sandwich from Gusto Panino revived me enough to go to an entirely different kind of museum, the exhibit on Renaissance banking at the Palazzo Strozzi.
But on Thanksgiving I went to the Argenti Museum in the Pitti.
I have now come to a considered and deliberate conclusion: the Pitti Palace is too large. That is why there are six museums in it, plus a garden which has a grotto, a second garden, and another museum inside itself. They had to sub-divide it just because of its size. And each of those six museums is also too large. Usually, upon leaving a museum, I have some kind of impression about the museum as a whole, some single thought or mood that becomes my mental tag for the place. The Uffizi is almost cuddly, the Accademia is pretentious, the Louvre is surreally epic, that kind of thing. So far, both times I have been in the Pitti, my thoughts have distilled down to one clear and simple sentence, and it is unusual because it is not a sentence that traditionally ever crosses my mind at all. Here is my thought about the Pitti: oh God, where's the bar?
Ground floor, last door on the right as you go into the courtyard from the front entrance, diagonally next to the door into the garden. Fortunately it is very well marked, so that after your mind completely snaps from inability to deal with even one more second of this you can still find it. Also fortunately, it is in a nice simple plain white room undecorated in any way and with simple, basic, modern chairs and tables because somebody out there understands. Of course, they are going to rob you blind, but the human down-to-earth honesty of this transaction almost made me weep.
Mind you, the Argenti is enough to drive anyone to hysteria. The official English translation is the Treasure Museum, although Argenti really means silver, and it is All The Precious Medici Stuff. I don't know whether it's the worst museum in Europe or one of the best. It is certainly one of the most terrifying.
It does, unequivocally, have the best fresco cycle ever, period. On one wall, you have barbarians and demons attacking classical civilization. There are hideous winged things chewing on the flanks of unicorns, and the Muses being menaced by big guys with swords, and people setting fire to Greek ruins, and so on. On the next wall, Lorenzo de Medici is welcoming the Muses into Florence, with a graceful outstretched hand. They look tired, but so relieved. Then there's a narrow panel of Truth reassuring Lorenzo that Aristotle and Neo-Platonism are compatible with Christianity. There is no text in the fresco, but damn, that's unmistakably what that is. Lorenzo also has a look of pure intellectual relief-- you can tell he was mildly worried about this. Then you have a wall with Lorenzo enthroned, surrounded by the great artisans of Florence as young men, each holding a model of his greatest work, and it is, of course, the Renaissance roll call. I can't even remember whether the Muses are in that picture, but does it matter? Best fresco cycle.
However, that's not what's on display. What's on display is, for instance, five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical gold platters with scenes from the Gospels on them. Or six hundred cameos with heads of famous women. In one case. Or thirty-five little fiddly ivory things, each carved with extreme delicacy and care to be the most spectacular little fiddly ivory thing it can possibly be. If there were one of it, it would be amazing, but because there's an entire case your brain is unable to comprehend all the little fiddly bits at the same time and decides to step out for a tea break. Or the exact twin of that terrible rock crystal reliquary from San Lorenzo, only it's worse because it has models of Dominican saints around the bottom which means that they look like ebony and ivory penguins. Or the exact twin of that terrible relief of the Duke from San Lorenzo, only it's much, much worse because instead of being made chastely though tastelessly in silver it is made in distressing full-color precious stones, so that the Medici arms are rubies in gold and the Duke's face is rose gold and his doublet is emerald stripes and lapis and it's just blindingly execrable.
There is a room in the Argenti devoted entirely to gadgets made out of deformed pearls. No, really. The artisan would take a deformed pearl and say, clearly God intended this to be the hump of a camel, although in fact God intended no such thing and probably the opposite, and then the artisan would graft a camel's neck and head and legs and tail onto the thing in extremely precious materials and say, oh, look, I have cunningly made it obvious what this particular deformed pearl really looks like. And then one of the Medici daughters would buy it, so that we centuries later could stare at it and say, that is the worst miniature of a camel I have ever, ever seen. There are deformed-pearl babies' cradles. Ships in sail. Insects. Harlequins with pearl legs. Mermaids with pearl tails. The mind begins to bleed.
And then there's what I think of as the display problem. You see, there will be a room, and it will have the aforementioned five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical gold platters with scenes from the Gospels on them hung on three walls, and against the fourth wall there will be a little case containing a cup made from a nautilus shell, which is all mother-of-pearl and amber. So you spend some time with that cup, you really appreciate it, because it is the only object in the room that is not overindulgently hyper-excessively too much, and you get a little dizzy when you try to look directly at the platters.
And then you will step into the next room, and there will be five hundred and ninety-seven almost identical mother-of-pearl cups made from nautilus shells in cases around three of the walls, and against the fourth wall there will be a little case containing a porcelain miniature portrait of an aristocratic relative, and I'm sure you see where this is going. This happens over and over and over in the Argenti. I do not know why they do this except to torment you. The point of this museum is to break you against the wealth and power of the Medici, the sheer weight of how damn much stuff they had, and oh, it certainly does that. If spread out into more reasonable configurations, a lot of this might not hurt at all, although a lot of it would just be terrible anywhere. (Tiny teasets made from amber. Coral crucifixes where the artist intended to use the natural growth of the coral to make the shapes, which works about as well as the deformed-pearl art. Porphyry Roman statues missing their heads, so that there are new Renaissance marble heads on them and the deficiency is glaringly obvious.)
There is an ivory horse carved, freestanding, inside a tiny ivory cage, and the horse and cage are linked by a carved ivory chain.
Okay, I get it, I'm impressed already-- this museum has three separate pope hats! Sewn with gold, embroidered with silver, dripping with diamonds, family arms in platinum chasings-- (when I told Thrud I'd been to the Argenti, afterwards, she looked reflective and said, 'yeah, it's an amazing museum, isn't it, no one should miss it, it's just full of things the human race shouldn't do. It's like, you don't make a sequel to Dude, Where's My Car and you don't do whatever the hell is up with the Argenti, you just don't do that.') A Mesoamerican jade mask looking confused and lonely and out of place, what is that even doing here, and a giant enamel crucifixion set, with about three hundred individual little tiny figures of separate people all of whom are carved in a distinctly anatomically uncanny-valley style, and the only non-historical sittable bench for visitors is in front of this giant furniture object, where I looked at the sign to see what it was and the sign said it was a Bavarian portable writing-desk containing a household devotional altar and, I am not making this up, a spice rack--
oh, God, where's the bar?
So you see. It's deeply hilarious, though it's also kind of torture by museum.
A sitdown and a drink and a nice sandwich from Gusto Panino revived me enough to go to an entirely different kind of museum, the exhibit on Renaissance banking at the Palazzo Strozzi.
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no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 02:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 05:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 09:01 am (UTC)Permission to
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 10:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 05:01 am (UTC)(also, subscribing, as your turn of phrase is excellent and hilarious)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 11:58 am (UTC)(Also, subscribing, because I love your writing style.)
no subject
Date: 2011-12-27 06:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 01:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 02:27 am (UTC)The rest of the museum sounds rather alarming.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 12:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 01:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 02:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 04:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-15 01:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 03:28 am (UTC)So, basically, this is the expensive version of the Museum of Bad Art.
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 04:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 06:20 am (UTC)Magnificent.
And I so needed the laugh.
Nine
no subject
Date: 2011-12-14 05:04 pm (UTC)A Mesoamerican jade mask
Do you find yourself missing the rest of the world? You've been diving into all this Italy, and it sounds like it's splendid, but do you ever go, my God, I have not seen anything Asian in days?
<3