Florence
Originally uploaded by millinerd
Because Giotto's Arena Chapel is so obviously dependent on Torcello (seeing them both within 24 hours drives home the point), and because I had just been to the mosaics of Ravenna, I arrived in Florence with a rather large Byzantine chip on my shoulder - a chip perhaps as imposing as one of the marble blocks upon which Michelangelo worked away. But the Renaissance, mirabile dictu, works away on me. The breaking point was the Palm Sunday procession through Ghiberti's Gates of Paradise and into Brunelleschi's (and Vasari's) dome. The masterpieces of the Uffizi, I then realized, are crumbs from the liturgical table.