Lots of Tuscan Treasure for Ori!

As Rome approaches, I wanted to emphasize again how special it was that your group got to experience the beauty of Tuscany.  The landscape is one of the most beautiful in the world—I even think somebody was wondering how could Italy “copyright” their Tuscan landscape and commodify the image.  It is a good thing cooler heads prevailed.

Painters have enjoyed the beauty of the landscape for centuries.  Actually the first person to draw an image that was landscape alone—and not a background to a portrait, was (you guessed it) Leonardo da Vinci.

Leonardo da Vinci, Drawing of the Arno Valley, 1473.

This drawing was created when he was 21, crawling over the hills where he grew up in Vinci—(hence his name Leonardo da(from) Vinci).  Vinci was just 6 miles north from Empoli where you and your team played soccer the other day.

A British Artist a few years ago made the painting inserted below of the Val di Ochi in Tuscany.  A photo of that valley is next to it.

Trevor Neal, c. 2012, Val di Orcia, Tuscany

Val di Orcia, Unesco Heritage Photo

There is no question Florence is the town of the Renaissance.  The great bronze doors of the Duomo Baptistry, the sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti spent his whole life carving and casting them. From a picture of you taken standing in front of the Duomo entrance, you had to have been staring at Ghiberti’s great Baptistry doors.  Interestingly, when they were taken down and restored recently, duplicate casts were made.  One of those casts now resides in Kansas City in the Nelson-Atkins Museum.  We’ll have to make a point to find it next time we are at the Museum.  Thanks to some generous Kansas City donors, these are in your hometown.

Left: Lorenzo Ghiberti, Gates of Paradise, Florence. Right: Cast of Ghiberti Gates, Nelson-Atkins Museum, KC.

I’m guessing in Florence you also got to experience Italian Gelato.  Just so you and your friends can get good at ordering Gelato as you arrive in Rome, here is a picture of Gelato flavors, and if you click on that picture you will be taken to a youtube video about how to order Gelato in Italian. link to how you order Gelato in Italian.

My favorite is “Pistacchio”.

Of the fifteen or so surviving paintings by Leonardo, two are in the Uffizi Museum in Florence, and one is in the Vatican Museum in Rome.  The face that perhaps you saw in the chalk drawing near the Florence Mercato, is a detail of an Angel’s Face from a Leonardo painting in Paris in the Louvre—so you in essence did “see” a rendered section  of a Leonardo da Vinci painting in Florence.

Florence Street Drawing, June 2025

Leonardo da Vinci, Detail Angel in Virgin of the Rocks, Louvre, Paris

What you definitely experienced was the size and dimensions of Michelangelo’s David in front of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.  It is a good thing somebody had the good sense to move it indoors in the late 1800’s.  Someday if you come back to Florence, you will be able to see the original. It does not disappoint.

Michelangelo, David, Accademia, Florence

However you will get to see one of Michelangelo’s great masterpieces, the Pieta, if you get to go inside St, Peter’s Basilica.  Make sure you find it.  You will not be disappointed.  He sculpted it when he was 24.