Italy for New Years!

I thought I'd share with everyone my holiday plans. I am going to study abroad this winter in Italy! I leave January 1st, 2007, and it'll be a two-week romp through Florence and Rome to study and look at paintings, buildings, temples, statues and oh so much more! I've taken about three Art History courses so far and I must say, if I wasn't an English major, I would be an Art History major. Art has a special place in my heart: I had originally wanted to attend Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) to do graphic design but was rejected. What I learned from that experience is that somethings in life don't happen for a reason, that maybe it was because I was too green or too raw or just not ready for such a direction in my life. I plan to return to graphic design, whether it be when I go to grad school or 20 years down the line. Anyway, back to Italy. I will be studying the Renaissance through art in Italy and here's a taste of what I hope to see:

Florence: Florence or Firenze was the artistic, cultural, and economic center of Italy during the Renaissance. Names like Vasari, Ghiberti, Giotto, di Medici, Donatello, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Titian, Rubens, Boccaccio, and Dante come to mind when speaking about Florence. (An aside for the English majors out there: Chaucer traveled to Florence and was deeply influenced by the poetry of Dante and Boccaccio; in fact, his Troilus and Criseyde is a translation of Boccaccio's Filostrato.)

I'm going to be staying at the Hotel Brunelleschi. It's supposed to have a great view, too:

The most obvious architectural marker in Florence is the Cathedral of Florence or the Duomo. It was built in pieces over an ancient Roman church in the popular Gothic style of thin, high walls, recessed doorways, and lancet, rose windows:

One of my favorite Florentine painters of the High Renaissance is Titian. I love his detail to attention and the way he renders clothing and materials in such a way as to make you want to reach out and touch it. This poor reproduction of the original portrait, A Man with the Quilted Sleeve, can't really do justice to the original, nor the high-resolution reproductions I've seen. But anyway, I love this painting because its extravagance: the shimmering silk blue, the rich, thick black fur, all of that becomes translated into the artist's skill of technique rather than becoming materialistic.

Rome: Rome is the theological center of Italy. Located within Rome is Vatican City, which is its own country. Being Catholic, I cannot wait to visit Rome and St. Peter's - it's almost like a pilgrimage to me. Anyway, my favorite artist of Rome, is Raphael, who was actually from Urbino but worked mostly in Rome under the patronage of Pope Julius II. I love Raphael for his capacity paint desire in his works. Take this portrait of Bindo Altoviti: his piercing gaze, the softness of those tresses, and his full red lips . . . he is just perfect. This portrait bends gender stereotypes, you have a young and feminine-looking lad who probably has everybody speechless by now.

Words cannot express my excitement and anticipation, but I imagine my experience will be something like Dante in his Paradiso, from Canto 33 when he rises above all the heavenly spheres to finally see God:

From that point on, what I could see was greater
than speech can show: at such a sight, it fails -
and memory fails when faced with such excess.

As one who sees within a dream and, later,
the passion that had been imprinted stays,
but nothing of the rest returns to mind.