Travel Italy- Road Scholar Hidden Treasures of Florence

Click Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, or Day 4, Extra history-San Marco, Day 5, Another Extra- Giotto's Bell Tower, Day 6 or Day 7 above. Day 6 at Ufizzi gives something of a timeline and overview if you want to start there.

This blog features photographs taken during the November, 2014, Road Scholar adventure in

Florence, Italy, called "The Hidden Treasures of Florence." Twenty-one of us shared this adventure with our always helpful and well prepared group leader Christina Viti and and terrific assistant, Eleana. Those who participated in this and other Road Scholar adventures are invited to post or send me photographs for inclusion. Heck, anyone is invited to post!

This blog is divided into the 7 days of our field trips with photographic highlights from each day. The many photographs of the paintings and sculptures we saw will be a good review for all of us and a good introduction for those contemplating this or a similar adventure. Additional photographs of our participants, landscapes, and street photography are included.

My wife Judy and I had minimal knowledge of Renaissance art, mostly college humanities' courses taken long ago. I have a fairly good knowledge of literature and philosophy of the period. Judy and I prepared by watching the 18 hour (36 lecture) Great Courses course entitled Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance (click on any underlined words to go to link) by William Kloss and by listening to the 18 hour (36 lecture) Great Courses social and intellectual history course entitled The Italian Renaissance by Kenneth Bartlett, both highly recommended. BTW, we bought both courses used on Ebay for about $30 each.

I used a Sony A6000 mirrorless camera with a 24-75 mm lens (equivalent) for photographing paintings and sculptures plus a 77- 315mm telephoto lens (equivalent) for the street photography and some landscapes. Some of the poorly lighted paintings we looked at are more easily appreciated with the better lighting of the camera shots. This camera is my preferred one for wildlife photography and worked well for the Florence photography. Links to my online South Carolina and Mexican butterfly field guides are here- South Carolina, Quintana Roo, Cozumel.

This, our first Road Scholar adventure, exceeded our expectations. Our instructors, Professors Giovanni Guidetti and Mario Carniani were great teachers and fabulously knowledgeable!

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!!!! The following is a first draft. Future drafts will label the photographs to the best of my ability. I didn't always do a good job of photographing the more famous or significant works, which is one reason you should go to the many links,
mostly from Wikipedia (yes, I know!).
Click on any photograph to enlarge.

DAY 1 (Monday)

After last evenings orientation meeting , this morning we travelled to Santa Trinita and Chiesa di Ognisanti (Church of All Saints) guided by Prof Guidetti to admire some of Ghirlandaio's masterpieces.
Santa Trinita Church-

The frescoes of the stories of St. Francis, considered Domenico Ghirlandaio's masterpieces are in the Sassetti Chapel of Santa Trinita including his beautiful Adoration of the Shepherds (seen below).