"Nothing ever changes here - except for the Gucci and Armani."

- Venetian gondolier, July 2007

Just returned from a morning marathon of art, running around from 8:30 this morning until I returned to the villa about an hour ago. After seeing art from various different portions of the Renaissance today (and, well, throughout the past 7 weeks), it has become apparant that Mary is STILL wearing blue, Jesus still looks like a bizzare little man as a child, and they are both still in almost every single painting. Surprisingly, Renaissance Art has not made any shocking new developments. That being said, although the Renaissance and it's art are fascinating, they are, well, in the past. And no matter how much we study them and apply our fancy color coding and perspective theories and "ohh" and "ahhh" over the introduction of trees as naturalism, the art doesn't change. And even with all of those theories, the fact of the matter could be that Cosimo di Medici was really rich, and when he commissioned the thousands of paintings that he did, he really wanted people to add some trees. Just saying. There are two sides to this Renaissance coin: one is beautiful, and the other is, well, exactly the same. Art here is repetition - there is growth, of course, but the subjects remain the same.

Anyways, now off to Italian for the afternoon. We're going to a photography museum this afternoon, which could be a nice breath of fresh air - art that didn't happen during the Renaissance! Art of the present!? Woah. After that it's time for some real dinner in Firenze after I locate Erica, who is planting her crazy self in Florence for the next 8 days :)

Ciao Amori!

Laura