Author: get back, laurettadimmick
Villa Demidoff and Giambologna’s Il Gigante
As I sit in Denver on a very cold February morning, my mind wanders back to Tuscany and warm weather. I’m almost always behind in my posts and so I take this moment to post about Villa Demidoff.
In 1568, Francesco I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, purchased a great estate in the hills outside of Florence and commissioned the famous architect, Buontalenti, to build a splendid villa as a residence for Bianca Cappello. Bianca was the Grand Duke’s Venetian mistress. The villa was built between 1569 and 1581, set inside a forest of fir trees.
While very little of Buontalenti’s villa survives, at least we still have this fabulous and very large statue of Il Gigante, set facing a pond filled with water lilies.
The lilies are absolutely gorgeous in late August. I had never seen anything as magnificent as the first time I saw this lake of waterlilies in bloom! And, the statue ain’t bad either.
OK, ripping my eyes away from the pink flowers, I walked around towards the back of the statue:
Giambologna was the creator of this amazing sculpture:
Il Gigante, also known as “the Colossus of the Apennines,” is an astounding work of art. Giambologna designed the lower part as a hexagon-shaped cave from which one can access, through a ladder, to the compartment in the upper part of the body and into the head. The cavity is filled with light that enters from the eye holes in the head.
The exterior of the statue is covered with sponges and limestone pieces, over which water pours into the pool below.
We know that originally, behind the statue, there was the large labyrinth made from laurel bushes. At the front of the giant was a large lawn, adorned with 26 ancient sculptures at the sides.
Later, many of the antique statues were transferred to the Boboli Gardens, and the park became a hunting reserve. As a part of the Pratolino estate, it was abandoned until 1819, when the Grand Duke Ferdinando III of Lorena changed the splendid Italian garden in the English garden, by the Bohemian engineer Joseph Fritsch. The part was increased from 20 to 78 hectares.
The park, which had been owned by Leopoldo II since 1837, was sold upon his death to Paul Demidoff, who redeveloped the property. Demidoff’s last descendant bequeathed the property to Florence’s provincial authorities.
And I feel better already. I can feel my cold, clenched muscles relax under the spell of the Tuscan sunshine. Soon I will be there again.
La Tour Eiffel
Any blog that even mentions the city Paris must also mention this magnificent structure! I just follow the pack on this one!
The miracle of flight
One minute you’re over the Appenine mountains in Tuscany…
And the next minute (well, 12 hours later, counting connections) you are over the western USA. Where it’s winter. And it’s cold. And dry.
And kind of starkly beautiful.
Check out that weird shape in the earth below, covered with snow. Alien symbols for UFOs? When I was 13, I would have thought so.
To me, the patterns and colors are beautiful.
Musée Picasso, Paris
Paris and its infinite treasures! The Musée Picasso is just one example.
First, the building!
The crazy American foods I miss
I’m in the US for a brief visit. High on my list of things to do while here is to hit up the supermarket for some must-have staples I can’t find in Italy.
But, when I returned from the store, I had to laugh at my group of foods. Only the brown sugar and the dried pintos (for the Mexican food I miss so much) will go back to Europe with me. The other things will be gobbled up during my American visit. Funny, right? I adore the old-fashioned sour cream/onion soup mix dip from my childhood. That on a great potato chip has got to be one of life’s greatest pleasures, at least to me!
I really like deviled ham (all these childhood flavors), but most of all I crave Welch’s grape juice. It is a unique flavor in all of the world. Trust me, I have sampled every grape juice I can find in Europe and none of them come close the the unique Welch’s juice.
Italians, in fact, think it is a great waste of the grape to make anything so simple as a juice when, with a little time and know-how, they can turn it into the miracle of wine!
There are some other things I will take back to Florence with me: dry yeast, vanilla extracts, otc meds like ibuprofen which is very expensive in Italy. You can buy it in packages of 10s or 20s. You get it only at a pharmacy and it isn’t otc. You have to request it of the pharmacist.
I was amused to discover in London that while you can purchase meds like ibuprofen in the same way as we do in the US–that is, you can find it on a shelf in a bottle of 100 tablets or so–there is a limit as to how much you can purchase at one time. The limit at the Boots Pharmacy I was in was 1 bottle of 100 tablets per visit. Of course, with a little planning, you can get around that, but what a pain in the neck to stock up on a vacation.
All for now, I need to go drink some juice and have some chips and dip!
Lunch at the Musee d’Orsay, a spectacular treat
Hector Guimard and Art Nouveau at the Musee d’Orsay, Paris
You may know the work of Hector Guimard if you are familiar with his iconic Paris Metro signs and stations.
What you may not know is that the Musee d’Orsay has a fabulous collection of his furniture. The collection also includes outstanding furniture by other Art Nouveau artists.
Here is just a glimpse of some of the wonders I saw:
What a discovery looks like
Wouldn’t you love to make this kind of discovery? From 1894, the discovery of a marble statue of Antinous near Delphi. Wow!
la statua di Antinoo scoperta a Delfi durante la campagna di scavo nel 1894
A true confession from a former, rabid art historian
Hi Janis, I’m disappointed we didn’t get a chance to meet up again before our trips to the US! I hope you are well again. I am happy to say I am almost well. The 2nd round of antibiotics and nebulizer did the trick.
I’ve been wanting to share a couple of things from my Paris trip that only you will understand! You know how we are always saying that “things aren’t like they used to be” in the art world in Italy. You can’t just pop in at the Medici Chapel and expect to find it open and empty like it would have been in the olden days! We are ancient!
And you know how we are always saying that we don’t like going to special exhibitions nowadays because you have to fight the crowds to get close to a painting. It is too much work and it ruins the experience.
So, in that vein, I have a couple of things:
First, I can spend an entire vacation without going into an art museum at all nowadays! I think that not only do I dislike the two items above, but I am just tired of art museums in general and my interests have evolved. I have to face the fact that I’m no longer a devoted student of art.
So, on one of our first days in Paris, staying well out of the center of the city and relying on the Metro, but the Metro was on strike…we decided to walk to the Pompidou Center. I haven’t been there in 30 years. My son has never been there. We had a lovely walk through a fascinating section of Paris and, when we arrived at the Pompidou, we joined a small group of people waiting to enter. We got inside, I looked around, and every fiber in my being said “leave!” There is all of Paris to experience and I don’t feel like getting lost in this big, modern building looking at art I really couldn’t care less about. My son was only too happy to leave. He was drug into so many art museums as a child that his right arm is longer than his left, or so we joke.
We were in Paris for 10 days and the one Metro line that you could count on working was the #1, which goes East to West, stopping at the Louvre. We rode that line almost every day and many a time we got off at the Louvre, the center of the city.
We walked by the pyramid almost daily, and even though the museum was always open, we decided not to go in and save our complete Louvre experience for the 17th, when we had Leonardo tickets.
So the days go by and we are planning to see the Louvre on the 17th. We depart Paris on the 19th.
We arrive at the Louvre about 11 a.m. on the 17th, even though our tickets were for 1 pm. I notice immediately that the usual line to enter the pyramid is not there and there is a pretty good sized group of people in the area, but it is helter scelter. I find a Louvre official and show him my Leonardo ticket on my phone. He scoffs. I’m confused. Then it becomes clear, on the 17th of January (my birthday and Michelle Obama’s too, btw!) the Louvre employees decided to join the strike. No one is getting into the museum!
I am in shock. This was one scenario I didn’t see coming. We planned our entire trip around this exhibition.
And yet, another part of me was just fine with this outcome. We gathered ourselves up and headed to the Left Bank where I treated us to a delicious birthday lunch at Les Deux Magots! It was perfect.
I hasten to add that during the 10 days I was in Paris I did attend 2 special art exhibitions: Toulouse Lautrec at the Grand Palais and Degas at the Opera at the Musee d’ Orsay. Both exhibitions were very crowded (in January for god’s sake!) and not enjoyable from that standpoint. I had been dreading the Leonardo show because I assumed it would be even more crowded.
So, what did I learn? I learned that I have made my last plan around a special art exhibition. Those days are officially over for me. Yes, I will always look at art. But, no more blockbusters unless I get a personal invitation to visit privately when the museum is closed to the public. And, while that used to happen in my life, that ain’t gonna happen again in this lifetime!
Only a fellow (sister?) art historian can understand the greatness of this tale!!
Ciao for now, sister, Lauretta
get back, lauretta! 
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