Grab Bag #4: Mini-Mentions on More Museums

(A series of other things I intended to write about while I was away but didn't have time to do)

There are so many museums and other places of art-historical and cultural interest in Florence; I have read or heard it said that a third of the important cultural sites in the world, as designated by UNESCO, are in Italy, and a third of those are in Florence, making it the holder of a ninth of the important cultural sites in the entire world. I'm sure we haven't seen all of the ones in Florence, even though our six stays in Florence starting in 2010 (with other trips to Rome, Milan and other places that I'm not counting here) have totaled on the order of 25 weeks. One reason for not seeing more is that we keep going back to the places we like best, which overlap considerably with the places everybody likes best.

We went again this year to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo (the museum of the work of the cathedral), whose collection includes all manner of beautiful objects that used to be part of the Duomo but were removed for various reasons over the years.

For example, the "Gates of Paradise" by Lorenzo Ghiberti were made for the Baptistery of the Duomo in Ghiberti's workshop during the period 1425 to 1452. They were removed during World War II to protect them from bombing, and gypsum molds were made of the doors before they were reinstalled. In 1990 those molds were used to create replicas so that the originals could be protected from air pollution and other damage, and after some necessary conservatorial work the original ten panels of gilded bronze were put on exhibit in the Museo dell'Opera, where there are not nearly so many people looking at them as are daily mobbing the reproductions in front of the Duomo.

Donatello's carved wooden St. Mary Magdalene, showing her as an old woman in ragged clothing, was once inside the Duomo but is now in the Museo dell'Opera. An adjacent room holds other depictions of Mary Magdalene including this lovely young woman, carved and painted.

Also in the museum is the so-called Bandini Pieta, the second of three Pietas that Michelangelo made.