Missing it would be like not seeing the "Mona Lisa" on a trip to Paris," but no timed admissions were available at Florence's Accademia when I booked my trip. Instead, immediately after checking into my hotel, just around the corner, I joined a late-afternoon line and ended up doing a good deed. After eavesdropping on two women ahead of me negotiate with a sketchy guy who was selling timed admission tickets for nearly triple the cost, I said "You sure are trusting." They took my meaning and within half-an-hour thanked me again as I stood inside the museum, awestruck, gazing up at Michelangelo's "David." As Chris would say, "check."
David's pedestal made it a lot easier to appreciate him than art hanging on the walls. Jockeying for decent sight lines is endemic to the city's must-see venues. If it's listed in a guidebook, expect crowds. Herewith a sampling of my favorite works, including several that anticipate the Renaissance about to come.
"Madonna & Child" by Florentine Painter (13th century)
I picked up some new descriptive terminology for altarpieces, too, including "pinnacle" and "predella." Would you believe that Giorgio Vasari, whose indelible re-acquaintance I made in Venice's Accademia, described this artist as a "minor master"?
"Coronation of the Virgin with four Musical Angels and Saints Francis, John the Baptist, Ivo and Dominic" by Giovanni dal Ponte (ca 1430)
Giorgio, I beg to differ. Just look at these gorgeous details, although the Virgin's finger is a little long.
I'm standing on the gallery's outdoor terrace with the Palazzo Vecchio behind me. Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned Vasari to design the U-shaped Uffizi ("offices" in Italian) in the mid-16th century as a kind of one-stop shopping for doing business in the duchy of Tuscany which he ruled with an iron fist and a fortune large enough to become one of era's greatest patrons. His son began displaying the family's treasures on the ground floor and by the next century, everyone taking a Grand Tour of Europe stopped to see the same Renaissance masterpieces that have now been on view for nearly 400 years,
The Arno River flows west below the gallery's U-bottom. According to a novel I read after returning, the water once ran red because butchers used it to dispose of blood drained from slaughtered livestock.
Classical Greek and Roman statues are paired with portraits of members of the Medici family including Cosimo I, the big cheese.
"Statue of a Woman Sacrificing" (Renaissance Copy of Classical Greek Statue) Cosimo I de' Medici by Giovanni Battista Naldini (1585)
Many of the classical statues on display were repaired or copied by Renaissance sculptors.
"Hercules Slaying the Centaur Nessus"
There's a rogue's gallery of infamous Roman emperors, too. Medusa adorns Nero's breastplate.
This may or may not be Caligula, according to the curators. Here's as good a place as any to complain about the Uffizi's lack of consistency in identifying art works.
Fun fact, overheard from an Aussie tour guide: Bernardo Buontalenti, the man who designed the Tribuna, where the Medici's displayed their most prized treasures, also invented gelato! Come to think of it, the Pines Pantry stocked Talenti which I always thought was an odd name for an ice cream brand. There must be a connection.
I've only just now reached the conclusion that painting during the Renaissance, in terms of market influence, was just like painting today, except that rich individuals had more say in the subjects chosen, with an emphasis on piety. Yep, Jesus, virgins, saints and angels were all once the rage less because of devout Christianity than as a hedge against going to Hell. I'm partial to the ones steeped in a little more imagination or idiosyncratic ability.
"Adoration of the Christ Child with the Young St. John the Baptist, St. Romuald, Angels, the Hands of God the Father and the Holy Ghost as a Dove" by Filippo Lipp (ca 1463)
Botticelli really, really sends me, even more than da Vinci and Michelangelo. Henry James, author of Portrait of a Lady, my favorite novel, may have stood in exactly the same spot as I did marveling at Venus's modesty, although his actual experience of the gallery was vastly different than mine based on what he wrote in Italian Hours: "Sometimes there were not more than two or three figures standing there, Baedeker in hand, to break the charming perspective."Multiply those numbers by a hundred for these paintings.
"The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli (ca 1485)
"Annunciation" by Botticelli (ca 1489-90)
"Calumny of Apelles" by Botticelli (1497)
"Crucifixion" by Agnolo Gaddi (ca 1390-96)
These young Korean women, dressed to kill, sparked an pop cultural epiphany: Florence was to Renaissance painting what Seoul is to K-Pop. But will people still be listening to BTS and Blackpink in 2425?
"Madonna and Child with Saint Francis, Saint John the Baptist, Saint Zenobius and Saint Lucy" by Domenico Veneziano (ca 1445-47)
Like most artists of the time, da Vinci apprenticed in a workshop. He painted what I'm guessing was only a small part of this awkward composition with his master.
Does this sitter remind you of anyone else? Her family's palace, which turned out to be the anti-Uffizi, was on my itinerary for the next day.
Portrait of Maddalena Strozzi by Raphael (ca 1504-06)
Apart from the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (photos weren't permitted during my 2001 visit), I'm not that familiar with Michelangelo's painting. He also designed the frame for this lush, assured work.
"Holy Family with the Young St. John the Baptist 'Doni Tondo'" (ca 1505-07)
This artist--the same guy who painted the Uffizi's corridor ceilings--came out of Bronzino's workshop.
"Venus & Cupid" by Alessandro Allori (ca 1570)
Endless mobs of people in a small gallery prevented me from getting decent shot of this "Medusa" (1597) by Caravaggio, a trail blazer of Baroque painting. I could hardly blame them, however; it's bloody insane!
The main advantage of traveling solo is that you can do whatever you want, at your own pace. Sometimes that means hitting three museums on a single day. I found "my people" at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection but the others had plenty to offer, too.
Gallerie dell'Accademia
An early morning reservation at the Accademia, across the Grand Canal in Dorsoduro, exposed me to the delights of Venice minus the crowds and felt like a quick seminar in the Venetian School of Renaissance painting.
The Sala dell’Albergo houses the only remaining painted wooden ceiling in Venice from that period. It's the product of a competition that included Veronese and Tintoretto after Titian failed to deliver on his promise. The latter artist got the jump by actually installing a piece of his work instead of showing only sketches to the judges, thus winning the commission.
While attending Columbia, I had a work/study job at the College Library's reserve desk, where books on various professors' syllabi could be checked out overnight. Lives of the Artists by Giorgio Vasari was among the most requested, perhaps because all students were required to take a course in art humanities, part of the "core curriculum." Until I visited the Accademia, I had no idea that Vasari was an extraordinary painter as well as a biographer of his contemporaries. Truly a very productive Renaissance man.
It's a good thing Venetian museums are pretty relaxed about timed admission. I showed up at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, a short walk from the Accademia, nearly two hours early and was allowed to enter. I took this shot of the exterior from a vaporetto the following afternoon.
Peggy was my kind of gal. She picked men with the same discriminating eye as she collected art (sometimes at the same time) while living in Europe prior to World War II, and she maintained a (relatively) modest Venetian lifestyle afterwards in a comfortable home surrounded by pretty things. What's not to emulate?
Peggy Guggenheim (1898-1979)
She's buried on the premises, right beside 14 pooches, her "beloved babies." Surprisingly, many were short-lived, lasting not much longer than her affairs.
No wonder Peggy had so many unfamiliar works by Max Ernst: she married the surrealist, not long after rescuing him from the Gestapo in France. He painted this eerie, unsettling work after they arrived in America. Their marriage didn't survive World War II, suggesting that concern for Ernst's personal safety may have been a bigger consideration than romance.
"The Antipope" (1941-42)
Two tragedies marked Peggy's life: her father went down with the Titanic when she was 12, and she lost her daughter late in life. A small gallery showcases some of her daughter's "naive" art, a characterization that diminishes Pegeen Vail's considerable talent IMHO.
"Girls in the Arches" (ca 1936)
The cheerfulness of the scene she captured outside the window of her mother's low-slung home belies the depression that may have killed her at the age of 41.
Sidebar: Apple Photos recently introduced "Clean-Up," an option that INSISTENTLY tries to remove human beings from pictures, an almost-too-on-the-nose metaphor for the feared future agenda of artificial intelligence. I used it only because there always were at least a couple of giggling people surrounding this priapic sculpture. You know it's not bronze; otherwise the penis would be as shiny as the testicles on the Wall Street bull!
Following an afternoon siesta in my comfy closet at the Hotel da Bruno, I had a hankering--as one does--for some "modern" Italian art, an entirely relative term in a city as saturated with it as long as Venice has been. Also because I had purchased a rather expensive museum pass, and Ca' Pesaro, one of ten included, was just a short walk over the Rialto Bridge in the San Polo neighborhood. Here's another vaporetto shot, this time from the morning of my arrival.
Like the Revoltella Museum, the late 17th-century palazzo was the gift of a civic philanthropist, although not the family for which it was named. In 1898, a duchess bequeathed it to the city of Venice to exhibit modern art. But unlike Trieste's patron, her image isn't plastered all over the place. I spotted only a bust on the staircase near the entrance.
Duchess Felicita Bevilacqua La Masa (1822-1899)
If I had to pick my favorite painting of the day, it probably would be this one. Unlike the current leadership of Israel, it looks as if he is praying for peace.
Seeing a Warhol work was like running into an old friend who you didn't feel like spending a lot of time with at the moment.
"White Brillo Boxes" & "Del Monte Boxes" (1964)
Making the acquaintance of Milan-born Adolfo Wildt, however, was exactly what I had in mind. Rarely has the work of an unfamiliar artist struck me with such force. His distinctive, haunting sculpture resonates even more after reading his Wikipedia entry, which suffers from a lack of cited sources. Despite his obvious talent, he seems destined to remain under-the-radar in perpetuity. I couldn't get enough.
"Larass" (1903)
"Mask of Pain" (1909)
"Vir Temporis Acti" (1911)
Portrait of Franz Rose (1913)
"A Rosary-MCMXV" (1915)
"The Mother of Christianity" (1917)
More cheerful glass work like this was on tomorrow's itinerary in Murano, the glass capital of western civilization.
This painting is a kind of Italian foreshadowing of Edward Hopper.
"The Christmas of Those Left Behind" by Angelo Morbelli (1903)
Despite my interest in some aspects of the collection, I mostly found it wanting in the area I had come to see. I'm guessing that's because the city of Venice relies primarily on donations for new acquisitions--including the Wildt sculptures--and has invested more in its Biennale as a vehicle for maintaining relevance in the contemporary art world.
"Cortege of the Princesses" by Vittorio Zecchin (1914)
Coincidentally, the huge gallery reserved for temporary shows juxtaposed "The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin (1880-1904) with "The Poem of Human Life," a pictorial cycle created by Giulio Aristide Sartorio for the 1907 Biennale. At that time, ironically, the Bevilacqua La Masa exhibitions, as they were then known, had a reputation for celebrating younger, less established artists.
A pigeon joined me for a Dolomiti beer and some complimentary (!) potato chips in the museum cafe which faced the Grand Canal.
Classical Greek and Roman statues are paired with portraits of members of the Medici family including Cosimo I, the big cheese. 
