Giovedi Santo. Holy Thursday.

Ciao!!
Sorry for not blogging the last two days earlier. I am using my 4 day weekend to my advantage and sleeping!! I slept 11 hours Thursday and Friday night, and I'm feeling very energized now.

Thursday for my art history class we went to the church of Santa Maria Novella, which was built in 1279, and is the seat of the Dominican order in Florence.

The exterior of the church. You wouldn't know it from the weather, but this picture was actually taken at 9am. The weather did get better then and we had a sunny, warm day by lunch time. 

This is the interior of the church. The crucifix was done by Giotto.

Now the main reason we went to the church was to see the famous fresco of "The Trinity" by Masaccio that is inside the church. The fresco was done in 1427 and is quite famous for a few reasons. The first, is that it is the first painting to ever use linear perspective. This was big in that time and made a very big contribution to Renaissance art. Recently the actual volume of the space within the painting was able to be calculated. Standard measuring units back in the 1400s were the "braccia" which was the standardized length of an arm (22.5 in) and a "palmo" which was a standard hand (11.5 inches). After figuring this out, they then realized that the dimensions of the painting had a magic number- 7. After 3, 7 is the next most important number religiously. (The 7 days of creation, etc). But there was also another reason for using 7. To figure out the volume, you're going to need pi. Well, how much is pi? If you're thinking 3.1417, you're wrong. They didn't have decimals back in the 1400s. So how did they calculate pi? As a fraction 22/7. As I'm sure you all remember, when learning fractions you loved when there was the same number in a denominator as in the numerator of the number you're multiplying. So the other reason Mosaccio used 7 in his painting was that the 7's would then cancel each other out. Pretty cool. (I don't know if I'm explaining it as well as I had it explained to me, but it was mind blowing when I learned it.) So after a lot of math, they determined that the space in the painting is 11 ft deep. 

The second reason that the fresco is so famous is because it went missing for 400 years. You might be wondering who a fresco, which is painted into the stone goes missing. Well, in 1470, Lorenzo de' Medici (those darn Medici's) had the church Renaissanced. This meaning that the rude screen was taken down, many times the walls were white washed to get rid of the gothic paintings, and side altars were placed throughout the church. Now, the man that was in charge of this, new how important the fresco was, but he had no choice. The Renaissance was all about symmetry, and seeing as how there was a side altar opposite the fresco, one had to be placed where the fresco was. Then in 1870, an art historian, who had read Vasari's  book and very detailed description of the location of the fresco, wondered if the fresco was still there. So they removed the altar piece and discovered that the fresco was indeed still there. This was the greatest discovery of the 19th century. So after discovering the fresco, they then moved it to the back of the church to its own wall. You can see in the picture the darker spots on the column is where parts of the fresco were lost in the move. Then, almost 100 years later in 1959, another historian re-read Vasari's book and read his description of a lower part of the fresco, describing a sarcophagus. So they went back and removed the actual altar, and discovered the lower part of the fresco. This was the greatest discovery of the 20th century. So, they then moved the top of the fresco, back to its original location and reunited the two halves. :) Yay!!

Here you can see the whole fresco, including the sarcophagus. The skeleton is 5'2'', the same height of the average man at the time. You can't see it in the pictures, but the skeleton is speaking. The words say literally "I was just that which you are and I am what you will be." Which is the known passage "What you are now I once was, what I am now you will be." The fresco was really beautiful, despite its quality. The upper portion is painted so it seems that you really are below the Trinity looking up, and the sarcophagus is below you and you are looking down upon it. 

Thursday night I to mass with my family. The Holy Thursday mass here was VERY different from the one back home. Honestly  I wasn't a big fan of it. It was too upbeat for the last supper if you ask me. There was clapping and the music was just too 'groovy' for me. I think that music would've been more fitting for Easter Sunday, not Holy Thursday. Also, they did not wash the feet of the congregation. They had 12 priests, in addition to the priests that belonged to the church, sitting up on the altar and they had their feet washed. It was very strange. There was over 30 people up on the altar. 16 were actual priests I think, then there were younger men that wanted to be priests, some older male servers, and then some younger servers as well. It was just a lot of people. I was very confused. I will say though, that I did pretty well understanding what they were saying, at least for the readings and the prayers. Those have pretty simple language and I've heard them so much in English, that I knew that what the readings were. I got a little lost as to what they were saying all of the rest of the time, like during the homily. Another difference was that they didn't kneel, at all. A few people did, but it seemed more of the, if you want to kind of thing, but not like back home where you kneel at certain points and don't at others. I found this strange because their kneelers are down all the time, they don't have the option of being folded up, but they also did not have any padding on them, so perhaps that is why no one kneels. I'm not exactly sure. I will have to go to a few more churches to see what the common consensus is. Overall the mass was good, and I did like the music in general, even though I didn't like it for this specific mass. 

Friday was a pretty low key day. I spent most of the day cleaning up my room, since I've been quite busy lately and haven't had time to keep everything organized. Then I worked on some homework and getting things ready for the next few weeks. Nothing really exciting. I had dinner with my family and we had pasta with a red sauce, and a frittata with potatoes. I normally don't eat dinner with my family on Fridays, so I'm not sure if they didn't have meat every Friday during Lent. I don't think the Italians follow that rule as much, because we had meat on Ash Wednesday, and my host mother said that we weren't having meat because it was Good Friday, so it made me think that this is the only Friday that they actually don't have meat. 

Well that is really all for now. I'm off to work on some more homework this afternoon and then I think I will be meeting up with some people from my program for a delicious dinner!