Our Month in Tuscany: Uffizi

Our 2^nd day in Florence, YAY! We LOVE it here.

We walk into the Uffizi at 9:00 a.m.

The building itself is so gorgeous, let alone what it contains! Floor to ceiling windows run the length of the halls, flooding them with natural light. Beautiful.

Statues line the halls.

The ceilings of the wide, marble hallways are entirely frescoed between beautiful wood beams.

We start making our way through the rooms off the hallways.

We take in a little Leonardo Da Vinci...

A little Caravaggio...

Here's, a portrait of "Bacchus." Our audio guide suggested that if Caravaggio didn't like you, he might do something like paint you drunk with rotten fruit...

But the faces he painted were captivating...

A little Raphael…

"Pope Leo X"

"Madonna of the Goldfinch" The kids liked the cute story in this one.

The girls loved this little guy holding the goldfinch. He was later made a Cardinal but then died at age 19.

A little Rubens…

A little Michelangelo...

A lot of Botticelli...

The mythological story depicted in this painting, "Primavera," is so interesting.

"The Birth of Venus" painted in 1486

We start paying attention to detail. It's a lot of fun for the girls to find the hidden images in the pictures. Here are a couple of examples we spotted…

Full painting…nice family pic

But look more closely…

yikes!

Andrea del Sarto did this beautiful 1517 painting, "Madonna of the Harpies"...

Whoa - there are spooky bird people on the pedestal!

There were also Titian's and Tintoretto's... and we pushed our feet beyond where they wanted to go but it was wonderful.

We have lunch on the Uffizi's terrace with a fantastic view. The upper levels of the Palazzo Vecchio & the duomo are right on top of us. We read that the Medici’s would hang out here & listen to the street music below. Hey! That's kind of like our 5^th floor walk-up (hee hee)!!!

The view from the "Cafeteria"