Seeing Beauty in the Everyday World
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The museum has a large collection of paintings with gold backgrounds, many on wood. Unfortunately, I don’t have very much info on these paintings, but share them because they are beautiful. Some have notable cracks and warping due to the…
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We had the chance to visit Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, the museum of the cathedral. It contains sculptures, paintings, icons, and many other treasures. As you enter the first gallery, you see a collection of fourteenth-century Sienese sculpture by Giovanni Pisano.…
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It was Sunday morning. We had been to mass and headed into the main Piazza when we saw some kind of foot race underway. Lots of people were wearing numbered bibs and carrying maps. What? Why were they carrying…
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The Saint Catherine of Siena parish in Kalamazoo, MI, is celebrating its 50th anniversary as a parish this year. Fr. Robert Creagan, formerly of this parish, organized and let this pilgrimage to Italy including the tour if Siena. Today we…
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Battistero di San Giovanni (Baptistery of Saint John) was built between 1316 and 1325 by Camaino di Crescentino. Recall from a post from Florence that you were not baptized inside the church, but in a separate building. Siena is another…
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We step inside the church to a grand space filled with beautiful art. Again, the pillars are alternating bands of black and white marble. The ceiling is painted simply, but beautifully. The inlaid marble mosaic floor is one of the…
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The Cattedrale Metropolitana di Santa Maria Assunta (Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption) was originally designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. The exterior and interior are constructed of white and greenish-black marble…
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Continuing our walk through Siena, we come upon the Loggia della Mercanzia. Loggia della Mercanzia ( Lodge of the Merchants), a meeting place for Siena’s merchants and money lenders and an early form of stock exchange, was built between 1417 and…
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We are moving on to Siena. After a short drive from Florence, we arrived at our hotel, dropped our bags, and started off toward the center of town in the rain. Unfortunately, our time in Siena was accompanied with rain.…
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I’ve got a few more photos from Florence before we leave town. This is a collection of photos from Piazza di Santa Croce and from the street, scenes that caught my eye, and didn’t fit in with anything else. There…