Day 36 - Florence .... so much

Ah Florence. From what I've seen thus far, it is a wonderful city with so many hidden pockets. This time I had to get a local guide book and first up was a famous Masaccio Fresco, Holy Trinity (1427), in a church. It is on a side wall, quite unassuming like but this is where things start to get going.

Should take a step back and explain how Florence fits into the larger scene of things. Basically in the 12-1400's it developed banking and allowed the city to become quite wealthy and break away from the middle ages feudal system. During the 1400s, the birth of the Renaissance would occur here. Around the middle of the century, perspective was finally codified and worked out (thus if you look at any images pre 1440s, perspective is never 100% right). Here was Leonardo da Vinci's master and Leonardo (who is about a generation older than Michangelo and Raphael) who got the ball rolling in terms of Renaissance and the 'universal man'.

Having been to Paris, with predominately Gothic Churches (light weight looking structures, very charming and surreal qualities), and Rome with Romaneque Churches (massive structures we build because we are engineers and everything needs to be bigger and out of concrete), Florence is a hybrid with a checker board marble colour. Still trying to see if I like this.