Tuesday 25th October 2011

The Gay Mother has regained her country fastness (terrible flies on the windowsills); Florence is over.

On Sunday we toiled to Santa Maria Novella but it was shut; but instead blossomed an exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi, ‘Beauty and Money: Botticelli, the Medicis and Savonarola’. The Gay Mother spied it on the way back from the SMN catastrophe and insisted. Well, what a stroke of luck! Turned out to be just up the PLRG street: Money and Beauty, Beauty and Money. I’ll tell you all about it.

As Maria said, ‘When God shuts a door, he opens a window somewhere else.’

That’s The Sound of Music.

In the meantime, here are some more graphs of Renaissance buildings.  I hope you see. In spirit, the Renaissance led straight to the Poor Little Rich Gays. The accompanying Classical revival in architectural was also essential. That’s why I thought: so much better to be on the Ponte Vecchio looking downstream to the Ponte  Trinità  than on the Ponte  Trinità looking upstream to the Ponte Vecchio. See graphs below if you can’t grasp…

Much Better to be on Ponte Vecchio Looking Downstream at Exquisite Rhythms of Ponte Trinità Than on Ponte Trinità Looking Upstream at Nooky Ponte Vecchio

Better to be on Ponte Vecchio Looking Downstream at Ponte Trinità Than on Ponte Trinità Looking at Nooky Wooky Olde Worlde Medieval Ponte Vecchio

Cloisters at Santa Croce, by Brunelleschi: One of the First Renaissance Structures: A Little Plain and Small-Scale for Some PLRGs But at Least not Gothic Muddle that Immediately preceded

Complex, Graceful, Grand, Far from Normal: Michelangelo's Staircase to the Laurentian Library, One of the First to be Free in the Room Like This: Bruce MacBain Has Slaved for Many Hours with Staircases: They are Incredibly Detailed and PLRG: There was a Lot of Trouble with Reggie Cresswell's Staircase: Had to Start Again! £12,000