More Florence

In the Duomo Museum: Aging Michelangelo decided to design his own tomb. So he got a block of marble, but it was hard and grainy--very hard to sculpt. Michelangelo sculpted himself as Nicodemus in this Pieta, but for one reason or another it was never finished.
Donatello was old when he decided to try his hand at wood sculpture and carved this aged Mary Magdalene out of white poplar. A young Luca Della Robbia was asked to make a choir box for the cathedral. These are some of the panels that illustrate Psalm 150 of various ways to praise the lord with instruments and song. Della Robbia did no more sculpture after this. He quit while he was ahead and devoted his studio to the production of colorful glazed terra-cotta. His family continued with the terra-cotta for so long that the name Della Robbia refers to this type of terra-cotta. William especially liked this Donatello--Habakkuk. At the Medici Palace a scrap of garden and some old garden statues are left where the teenage Michelangelo lived as an adopted son, where Leonardo da Vinci played the lute at parties and Botticelli strolled.In a courtyard of the Medici Palace, Orpheus and his harp music tames the three headed dog that guards the entrance to hell. Does this bit sound familiar to you Harry Potter lovers? No pictures allowed in the Medici Chapel. This sculpture was from a special show in a side room at the Palace. Sculpted by Ciusa in 1907 it is called "La Madre del'ucciso' the mother of a murdered man. She is sitting and mourning.