5. like never before

This summer I went on the most intersting and educational trip of all my life. For the whole week my parents and I moved from one Italian city to another visiting different places and museums in each of them. First, we landed in Venezian airport "Marco Polo" and the next two days we were floating in small and fast Venezian vaporetti discovering the ameneties of the "Adriatic queen". The next stop of our trip was in Florence, and this town (or city) with its countless galleries really made me think, I mean, ponder, study, discover and learn something new and compare it with the knowldge I had had alredy before. This story is about how I spent more than 5 hours in the Uffizi.

The first lesson which I learn was the lesson of Christianity. The stories such as The Adoration of the Magi, The Annunciation, The Coronation of the Virgin, The Baptism of Christ and portrayals of the Holy family inprinted in plenty of masterpieces created by Giotto, Duccio, Cimabue and Lippi not only gave me an opportunity to feel the history (as these canvas were painted more than 500 years ago) but also made me plunge into the source of the vast ocean of the European culture (to which I also belong but didn't realised it so before - I saw how our Orthodox culture and Catholic culture diverged - but they both have the common source). As well as I was given a good chance to learn many interesting English words :)

The Renaissance halls taught me the second lesson. Then I had to recall all the historical and mythological knowledge I had and add them to the knowledge I used in the previous halls. So, you can see, it was quite a competitive task! Botticelli, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Caravaggio (whose canvas I saw this winter in Pushkin fine arts museum), Rafaello, Perugino and Titian painted on the Christian themes and on Mythological themes as well. For example, Botticelli's works include The Birth of the Venus, The Triumph of Spring, The Madonna of the Pomegranate and already familiar to me The Adoration of the Magi. As  I visited all these rooms, I discoverd that there were more than 4 Annunciations and Adorations of different masters. My favourite Annunciation is by Sandro Botticelli (I mean, the one, which is in the Uffizi; later I discovered that he has another 2 Annunciations о_О), here it is:

The colours are warm, and portarayals of Gabriel and Virgin seem to me to be more sympathetic and heartfelt than anywhere else... Also it was on the desktop of our Russian teacher's computer :)

By this moment we had visited less than a half of the whole exhibition. I was still trying to see as much canvas as possible, but the amount of the mental work which I've alredy had done made my head ache. I was very glad to find there masterpieces of Velasquez, Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Dyck and other artists of XVII-XVIII centuries, but it was very hard to find out what really were on those canvas...

Well, it's a good reason to come back there again, isn't it? There is still a lot to learn. But due to its richness my first lesson there I will remeber forever. It is never late to learn.

Thank you for reading.