Florence is the art city in Italy, because it is here that the period known as the Italian Renaissance had its greatest flowering. You will remember that the new style had an early appearance in the frescoes of the Arena Chapel by Giotto, but because of the ravages of the Black Death in Europe after 1348, it took over a century for artistic innovation to take root. The word “Renaissance” refers to a re-birth, and specifically, to a revival of admiration for the classical past of Greece and Rome -- a legacy which included literature, architecture, sculpture, painting, coins and carved gemstones. Florentine artists were at the forefront of this revival, journeying to Rome to study the ancient monuments, and even digging buried and broken statuary right out of the ground.

But the re-birth of classicism is only one part of the story of Renaissance art: this is the most widely loved of all the periods of art because of its naturalism, its semblance to our own experienced world. Artists in Florence responded to and attempted to surpass the visual achievements of their fellow artists, and the city was a hot-house of artistic rivalry for this reason. Proud Florence, even then, was keenly aware of its matchless place in the history of art in Italy.

Visitors to Florence typically flock to see Michelangelo's David, and it is an artistic masterpiece not to be missed. But the most impressive of Michelangelo's sculptural ensembles is in the New Sacristy in the church of San Lorenzo . The artist was notorious for never completing major projects -- one dragged on for over forty years -- but the New Sacristy gives us the closest glimpse at the scope of his artistic ambitions. Don't let the fact that this is a tomb chapel be a turn-off: tomb sculpture was a major vehicle of artistic expression during this time period, and death was never so movingly tied to the cycle of life as in the New Sacristy.

The chapel was intended to house the tombs of four members of the Medici banking family. Despite an ostensibly Republican government, the Medici were the de facto rulers of Florence during the Renaissance period. Lorenzo de' Medici (1449-92, deservedly nicknamed “il Magnifico”) had recognized the talents of Michelangelo when the artist was still a teenager, and invited him to his home to train as a sculptor in his garden of antiquities. His was one of the tombs planned for the chapel -- never completed, nor that of his brother, Giuliano (died 1478) -- but Michelangelo did sculpt the tombs of two younger Medici, Giuliano, Duke of Nemours (died 1516), and Lorenzo, Duke of Urbino (died 1519).

The wall tombs face each other across the chapel. The tomb of Giuliano shows an alert man clad in ancient Roman armor seated in a niche, and below him the figures of Night and Day recline on a curved sarcophagus. Night rests her head in the crook of her arm, and symbols such as the owl by her foot identify nocturnal time. Note also the high polish of her skin, as if reflecting the glow of moonlight. As beautiful as this figure is, she has her critics: it is said that her breasts have been merely appended onto a male torso, and that her muscled thighs lack even a pretense of femininity. Michelangelo did in fact develop her form from a male nude anatomical study. Did he intentionally “masculinize” Night in order to heroicize her, and make her an equal to powerful Day beside her, or did he more simply lack artistic, as well as sexual, interest in the female body? You, the traveler, be the artistic judge!