Ten works of art in Florence that will blow you away. Most of this art is in Florence due to the legacy of the Medici family, and is located in the Uffizi museum.
The height of Florence's power was the 1400s, as the Renaissance was breaking out. Prior to this, almost all Italian art was related to the church. Therefore, the bulk of art in the Uffizi is religious, and the museum is laid out chronologically so you go through about 7 rooms full of saints, martyrs and Madonnas with child.
This context sets up the mind blowing explosion of humanism that is the Botticelli room.
Botticelli
Boticelli, The Birth of Venus, 1486, Galleria Uffizi, Florence
Birth of Venus. The model for Venus was Simonetta Vespuci, and Sandro Botticelli was probably in love with her. She was mistress of Lorenzo Medici, however.
Boticelli's "Primavera" in the Uffizi in Florence
It's fairly insane how under-appreciated Botticelli is, given the colossal power of the paintings in this one room. Remember that Birth of Venus and Spring are both huge canvases. Room 10, Uffizi is all I'm saying. It only costs about 7 Euros to go to this museum, but it's a good idea to call ahead to get a reservation: Phone +39 055 238 8683.
Spring, by Botticelli
Botticelli, Madonna of the Pomegranate
Probably the only Madonna giving baby Jesus a Pomegranate you're likely to see in a while. (The pomegranate signifies passion).
Botticelli, Madonna of the Magnificat
A more classical mother & child.
A Michelangelo
Michelangelo, 1503, Doni Tondo (Uffizi)
Doni Tondo - a wedding gift by Michelangelo. The frame alone (not shown, but also by Michelangelo) is worth the trip to Florence.
Like Botticelli, Michelangelo's painting blows you away - it was probably the 16th century equivalent of the introduction of color TV. It's stunning and the image on the right, like all the images you see here, is a pale, pale imitation.
Now we continue in the Uffizi.
There are several paintings of Saint Sebastian's martyrdom, which you'll come to easily recognize by the arrows piercing his torso. Then all of a sudden...
Titian, Venus of Urbino, 1538 (Uffizi)
Venus of Urbino, Titian
Hard to believe that Titian's Venus would not be considered NSFW back in 1540. Mark Twain famously remarked on this painting:
It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed --no, it is the attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describe that attitude there would be a fine howl --but there the Venus lies for anybody to gloat over that wants to --and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and art has its privileges. I saw a young girl stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gazing long and absorbedly at her, I saw aged infirm men hang upon her charms with a pathetic interest.
Raphael - a technical masterpiece
Raphael, Pope Leo XThis painting has such amazingly rich texture, you can feel the silk of his clothing.
Just outside the Uffizi there's an amazing set of sculptures.
Giambologna, The Rape of the Sabine, 1582
Rape of the Sabine
Iconically Famous David
Finally, you've got to go to the Gallery Academia to see basically one sculpture. Michelangelo, David, Galleria Academie, Florence
Michelangelo's David
In fact, that's true for all of the works, you have to see them in person. Thank the Medicis when you go.
And that's not the end of it, Florence has at least 10 more of the top 100 pieces of art you need to see before you die. Rome has another 20 or so. You might think I'm exaggerating, but I'm not. It's just insane.
Finally, this post is dedicated to my high school art history teachers, especially Mrs. Gullickson.
¶ 3/21/2008
When kids design a keyboard for a laptop, the important stuff gets it's own key.
And really, what keyboard shouldn't have it's own Google button?
¶ 3/12/2008
Marketing Sherpa tells you how to make sure your PDFs can be indexed by Google.
It's a set of basic tips (make sure you have a recent version of Acrobat, add meta-data, divide large files, etc.), but one important one is:
Step #2. Identify the textYou cannot manipulate the text in an image like text in a word processor. To do that in Acrobat, you need to open your image-based PDF and run “optical character recognition.” Go to the “document” menu. It will scan your document and translate the image-text into text that can be edited so search engines can read it.
Acrobat may not have been able to recognize all of your PDF’s text after running OCR, however, so some portions may be marked “suspect.” To find your PDF’s suspects and check their accuracy, click:
Document > OCR Text Recognition > Find all OCR Suspects
This will enclose all suspect words in boxes and allow you to check whether the translation is correct or whether it needs to be modified.
Now go out there and spam the world with those optimized PDFs!
¶ 3/11/2008
Wow. Jeremy Chatfield is one of the few search engine marketers (SEM) bloggers who still publishes substantive research on Google Adwords, and today he rips Google for using search history and personalization in determining which ads to show.
Google’s success was built on delivering search results that matched user expectation. Once again, we see Google acting to enhance revenue, without any concern for advertisers. This time, however, they have screwed the pooch. Users see less relevant results, too. This is not a good idea, as it will decrease the value of the search results page *for users*, and that will inevitably weaken interest in using Google.
Pretty strong words - I mean if it came from Aaron Wall, well, we all know how he loves to hate on Google, but coming from Jeremy, it's pretty sobering. Jeremy also provides a detailed example of the decrease in ad relevance based on recent searches.
And perhaps its one of the hidden factors in Google's recent CTR drops (on the search side - the content side is easily explainable).
I think that the examples above make it clear why keyword search performance has dipped recently, reducing average CTR, reducing conversion rates and making the behaviour closer to that for content match. This is not the precision marketing tool that I was using last year. This is a weaker, more expensive and less precise tool that brings in a wider range of less interested users.
Overall, it's good to have Jeremy still posting real info. Most other SEMs have given up sharing any real info as the industry has become more efficient.
Labels: google
¶ 3/11/2008
