Italy vi--What a piece of work. . .

That messy thing this guy is raising like a trophy, it's a woman's head--note the long knife in his right hand. Lovers of antiquity will recognize the killer immediately, but the rest of us need to read: it's Perseus, who's defending his mother by killing Medusa, the beautiful woman with snakes for hair, a woman with the nasty habit of turning those who look at her to stone. It's a long story.

Just to be sure, here's this immense sculpture from the front.

Sort of. From the side really, and only his upper half. I guess I'm more squeamish than the Renaissance sculptors, who rendered the gods like Perseus and Medusa buck naked. To me, one of the most memorable places on our sojourn in Italy was the Loggia dei Lanzi, an arched outdoor sculpture gallery created in the 14th century as a place where dignitaries could stand outside on the village square and not get wet in the rain or burned in the Italian sun.

Today, it's an incredible statuary, among the most visited in the world; and its most famous single piece of work--despite the brutality--is Perseus here, who's been in the Loggia since 1554. Let me say that again: this young killer, made of bronze, has stood right there, Medusa's head in his hand, since 1554. 

Pardon me for a moment while I swallow my squeamishness. Here he is in the all-together. And yes, if you're wondering, that's Medusa's headless, naked corpse beneath his feet.

Now Perseus had good reasons for doing what he did, and Medusa, despite her beauty, was not without her own treachery. Nonetheless, the Loggia statuary is not particularly kind to women. Yet another incredible work is The Rape of the Sabine Women, sometimes called The Seduction of the Sabine Women (you may find it listed under both names), because there is some question about what the word rape meant in the 16th century, when the piece was first set in Loggia. Here 'tis. Go ahead and wince.

The glory of sculpture, Michelangelo claimed, was that it was the only art form that rendered our humanity in perfect imitation of life itself. This twisting picture of human violence can be viewed from anywhere. Every inch of its exposure is all us. He was right, and sometimes it's almost terrifying. Look at that arm's fateful reach.

Another sculpture from the Loggia, The Rape of Polyxena. More naked brutality.

No grouping of art pieces was as striking to me as the statues in the Loggia, a corner on the square at the palace of the Medicis in Florence. We stood there in awe on a night when this country was going through a difficult moment, the hearings for a man nominated for the Supreme Court of the land, a man accused of attempted rape three decades in his past through testimony I read about as being emotionally riveting. In a way, I was relieved to have missed all of that because it would have consumed me, probably as the stories here retold in brass and marble consumed those who knew them a thousand years ago. 

But it was also the sheer power of all the sculpture, these bigger-than-life renditions of stories peopled with characters with perfectly glorious bodies, muscled--each of them--like chiseled body builders. Just about all of them are sculpted in violence, often violence against women. As specimens of humanity these incredible sculptures take your breath away. Their sheer and perfect nakedness is beguiling but brutal. 

It's a measure of Renaissance glory, we're told, the desire of the age to glorify our humanity in its rawest form, after medieval darkness insisted the only glory was in the divine life yet to come. Look at this, Renaissance sculptors insisted, this is us. We're something. We really are.

What a piece of work is man, How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty, In form and moving how express and admirable, In action how like an Angel, In apprehension how like a god, The beauty of the world, The paragon of animals. And yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust?  Hamlet.

 In Florence, don't miss Loggia. In truth, you can't.