Gezicht op het Palazzo Vecchio te Florence 1886 - 1927

Guglielmo Taubert rendered this view of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence with etching. This civic building is adorned with merlons, ancient symbols of power and defense, which, as we see, are reinterpreted as mere decoration, like teeth in the jaws of time. Consider the tower of the Palazzo, reaching skyward. It echoes the Tower of Babel, a symbol of human ambition and the inevitable fall from grace. This aspiration towards the heavens is a recurring motif. We find it not only in architecture but also in the human psyche, a desire to transcend our earthly bounds. The prominent clock face is a more modern allusion to time and mortality, yet, it still resonates with the same anxieties that drove the construction of ziggurats of Mesopotamia. Time, like those ancient structures, waits for us all.