BLESSED (BUT NOT TOO MUCH)

This time I do not want to talk about a work, at least not directly, but about the story behind it.It was January 28, 1671 when Clement X, who had been elected to the papal throne a year before, with a “breve” proclaimed blessed Ludovica Albertoni, a Franciscan tertiary who lived at the turn of […]

“STRAINING NATURE” PONTORMO AND THE LOST FRESCOES AT S. LORENZO

If you head east from the center of Empoli in the direction of Florence and after the bridge turn left, within a few hundred meters you will find yourself at number 97/99. It is a building that can be guessed ancient from the wooden lintels embedded in the masonry. The street is called via Pontorme […]

A BRIEF JOURNEY IN THE MANNERIST SYMBOLISM

It is often said, and rightly so, that many Mannerist works are imbued with symbols that are not always easy to recognize and interpret. Let’s go and see one of them, and in order not to bother the overused “Allegory of the Triumph of Venus” we will choose another one, also by Bronzino, but much […]

“THAT ONLY HIMSELF AND NOTHING ELSE RESEMBLES” VICINO ORSINI AND THE SACRED WOOD OF BOMARZO

In the context of late Renaissance gardens of the mid-sixteenth century, the Sacred Wood of Bomarzo occupies a position that is both eccentric and exemplary. The apparent contradiction is nourished by its being a unicum that moves the limit of artifice much further than its contemporaries dared to do (and does so, paradoxically, renouncing the […]

A PIECE OF ITALY IN WESTMINSTER

In the heart of London, behind the menacing headquarters of MI5, there is Thorney Street. Looking for a guy with that name would be useless because Thorney was the name of the now forgotten island that once hosted that strip of land. It was on this island, probably for security reasons, that in the 1140s […]

“Qui alium sequitur nihil invenit” (THE early FRANCESCO BORROMINI)

“…a monstrous heap of human bones and coffins broken into fragments lays collected in the middle of the subterraneous area, previously to being removed from the spot“. Thus in 1842 Sir George Head describes the central nave of the basilica of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini, which had been gutted as a result of work to consolidate […]

CARAVAGGIO IN GENOA. HYPOTHESIS FOR AN INSPIRATION

On the evening of July 29 1605 the young notary Mariano Pasqualone, a native of Accumoli, shows up with a head wound at the offices of the criminal court in Rome to file a complaint. What he tells is that while walking in Piazza Navona “son stato assassinato da Michelangelo da Caravaggio pittore. Mi sono […]

Rembrandt and doctor tulp

It must have been very cold that January 31 1632 in Amsterdam when Adrian Adrianeszoon, known in the slums as “Het Kindt”, was hanged for yet another robbery attempt. Adrian Adrianeszoon had behind him a respectable criminal career made of theft and violence and in the past the Dutch justice had already made him amputate […]

THE IDEAL CITY OF THE RENAISSANCE

“Ho trovato una città di mattoni, ve la restituisco di marmo”Ottaviano Augusto in Svetonio, Vite dei Cesari, Aug., XXVIII, 3 “Quante Città vedevamo noi mentre eravamo fanciulli fatte tutte di asse, le quali hora sono state fatte di marmo?”Leon battista Alberti, De re aedificatoria, VIII, 5 The serene dream of the ancient, with its pacifying regularity, […]

THE VAULT OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL: EVOLUTION OF AN IDEA

When, in the mid-’70s of the fifteenth century, Sixtus IV decided to rebuild the Cappella Magna, the palatine chapel of the Apostolic Palace, he still did not know exactly what it would look like, let alone that one day it would take his name, but he knew he wanted it to be magnificent and able […]

The Tempest, or The mistery that (maybe) wasn’t there

We all know it: the famous Tempest painted by Giorgione in the early sixteenth century, a canvas whose success, at least in our time, is partly due to the search for arcane symbolism, sometimes quite abstruse, behind its surface of rural scene threatened by an impending downpour. The suspended, veiled, timeless atmosphere, the silence of […]