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The Florentine
Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.
The Florentine Press's groundbreaking publication Invisible Women: Forgotten Artists of Florence, written by The Florentine's cultural editor Jane Fortune in 2009, has inspired a documentary to be aired on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) in the United States. Created to spotlight state-of-the-art restoration and
After placing 70 works of the Uffizi Gallery online in 2011, the Google Art Project has recently expanded the number of Italian museums involved in the initiative, including two from Tuscany. The works now available via Artwork View are from the Fondazione Musei Senesi in Siena and the Museo di
A large whitewashed villa named La Rondinaia (‘Swallow's Nest'), wedged on a sheer cliff face in Ravello, overlooking the Amalfi coast, was the place where prolific American novelist, playwright, essayist and pundit Gore Vidal, lived and worked for more than 35 years. From this lofty perch high above
When the church of Santa Croce was built in the thirteenth century, it was just outside the city walls and the space in front of it was an open field that periodically filled with crowds of people who wanted to hear the speeches of Franciscan preachers. Eight centuries later, piazza
Italy's Fascist dictatorship never enforced one style on the nation's artists. In the 1930s, therefore, traditional portraiture was practised alongside advanced abstraction in visual art and interior design. In architecture, classicism was revived for official buildings but modern streamlined structures were also built: Florence's main railway station,
It probably isn't that much fun coming second at anything, but when, over the past several years, the prestigious American business magazine Forbes has ranked you as the second richest man in Italy, with an estimated worth of 11.5 billion dollars, you can't complain all that much.
Though renowned enough to earn France's Legion of Honor award in 1802, French animal painter Rosa Bonheur was under constant threat of arrest because of her preference for wearing trousers while sketching in public. Eighteenth-century Swiss painter Angelica Kauffmann could ask virtually any price for her works and
Filmmaker David Battistella moved to Florence from Canada in 2011 to pursue his dream: writing and producing a feature film based on Ross King's 2000 book Brunelleschi's Dome, about the life of Filippo Brunelleschi and the building of Florence's Cupola. This column chronicles the pursuit of his
There are plenty of Italophile Englishmen to study, but, if you find yourself passionately craving information about the Arts and Crafts movement, historic-house museums or early twentieth-century men's moustaches (all of which are perfectly reasonable), you might very well turn to Herbert Percy Horne (1864-1916) to
Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley and Edith Wharton all came to visit her. Henry James and Mario Praz frequented her salons. English writer Vernon Lee welcomed them all. For 46 years, at her villa, Il Palmerino, Lee ‘held court' for a vast network of Anglo-American and Florentine writers, artists,
Known to all in town simply as the ‘Duomo,' the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, with its neo-gothic façade in white, green and red marble, Brunelleschi's amazing dome and Giotto's imposing bell tower, is probably the first place visitors to Florence go. Just
The irony of my job is not lost on me. As I go to work each day, I make my way on stony streets where it seems, at times, that you can still hear the Guelfs and Ghibellines hurling abuses, and sometimes even projectiles, at one another. From time to
American writer and patron of the arts Mabel Dodge (also known, in recognition of her four husbands, as Mabel Evans Dodge Sterne Luhan), was born Mabel Ganson on February 26, 1879. She was the only child and heiress of a wealthy but unloving family in Buffalo, New York. After a
Those looking for an art-filled, meditative spot without Florence's summer crowds should make a quiet visit to the Chiostro dello Scalzo, located on the city's ultra-central via Cavour, just past the church of San Marco. With any luck, you'll be alone to admire its 16
The celebrations of Vespucci Year continue with the opening of the exhibit at Palazzo Pitti, New Frontier: History and Culture of the Native Americans from the Collections of The Gilcrease Museum of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Co-organizer Laura Johnson reflects on the title and gives TF a personal glimpse behind the
At the end of the nineteenth century, the hills around Florence were filled with abandoned villas whose aristocratic owners had gone bankrupt, lost interest, or moved on to Rome when ...
Filmmaker David Battistella moved to Florence from Canada in 2011 to pursue his dream: writing and producing a feature film based on Ross King's 2000 book Brunelleschi's Dome, about the life of Filippo Brunelleschi and the building of Florence's Cupola. This column, which began with TF 149,
A city famed for its Renaissance sculpture, Florence also hosts interesting works by female sculptors. Following what she has coined the Women Artists’ Trail, TF’s culture editor Jane Fortune ...
Inspired by a Florentine itinerary linked to Palazzo Strozzi's city-wide cultural and artistic extravaganza, the exhibit, American's in Florence: Sargent and the American Impressionists, The Florentine’s culture editor, Jane Fortune, shares her ‘gems,’ treasures that spotlight the importance of international artists and intellectuals
Being born in Canada means having ice hockey in your veins. It’s a little understood sport in which fist-fighting is considered a normal part of the game. In hockey, a ...
Economist and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith maintained that ‘in central banking as in diplomacy, style, conservative tailoring, and an easy association with the affluent count greatly and results far much ...
Florence, with its austere pietra serena (sandstone) buildings, never fails to excite one's emotions! It is most magical either as the sun begins to spread across the brick-red roofs or as it sets, reflecting its glorious golden colors on the surface of the Arno. It is a city
No sound like it had been heard in Florence since World War II. An hour after midnight on May 27, 1993, a massive explosion echoed throughout the city. A white Fiat Fiorino van, stolen from via della Scala the evening before and taken to Isolotto where it was loaded with
As well as looking west in commemoration of Amerigo Vespucci's donation of his name to America, ambitious thematic exhibitions in Florence this summer are also looking east. At the Pitti Palace, exhibitions spanning 500 years of Japanese art trace points of cultural contact with Italy from the time of
