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The Florentine
Art and culture from Florence, Italy, focusing on exhibitions, museums, artisans and more.
The Count of Warwick pays his reverences to His Most Serene Highness the Lord Duke, and he will give me a book in praise of chemistry by Doctor Cornacchino who teaches at Pisa, as well as a certain miraculous powder, which I tried a little of yesterday to my great
When Luciano Pavarotti died in September 2007, he was hailed as ‘one of the greatest’ Italian tenors of the twentieth century. The other ‘great’? During his lifetime, Enrico Caruso was as famous as Pavarotti for his unique and powerful voice, his talent and his charisma—
Florence and its surrounding areas are famous for a thriving artisan community, whose members still maintain Renaissance traditions today. Though mass tourism and a changing economy have significantly impacted the industry’s workshops, there are still numerous examples of true craftsmanship in Florence. These artisans helped make Florence one
Renaissance Florence was built around trade, and trade requires efficient and reliable banks. Banking relies on speculation on probable outcomes. So it should not be surprising that Florentines were renowned for their passion for gambling on a wide range of activities. Betting on horse racing in Piazza Santa Maria
The crater in the highway near the turnoff to a town called Capaci, about 20 kilometres between the Palermo Airport of Punta Raisi and Palermo itself, was about 30 meters ...
In 402AD, the Roman emperor Honorius decreed the city of Ravenna the capital of the Western world, a title it kept until the eighth century. The city became the center for mosaic art in the fifth and sixth centuries, and Ravenna, which is accessible by train from Florence (see ‘
The first of the five Fendi sisters, Paola, entered the family business in 1946. She was soon joined by her other four sisters Carla, Anna, Franca, and Alda. They were following in the footsteps of their mother, Adele Casagrande who had opened a leather and fur store and workshop in&
Though the majority of the Medici Archives are filled with records of day-to-day communication in a large bureaucracy, there are several entertaining reports from agents and observers from the political power centres of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century western Europe. So much detailed information was sent from cities such
Jovial, plump and a superb communicator, Angelo Roncalli took the name of John XXIII when he was elected pope in 1958, at the age of 77. It was commonly believed that, given his age, he would be a ‘transitional’ pope, an interim pontiff until a more long-term
Left unused for decades, the vast space underneath the Palazzo Strozzi courtyard has been restored to its original splendor and will be home to Florence’s new Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina (CCCS). Explaining how the new venue will showcase different approaches to contemporary art and culture, director Fransiska
Fall in love with Florence all over again with Jane Fortune’s unique book To Florence, Con Amore: 77 Ways to Love the City. Jane’s affection for her adopted city shines through in this collection of heartfelt and informative essays. If it’s Leonardo lore
Florence can easily boast that she has produced more top-quality Renaissance artists than any other Italian, or indeed European, city. What’s more, she can even boast that she has nurtured the three artists who are undisputedly among the ‘top of the top’—Leonardo da
Renaissance Tuscany was notorious for its practical jokes and ‘robust’ physical humour. Examples of complicated deceptions designed to confuse, embarrass or bring someone down a notch or two can be found in the tales of Boccaccio, Vasari’s Lives of the Artists and, of course, in the
His name is not a household word, not even in Italy, but it should be. Nor was his extraordinary story told until fairly recently. But, starting in 1940, for a period of five years, three months and eight days, a young, public servant, Pasquale Rotondi, a superintendent of the Artistic
One of the delights of dipping into the Medici Archives is discovering that our ancestors could be just as irreverent, cynical, critical and downright mean as any twenty-first-century commentator. Two fine examples of scorn, lack of empathy, and disrespect for high office can be read in reports to
‘Some of Michelangelo’s friends wrote from Florence to tell him to return, since it was not beyond the realm of possibility that he might be given the block of spoiled ...
The women are beautiful. Sometimes they are of humble origin, sometimes they are aristocrats but they are always striking. The men are handsome and dashing, often airmen or navy officers, but almost always attractive and debonair. And they are in love. Sometimes it is innocent and naïve, other
Close to the palace and piazza of the Priors [] is an Oratory of extraordinary beauty, worked entirely in dressed stone and constructed on arched vaults supported by beautifully sculptured piers. On the exterior of the piers are sculpted statues of the saints, some of alabaster and some of bronze of
One Tunisian cow Six straw hats Seven pounds of sausages One illustrated book on the excellence of women One short harquebus to go with the longer, more common models A ...
Most people who head to Florence do so to see its Renaissance art treasures. But did you know that Florence boasts one of the world’s finest photography museums? Florence is the home of Alinari, the world’s oldest firm working in the field of documentation of
The study of history would suggest that while human nature remains fairly constant, attitudes, customs, and institutions change continuously. This certainly rings true in the case of ‘Signora Saltarella’, a leading courtesan in mid-sixteenth-century Florence and Rome. Marco Bracci, reporting in the Medici Files
Those looking for the work of women sculptors living or working in the Florence area will have better luck finding pieces from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Felicie de Fauveau (Florence 1802–1866) was very political in her youth, which caused her to flee to Brussels at a
