To see all the slides with images, click on the PDF file at the bottom of this page.
Florence and the Medici
The Medici: Cosimo, Eleanor, and the children
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDd4INjp5k8
Palazzo Vecchio
In 1299, the people of Florence decided to build a palace worthy of the city's importance, more secure and defensible in times of turbulence for the magistrates. Arnolfo di Cambio, the architect of the Duomo and Santa Croce began construction upon the ruins of Palazzo dei Fanti and Palazzo dell'Esecutore di Giustizia, once owned by the Uberti family. Giovanni Villani (1276–1348) wrote that the Uberti were "rebels of Florence and Ghibellines," stating that the palazzo was built to ensure that the Uberti family homes would never be rebuilt on the same location.
The cubical building is made of solid rusticated stonework, with two rows of two-lighted Gothic windows, each with a trefoil arch. In the 15th century, Michelozzo di Bartolomeo Michelozzi added decorative bas-reliefs of the cross and the Florentine lily in the spandrels between the trefoils.
The building is crowned with projecting crenellated battlement, supported by small arches and corbels. Under the arches are a repeated series of nine painted coats of arms of the Florentine republic. Some of these arches can be used as embrasures for dropping heated liquids or rocks on invaders.
Palazzo Vecchio
Rocky's Italy: Palazzo Vecchio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcSHD9eXfC0
Rick Steves
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDXlVogk3J
Florence Art Tour #studyabroad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lviNUxX8TXM
Official Guide to Palazzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uaDjY3tqnw8
Vasari corridor from Palazzo Vecchio to Uffizi
The Vasari Corridor was built in five months by order of Duke Cosimo I de' Medici in 1565, to the design of Giorgio Vasari. It was commissioned in connection with the marriage of Cosimo's son, Francesco, with Johanna of Austria.
The idea of an enclosed passageway was motivated by the Grand Duke's desire to move freely between his residence and the government palace, when, like most monarchs of the period, he felt insecure in public, in his case especially because he had replaced the Republic of Florence.
Uffizi Gallery
See museum's home page at https://www.uffizi.it/en/the-uffizi
Uffizi Gallery
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy.
One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the Italian Renaissance. After the ruling House of Medici died out, their art collections were given to the city of Florence under the famous Patto di famiglia negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress.
The Uffizi is one of the first modern museums. The gallery had been open to visitors by request since the sixteenth century, and in 1765 it was officially opened to the public, formally becoming a museum in 1865.
The cortile (internal courtyard) is so long, narrow and open to the Arno at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe. Vasari, a painter and architect as well, emphasized its perspective length by adorning it with the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys, as well as the three continuous steps on which the palace-fronts stand.
Uffizi Gallery
The building of the Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici as a means to consolidate his administrative control of the various committees, agencies, and guilds established in Florence's Republican past so as to accommodate them all one place, hence the name Uffizi, "offices."
The Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices and the Archivio di Stato, the state archive. The project was intended to display prime art works of the Medici collections on the piano nobile (main floor).
The plan was carried out by his son, Grand Duke Francesco I. He commissioned the architect Buontalenti to design the Tribuna degli Uffizi that would display a series of masterpieces in one room, including jewels; it became a highly influential attraction of a Grand Tour. The octagonal room was completed in 1584.
The top floor was made into a gallery for the family and their guests and included their collection of Roman sculptures.
Over the years, more sections of the palace were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici. For many years, 45 to 50 rooms were used to display paintings from the 13th to 18th century.
Pitti Palace
The solid, massive building is enhanced by the simple tower with its clock. Giovanni Villani wrote that Arnolfo di Cambio incorporated the ancient tower of the Foraboschi family (the tower then known as "La Vacca" or "The Cow") into the new tower's facade as its substructure;[1] this is why the rectangular tower (height 94 m) is not directly centered in the building. This tower contains two small cells, that, at different times, imprisoned Cosimo de' Medici (the Elder) (1435) and Girolamo Savonarola (1498). The tower is named after its designer Torre d'Arnolfo. The tower's large, one-handed clock was originally constructed in 1353 by the Florentine Nicolò Bernardo, but was replaced in 1667 with a replica made by Georg Lederle from the German town of Augsburg (Italians refer to him as Giorgio Lederle of Augusta) and installed by Vincenzo Viviani.
Duke Cosimo I de' Medici (later to become grand duke) moved his official seat from the Medici palazzo in via Larga to the Palazzo della Signoria in May 1540, signalling the security of Medici power in Florence.[2] When Cosimo later removed to Palazzo Pitti, he officially renamed his former palace to the Palazzo Vecchio, the "Old Palace", although the adjacent town square, the Piazza della Signoria, still bears the original name. Cosimo commissioned Giorgio Vasari to build an above-ground walkway, the Vasari corridor, from the Palazzo Vecchio, through the Uffizi, over the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti. Cosimo I also moved the seat of government to the Uffizi.
The palace gained new importance as the seat of united Italy's provisional government from 1865 to 1871, at a moment when Florence had become the temporary capital of the Kingdom of Italy. Although most of the Palazzo Vecchio is now a museum, it remains as the symbol and center of local government; since 1872 it has housed the office of the mayor of Florence, and it is the seat of the City Council. The tower currently has three bells; the oldest was cast in the 13th century
Pitti Palace
The Palazzo Pitti, in English called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance building, situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker.
The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxury possessions.
The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919. The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of this design known as the corps de logis, is 32,000 square metres, divided into several principal galleries or museums.
Pitti Palace
Purchased in 1550, the Palace was chosen by Cosimo I de’ Medici and his wife Eleanor of Toledo as the new Grand Ducal residence, and it soon became the symbol of the Medici’s power over Tuscany.
It also housed the Court of two other dynasties: the House of Habsburg-Lorraine (who succeeded the Medici from 1737) and the Kings of Italy from the House of Savoy, who inhabited it from 1865.
Nonetheless the palace still bears the name of its first owner, the Florentine banker Luca Pitti that in the mid-1400s started its construction―maybe after a design by Brunelleschi―at the foot of the Boboli hill beyond the Arno River.
Today the Palace is divided into five museums: the Treasury of the Grand Dukes and the Museum of Russian Icons (with the Palatine Chapel) on the ground floor, the Palatine Gallery and the Imperial and Royal Apartments on the first floor, the Gallery of Modern Art and the Museum of Costume and Fashion on the second floor.
See: https://www.uffizi.it/en/pitti-palace for more detail.
Ferrara and the Este Family
Ferrara is a city in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region, known for the buildings erected by its Renaissance rulers, the Este family.
These include the moated Este Castle, with its lavish private chambers. The family also built the Diamanti Palace, clad in diamond-shaped marble blocks and home to the National Picture Gallery. The Romanesque Ferrara Cathedral has a 3-tiered facade and a marble bell tower.
Ferrara and the Este Family
The Este Delights (delizia) are Renaissance residences built by the Este family that date back to the period of the Duchy of Ferrara, when it also included the territories of Modena and Reggio Emilia.
In 1995 some of the still existing delights, all in the province of Ferrara, were included by UNESCO in the list of World Heritage Sites, together with Ferrara and its Po delta. The motivation reads: "the residences of the Dukes of Este in the Po Delta illustrate in an exceptional way the influence of Renaissance culture on the natural landscape."
NOTE: we looked at World Heritage Sites in Kolkata, India, when we read A Rising Man, specifically the Bengal Club
Women artists of the Renaissance
In Renaissance Italy, most women from the upper classes had only two options in life― marriage or the convent. Not a very promising environment for women artists to emerge or thrive; in fact, it was incredibly difficult. They were unable to receive formal art training, so they were either self-taught or taught by their fathers. Once they emerged, they would be widely overlooked, as the painter’s brush is “more manly.”
However, despite all challenges, some women managed to become acclaimed artists, even leading ones. Here are some famous female Renaissance artists who managed to overcome social and cultural limitations of their time.
Patriarchal structures kept many women from participating in the commercial art market. Academies for fine arts first opened in the 16th and 17th centuries but refused to accept women. In later years, sexist scholars overlooked women’s artwork or even mislabeled it as the work of their male contemporaries.
Women artists of the Renaissance
Sources:
Smithsonian magazine, March 8, 2022
Art in Context magazine
WideWalls
Detroit Institute of Art
Smart History
Women artists of the Renaissance
Thanks to feminist scholars of the last century, Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi (1593-1653) has gone from a footnote in art history textbooks to something of a household name. Her works now fetch sums in the millions. In 2020, London’s National Gallery staged a blockbuster solo exhibition of Gentileschi’s art—the museum’s first-ever show dedicated to a single woman artist.
Yet those eager to shine a spotlight on Gentileschi might do well to expand their scope. As a new exhibition at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) declares, Gentileschi was one of several women artists that forged successful careers in Italy leading up to the Enlightenment. [Their exhibit] “By Her Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, 1500–1800” showcases masterpieces done by 17 Italian women to make the case for a broader view of women’s participation in the Italian Renaissance.
The curators hope the exhibition will help visitors understand how Gentileschi and other early Italian women artists found success in the male-dominated art world of the 16th through 18th centuries, as well as stir up broader conversations on “gender and power dynamics in the contemporary world."
Women artists of the Renaissance
Gentileschi is perhaps best known because of the traumatic events of her young life. At age 17, she was raped by fellow painter Agostino Tassi. Her father, also a painter, filed charges against Tassi on her behalf. During a psychologically and physically brutal trial, Gentileschi offered stirring testimony and even underwent torture to “prove” her story. Her rapist was found guilty but never punished.
It's no coincidence, therefore, that Gentileschi completed her arguably most famous painting, Judith Beheading Holofernes (c. 1620) shortly after the trial. The work depicts a Biblical story of revenge, where the Old Testament heroine and Hebrew widow, Judith, mercilessly beheads an Assyrian general, Holofernes, to save her people and defend her village from destruction.
Artemisia Gentileschi
Elisabetta Sirani (1638–1665),
Sirani’s Portia Wounding Her Thigh (1664), depicts a scene from Plutarch’s Lives, a series of biographies of famous Greek and Roman men written by the first-century philosopher.
In Plutarch’s tale, Portia stabs her own thigh to prove fealty to her husband, Brutus—and learn the secret details of his plot to assassinate Roman general Julius Caesar.
Sirani’s rendering of Portia has been praised as a proto-feminist vision, according to Sotheby’s auction house, which sold the work for half a million dollars in 2008.
Detroit Institute of Arts / Collezioni d’Arte e di Storia della Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio di Bologna
Sofonisba Anguissola (1532–1625)
An educated lady, Sofonisba Anguissola’s self-portraits display the often contradictory virtues expected of a young noblewoman and of an artist.
Renaissance art represented culture and art and was thought to represent accurate portrayals at the time. However, they actually demonstrated the restrictions that women had to face during the Renaissance, as their appearances were often changed and manipulated according to how artists saw fit.
For three centuries, women who exhibited extraordinary artistic talent were not allowed to enter academies with their works, no matter how magnificent they were.
It was this talent, along with a spotless reputation and an exceptional education (facilitated by her impoverished but forward-thinking, nobleman father), that would help Anguissola become a painter at the court of King Philip II of Spain.
Yet as men were court painters and Anguissola was a woman, she was given a title more appropriate to her gender: lady-in-waiting to Philip’s queen, Elizabeth of Valois.
Levina Teerlinc (1510?–1576)
A portrait miniature of Princess Elizabeth Tudor
An artist’s daughter: Bruges-born artist Levina Teerlinc was among the highest paid and most prolific artists at the Tudor court in England for about thirty years but today only five or six works can tentatively be attributed to her hand.
Miniatures, or tiny detailed portraits, were a popular format made and given as keepsakes and gifts, viewed privately or worn as a pendant or brooch. In a pre-photography world, miniature portraits allowed individuals to distribute their own image to others in an intimate format. And few wanted more portraits than the nobles of the Tudor court, in part because portraits offered highly curated images reflecting contemporary styles and status.
Plautilla Nelli (1524–1588): Artist Nun
Lavinia Fontana - A Vatican Portraitist
An Italian painter regarded as the first woman artist, Lavinia Fontana was also the first woman to paint female nudes. A daughter of the prominent artist Prospero Fontana, she made great strides in portraiture, becoming famous within and beyond Italy.
She was also commissioned to paint religious and mythological themes, which sometimes included nudes.
Lavinia Fontana - A Vatican Portraitist
After moving to Rome to pursue her career, she became a portraitist at the court of Pope Paul V, receiving numerous honors, such as a bronze portrait medallion cast by sculptor and architect Felice Antonio Casoni.
Among her earliest paintings that remained is Christ with the Symbols of the Passion from 1576, now in the El Paso Museum of Art.
Self-Portrait at the Clavichord with a Servant (detail), c. 1577
Fede Galizia - A Pioneer of the Still Life Genre
Judith Leyster: Dutch Golden Age Painter
A Dutch Golden Age painter, Judith Leyster painted genre works, portraits and still lifes. A truly remarkable artist, she painted energetic scenes with one or two figures engaged in merrymaking, such as music, dance and games.
She was also innovative in her domestic genre scenes, often depicting quiet scenes of women at home.
Though praised by the observers and historians of her era, Leyster had been essentially erased from art history since her death in 1660. Her entire oeuvre was attributed to Frans Hals or to her husband, Jan Miense Molenaer, until Hofstede de Groot first attributed seven paintings to her in 1893.
Self-Portrait (detail), c. 1633
Elisabetta Sirani
An Italian Baroque painter and printmaker, Elisabetta Sirani was the most famous woman artist in early modern Bologna who established an academy for other women artists.
According to written records, she created 200 paintings, drawing and etchings during her brief career.
She was known to paint beautifully and quickly, attracting visitors to her studio who enjoyed watching her work.
Art historian Carlo Cesare Malvasia praised her for the originality of her compositions, her style of drawing, her fast manner of working, and her professionalism. She died at age 27 under suspicious circumstances.
Self-Portrait as Allegory of Painting (detail), 1658
Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570
The Met
https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=3CxZ2PrXQ1M
The Medici: Portraits and Politics
In 16th century Florence, portraiture was often likened to a mask because the process of constructing an identity to be passed down to posterity involves masking, as well as revealing.
Formal portraiture in this period is often less revealing of the sitter's private personality than the record of a negotiation of the private and the public spheres.
. . . Portraiture is the clearest guide to a period and the way people envision themselves in the society in which they live. This is especially true in this exhibition, in which the portraits reflect the awareness of the sitter's identity at a defining moment in the history of Florence.
Portraiture of this period was much more than a mere record of a sitter's features. Artists constructed a synthetic image of the person portrayed, evoking the social and cultural ambition, as well as aspects of their personality.
The result are portraits of unique fascination.
The Medici: Portraits and Politics
The Medici family enjoys an almost mythic status today. The Medici were unquestionably the most important family in Florence.
The history of the family, more than any other, is linked to the figurative arts and to literature, which they employed to create an identity that incorporated the city, the government and the family's ideals.
From the early 15th century until the extinction of the male line in 1737, their ups and downs were linked to those of the city. And it was under them that the republic of Florence became a duchy. First, with Alessandro de Medici and then Cosimo I. These are the two figures that shape the story we tell in this exhibition.
Next Week
Maggie O'Farrell
The Marriage Portrait
Sources
Florence, the Art of Magnificent
https://www.pbs.org/video/florence-the-art-of-magnificence-6a9hnu/
The Medici: Portraits and Politics, 1512–1570
https://www.pbs.org/video/the-medici-portraits-and-politics-15121570-brpfjl/