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| Claire visits Santa Maria del Fiore, Firenze |
Claire Fontaine, who is an expert in art and design, have been explaining all the details about these two works to the rest of the group and they have spent a wonderful day learning more things about Renaissance in this wonderful Tuscan land.
Before visiting the Duomo and Giotto's Campanile, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 4).
More information: Colloсations and fixed expressions 1
Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore is the cathedral of Florence, Tuscany, in Italian Duomo di Firenze. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, bordered by white, and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris.
The cathedral complex, in Piazza del Duomo, includes the Baptistery and Giotto's Campanile. These three buildings are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site covering the historic centre of Florence and are a major tourist attraction of Tuscany. The basilica is one of Italy's largest churches, and until the development of new structural materials in the modern era, the dome was the largest in the world. It remains the largest brick dome ever constructed.
Santa Maria del Fiore was built on the site of Florence's second cathedral dedicated to Saint Reparata; the first was the Basilica di San Lorenzo di Firenze whose first building was consecrated as a church in 393 by St. Ambrose of Milan. The ancient structure, founded in the early 5th century and having undergone many repairs, was crumbling with age, according to the 14th-century Nuova Cronica of Giovanni Villani, and was no longer large enough to serve the growing population of the city.
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| Tina visits Santa Maria del Fiore, Firenze |
On 18 August 1418, the Arte della Lana announced an architectural design competition for erecting Neri's dome. Brunelleschi won and received the commission. Work started on the dome in 1420 and was completed in 1436. The cathedral was consecrated by Pope Eugene IV on 25 March 1436, the first day of the year according to the Florentine calendar.
It was the first octagonal dome in history to be built without a temporary wooden supporting frame. It was one of the most impressive projects of the Renaissance. During the consecration in 1436, Guillaume Dufay's motet Nuper rosarum flores was performed. The structure of this motet was strongly influenced by the structure of the dome.
The decoration of the exterior of the cathedral, begun in the 14th century, was not completed until 1887, when the polychrome marble façade was completed with the design of Emilio De Fabris. The floor of the church was relaid in marble tiles in the 16th century.
More information: Museum Florence
The exterior walls are faced in alternate vertical and horizontal bands of polychrome marble from Carrara (white), Prato (green), Siena (red), Lavenza and a few other places.
The cathedral of Florence is built as a basilica, having a wide central nave of four square bays, with an aisle on either side. The chancel and transepts are of identical polygonal plan, separated by two smaller polygonal chapels. The whole plan forms a Latin cross. The nave and aisles are separated by wide pointed Gothic arches resting on composite piers.
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| Tonyi & Jordi visit Santa Maria del Fiore, Firenze |
metres, length 153 metres, width 38 metres, width at the crossing 90 metres. The height of the arches in the aisles is 23 metres. The height of the dome is 114.5 metres.
In 1409-1411 Donatello made a statute of Saint John the Evangelist which until 1588 was in a niche of the old cathedral façade. A figure of Hercules, also in terracotta, was commissioned from the Florentine sculptor Agostino di Duccio in 1463 and was made perhaps under Donatello's direction. A statute of David by Michelangelo was completed 1501-1504 although it could not be placed on the Butteresss because of its six ton weight. In 2010 a fiberglass replica of David was placed for one day on the Florence cathedral.
The building of such a masonry dome posed many technical problems. Brunelleschi looked to the great dome of the Pantheon in Rome for solutions. Brunelleschi's solutions were ingenious, such as his use of the catenary arch for support.
More information: Museums in Florence
The commission for this bronze ball went to the sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, in whose workshop there was at this time a young apprentice named Leonardo da Vinci. Leonardo might have also participated in the design of the bronze ball, as stated in the G manuscript of Paris Remember the way we soldered the ball of Santa Maria del Fiore.
The decorations of the drum gallery by Baccio d'Agnolo were never finished after being disapproved by no one less than Michelangelo.
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| Pianta di Santa Maria del Fiore, Duomo di Firenze |
The building of the cathedral had started in 1296 with the design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was completed in 1469 with the placing of Verrochio's copper ball atop the lantern. But the façade was still unfinished and would remain so until the 19th century.
The original façade, designed by Arnolfo di Cambio and usually attributed to Giotto, was actually begun twenty years after Giotto's death. The whole façade is dedicated to the Mother of Christ.
More information: Visit Florence
The three huge bronze doors date from 1899 to 1903. They are adorned with scenes from the life of the Madonna. The mosaics in the lunettes above the doors were designed by Niccolò Barabino. They represent, from left to right: Charity among the founders of Florentine philanthropic institutions; Christ enthroned with Mary and John the Baptist; and Florentine artisans, merchants and humanists. The pediment above the central portal contains a half-relief by Tito Sarrocchi of Mary enthroned holding a flowered scepter. Giuseppe Cassioli sculpted the right-hand door.
On top of the façade is a series of niches with the twelve Apostles with, in the middle, the Madonna with Child. Between the rose window and the tympanum, there is a gallery with busts of great Florentine artists.
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| Drawing of Santa Maria dei Fiore, Firenze |
The Gothic interior is vast and gives an empty impression. The relative bareness of the church corresponds with the austerity of religious life, as preached by Girolamo Savonarola.
The church is particularly notable for its 44 stained glass windows, the largest undertaking of this kind in Italy in the 14th and 15th century. The windows in the aisles and in the transept depict saints from the Old and the New Testament, while the circular windows in the drum of the dome or above the entrance depict Christ and Mary. They are the work of the greatest Florentine artists of their times, such as Donatello, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Paolo Uccello and Andrea del Castagno.
Donatello designed the stained-glass window, Coronation of the Virgin, in the drum of the dome, the only one that can be seen from the nave.
Brunelleschi had proposed the vault to glimmer with resplendent gold, but his death in 1446 put an end to this project, and the walls of the dome were whitewashed. Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici decided to have the dome painted with a representation of The Last Judgment. This enormous work, 3,600 metres square of painted surface, was started in 1568 by Giorgio Vasari and Federico Zuccari and would last till 1579.
More information: Brunelleschi
Giotto's Campanile is a free-standing campanile that is part of the complex of buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, Tuscany.
Standing adjacent to the Basilica of Santa Maria del Fiore and the Baptistry of St. John, the tower is one of the showpieces of Florentine Gothic architecture with its design by Giotto, its rich sculptural decorations and its polychrome marble encrustations.
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| Joseph visits Giotto's Campanile, Firenze |
In Giotto's campanile there are seven bells: Campanone, La Misericordia, Apostolica, Annunziata, Mater Dei, L'Assunta and L'Immacolata.
On the death in 1302 of Arnolfo di Cambio, the first Master of the Works of the Cathedral, and after an interruption of more than thirty years, the celebrated painter Giotto di Bondone was nominated as his successor in 1334.
Giotto concentrated his energy on the design and construction of a campanile, bell tower, for the cathedral. He had become an eminent architect, thanks to the growing autonomy of the architect-designer in relation to the craftsmen since the first half of the 13th century. The first stone was laid on 19 July 1334.
More information: Museum Florence
His design was in harmony with the polychromy of the cathedral, as applied by Arnolfo di Cambio, giving the tower a view as if it were painted. In his design he also applied chiaroscuro and some form of perspective instead of a strict linear drawing of the campanile. And instead of a filigree skeleton of a gothic building, he applied a surface of coloured marble in geometric patterns.
When he died in 1337, he had only finished the lower floor with its marble external revetment: geometric patterns of white marble from Carrara, green marble from Prato and red marble from Siena. This lower floor is decorated on three sides with bas-reliefs in hexagonal panels, seven on each side.
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| Contemplating the Duomo from Giotto's Campanile |
The hexagonal panels on the lower level depict the history of mankind, inspired by Genesis. The east side only contains five panels, because of the entrance door.
The north side hexagonal panels depict: Sculpture, Phidias, Painting, Harmony, Grammar, Logic and Dialectic, Music and Poetry, Geometry and Arithmetic. The lozenges, on the next level, already show a different style: the marble figures stand out on a background of blue majolica.
More information: Visit Florence
On the West side The Planets, on the South side The three Theological and four Cardinal Virtues; on the East side the seven Liberal Arts and on the North side the Seven.
On the next level on each side there are four statues in niches. They have been sculpted in different periods.
These levels were built by Francesco Talenti, Master of the Works from 1348 to 1359. Each level is larger than the lower one and extends beyond it in every dimension such that their difference in size exactly counters the effect of perspective. As a result, the top three levels of the tower, when seen from below, look exactly equal in size.
The reliefs, statues and decoration make a coherent whole when interpreted in terms of medieval scholastic philosophy.
More information: Florence Inferno
And when I thought
of Florence, it was like a miracle
city embalmed and like a corolla,
because it
was called the city of lilies and its cathedral,
St. Mary of the Flowers.
Marcel Proust
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