 |
| Visiting Piazza Duomo, Prato |
Prato is well-known as a textile centre nowadays but during the Renaissance, this city was an important cultural place where Florentine artists like Donatello and Filippo Luppi worked and created some amazing works that we can contemplate currently.
During the travel from Firenze to Prato, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 15).
More information: Places
Prato is a city and comune in Tuscany, the capital of the Province of Prato. The city is at the foot of Monte Retaia, the last peak in the Calvana chain. Prato is Tuscany's second largest city and the third largest in Central Italy, after Rome and Florence.
Historically, Prato's economy has been based on the textile industry. The renowned Datini archives are a significant collection of late medieval documents concerning economic and trade history, produced between 1363 and 1410.
The city boasts important historical and artistic attractions, with a cultural itinerary that starts from the Etruscans and then expanded in the Middle Ages and reached its peak with the Renaissance, when they left their testimonies in the city artists such as Donatello, Filippo Lippi and Botticelli.
 |
| Claire Fontaine visits the old town, Prato |
Archaeological findings have proved that Prato's surrounding hills were inhabited since Paleolithic times. The plain was later colonized by the Etruscans. It was of medium size and it was already a centre for the wool and textile industry. The Etruscan city was inhabited until the 5th century BC, when, for undisclosed reasons, it decayed; control of the area later shifted to the Romans, who had their Via Cassia pass through here, but did not build any settlement.
In the early Middle Ages, the Byzantine and Lombard dominations prevailed in the region.
The history of Prato itself begins from the 10th century, when two distinct villages, Borgo al Cornio and Castrum Prati (Prato's Castle), are known. In the following century the two settlements were united under the lords of the castle, the Alberti family, who received the imperial title of Counts of Prato. In the same period the plain was dried and a hydraulic system regulating and exploiting the waters of the Bisenzio River was created to feed the gualchierae, pre-industrial textile machines.
More information: Città di Pratto
After a siege in 1107 by the troops of Matilde of Canossa, the Alberti retreated to their family fortresses in the Bisenzio Valley: Prato could therefore develop as a free commune. Within two centuries it reached 15,000 inhabitants, spurred in by the flourishing textile industry and by the presence of the Holy Belt relic. Two new lines of walls had to be built in the mid-12th century, and in the early 14th century.
In 1326, in order to counter the expansionism of the Republic of Florence, Prato submitted voluntarily under the seigniory of Robert of Anjou, King of Naples. However, on 23 February 1351 Joanna I of Naples sold the city to the Republic of Florence in exchange for 17,500 golden florins.
Prato's history therefore followed that of Florence in the following centuries.
 |
| Tina Picotes visits Ponte Mercatale in Prato |
The severity of the sack of Prato led to the surrender of the Florentine Republic, and to the restoration of the Medici rule. Historians debate the actual number of people killed during the sack, but contemporary chroniclers asserted between 2000 and 6000 people were slaughtered in the streets.
In 1653 Prato obtained the status of city and became seat of a Catholic diocese. The city was embellished in particular during the 18th century. In the 18th Century, with the ascent of Lorraine at the head of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the city was embellished and also experienced a significant cultural development, which was promoted by the grand dukes themselves.
The intellectual foresight of Prato and its land in this century finds its maximum expression in the words of Filippo Mazzei, a friend of Thomas Jefferson, which today are reported in the second paragraph of the Constitution of the United States of America: All men are created equal.
More information: Tuscany Beautiful Everywhere
After the unification of Italy in the 19th century, Prato became a primary industrial centre, especially in the textile sector and it population grew up. The town experienced significant internal immigration. Previously part of the province of Florence, in 1992 Prato became the capital of the eponymous province.
Prato is home to many museums and other cultural monuments, including the Filippo Lippi frescoes in the Cathedral of Santo Stefano, recently restored. The Cathedral has an external pulpit by Donatello and Michelozzo, built and still used for the display of the cathedral's famous relic of the Virgin Mary, the Girdle of Thomas (Sacra Cintola, a cord belt), which had a great reputation in the late Middle Ages and is often shown in Florentine art. Also of interest is the Teatro Metastasio, the city's main venue for operas and other theatrical productions, which was built in 1829–30.
The typical Pratese cuisine, as in general that of the whole Tuscany, uses poor products and ingredients, mainly from the territory. The bread, called bozza pratese, is definitely the basic element of the kitchen.
In Prato, as in Florence it is customary to use bread to prepare croutons with the livers, panzanella and pappa al pomodoro.
More information: Visit Tuscany
Not much was really invented during the Renaissance,
if you don't count modern civilization.
P. J. O'Rourke
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello, was a Tuscan sculptor of the Renaissance. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used this to develop a complete Renaissance style in sculpture, whose periods in Rome, Padua and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy a long and productive career.
He worked with stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax, and had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs.
 |
| Donatello |
Brunelleschi's buildings and Donatello's sculptures are both considered supreme expressions of the spirit of this era in architecture and sculpture, and they exercised a potent influence upon the artists of the age.
In Florence, Donatello assisted Lorenzo Ghiberti with the statues of prophets for the north door of the Baptistery of Florence Cathedral, for which he received payment in November 1406 and early 1408.
In 1409–1411 he executed the colossal seated figure of Saint John the Evangelist, which until 1588 occupied a niche of the old cathedral façade, and is now placed in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. This work marks a decisive step forward from late Gothic Mannerism in the search for naturalism and the rendering of human feelings. The face, the shoulders and the bust are still idealized, while the hands and the fold of cloth over the legs are more realistic.
More information: Visit Tuscany
In 1411–1413, Donatello worked on a statue of St. Mark for the guild church of Orsanmichele. In 1417 he completed the Saint George for the Confraternity of the Cuirass-makers.
The elegant St. George and the Dragon relief on the statue's base, executed in schiacciato is one of the first examples of central-point perspective in sculpture. From 1423 is the Saint Louis of Toulouse for the Orsanmichele, now in the Museum of the Basilica di Santa Croce. Donatello had also sculpted the classical frame for this work, which remains, while the statue was moved in 1460 and replaced by Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Verrocchio.
Between 1415 and 1426, Donatello created five statues for the campanile of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, also known as the Duomo. These works are the Beardless Prophet; Bearded Prophet (both from 1415); the Sacrifice of Isaac (1421); Habbakuk (1423–25); and Jeremiah (1423–26); which follow the classical models for orators and are characterized by strong portrait details. From the late teens is the Pazzi Madonna relief in Berlin. In 1425, he executed the notable Crucifix for Santa Croce; this work portrays Christ in a moment of the agony, eyes and mouth partially opened, the body contracted in an ungraceful posture.
 |
| David by Donatello |
Donatello made the recumbent bronze figure of the deceased, under a shell. In 1427, he completed in Pisa a marble relief for the funerary monument of Cardinal Rainaldo Brancacci at the church of Sant'Angelo a Nilo in Naples.
In the same period, he executed the relief of the Feast of Herod and the statues of Faith and Hope for the Baptistery of San Giovanni in Siena. The relief is mostly in stiacciato, with the foreground figures are done in bas-relief.
Around 1430, Cosimo de' Medici, the foremost art patron of his era, commissioned from Donatello the bronze David, now in the Bargello, for the court of his Palazzo Medici.
This is now Donatello's most famous work, and the first known free-standing nude statue produced since antiquity. Conceived fully in the round, independent of any architectural surroundings, and largely representing an allegory of the civic virtues triumphing over brutality and irrationality, it is arguably the first major work of Renaissance sculpture. Also from this period is the disquietingly small Love-Atys, housed in the Bargello.
More information: Donatello
When Cosimo was exiled from Florence, Donatello went to Rome, remaining until 1433. The two works that testify to his presence in this city, the Tomb of Giovanni Crivelli at Santa Maria in Aracoeli, and the Ciborium at St. Peter's Basilica, bear a strong stamp of classical influence.
Donatello's return to Florence almost coincided with Cosimo's. In May 1434, he signed a contract for the marble pulpit on the façade of Prato cathedral, the last project executed in collaboration with Michelozzo. This work, a passionate, pagan, rhythmically conceived bacchanalian dance of half-nude putti, was the forerunner of the great Cantoria, or singing tribune, at the Duomo in Florence on which Donatello worked intermittently from 1433 to 1440 and was inspired by ancient sarcophagi and Byzantine ivory chests.
In 1435, he executed the Annunciation for the Cavalcanti altar in Santa Croce, inspired by 14th-century iconography, and in 1437–1443, he worked in the Old Sacristy of the San Lorenzo in Florence, on two doors and lunettes portraying saints, as well as eight stucco tondoes.
From 1438 is the wooden statue of St. John the Baptist for Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice.
Around 1440, he executed a bust of a Young Man with a Cameo now in the Bargello, the first example of a lay bust portrait since the classical era.
More information: Florence Tickets I & II
Speak, damn you, speak!
(Donatello muttering under his breath to his sculptures
as he desired greater richness in their expressions)
Donatello
Fra' Filippo Lippi (c. 1406-8 October 1469), also called Lippo Lippi, was a Tuscan painter of the Quattrocento.
Lippi was born in Florence in 1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, and his wife. When he was still a small child, both his parents died. He was sent to live with his aunt Mona Lapaccia; however, because she was too poor to rear him, she placed him in the neighboring Carmelite convent. He was eight years old when he left for the convent and started his education there.
 |
| Filippo Lippi |
He was ordained as a priest in approximately 1425 and remained in residence of that priory until 1432.
In 1432 Filippo Lippi quit the monastery, although he was not released from his vows. In a letter dated 1439 he describes himself as the poorest friar of Florence, charged with the maintenance of six marriageable nieces.
With Lippi's return to Florence in 1432, his paintings had become popular, warranting the support of the Medici family, who commissioned The Annunciation and the Seven Saints.
Cosimo de' Medici had to lock him up in order to compel him to work, and even then the painter escaped by a rope made of his sheets.
More information: Fra Filippo Lippi
In 1441 Lippi painted an altarpiece for the nuns of S. Ambrogio which is now a prominent attraction in the Academy of Florence, and was celebrated in Browning's well-known poem Fra Lippo Lippi.
In 1452 Lippi was appointed chaplain to the nuns at the Monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Florence.
 |
| Madonna and Child, Filippo Lippi |
In 1458, while engaged in this work, he set about painting a picture for the monastery chapel of S. Margherita in that city, where he met Lucrezia Buti, a beautiful novice of the Order and the daughter of a Florentine named Francesco Buti. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit for the figure of the Madonna or perhaps S. Margherita.
Under that pretext, Lippi engaged in sexual relations with her, abducted her to his own house, and kept her there despite the nuns' efforts to reclaim her. This relationship resulted in their son, Filippino Lippi, who became a famous painter following his father.
More information: Po-Net
Lippi died in Spoleto, on or about 8 October 1469. The mode of his death is a matter of dispute. It has been said that the pope granted Lippi a dispensation for marrying Lucrezia, but before the permission arrived, Lippi had been poisoned by the indignant relatives of either Lucrezia herself or some lady who had replaced her in the inconstant painter's affections.
The frescoes in the choir of the cathedral of Prato, which depict the stories of St. John the Baptist and St. Stephen on the two main facing walls, are considered Fra Filippo's most important and monumental works, particularly the figure of Salome dancing, which has clear affinities with later works by Sandro Botticelli, his pupil, and Filippino Lippi, his son, as well as the scene showing the ceremonial mourning over Stephen's corpse.
This latter is believed to contain a portrait of the painter, but there are various opinions as to which is the exact figure.
More information: The Athenaeum
A-painting for a great man.
Saints and saints and saints again.
Filippo Lippi
