The Grandma continues her recovery. Reading is always healthy and entertaining because you learn. Today, she has been reading about the flood that devastated Florence on a day like today in 1966.
The 1966 flood of the Arno, in Italian Alluvione di Firenzedel 4 novembre 1966, in Florence killed 35 people and damaged or destroyed millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. It is considered the worst flood in the city's history since 1557. With the combined effort of Italian and foreign volunteers alike, or angeli del fango (Mud Angels), many of these fine works have been restored. New methods in conservation were devised and restoration laboratories established. However, even decades later, much work remains to be done.
Located in the Tuscany region of Central Italy, the river Arno is approximately 240 kilometres long. It flows from the Mount Falterona hills of the Apennine Mountains to the Ligurian Sea, just 11 kilometres west of Pisa. Lush vineyards and olive groves line the river's scenic course to the west, out to sea. Principally utilized for irrigation purposes, only 32 kilometres of the river is used for navigation.
The highest flows of the river generally occur in spring and autumn of every year, when rainfall in the Apennines is at its greatest. The intensity of the 1966 flood was further increased by both the topography of the Apennines, which contributed to the high run-off rates and river discharges, and urban development. Roads, such as the Via dei Calzaiuoli, served as narrow channels for floodwaters, allowing for their greater speed and destruction within the city; bridges, on the other hand, hindered river flow where it was needed, allowing water to pour over the floodplain with great force.
The flood has had a lasting impact on Florence, economically and culturally. City officials and citizens were unprepared for the storm and the widespread devastation that it caused. There were virtually no emergency measures in place, at least partially because Florence is located in an area where the frequency of flooding is relatively low. In fact, approximately 90% of the city's population were completely unaware of the imminent disaster.
Residents were set to celebrate their country's World War I victory over Austria on 4 November, Armed Forces Day. In commemoration, businesses were closed and many of their employees were out of town for the public holiday. While many lives were likely spared as a result, the locked buildings greatly inhibited the salvaging of valuable materials from numerous institutions and shops, with the exception of a number of jewellery stores whose owners were warned by their nightwatchmen.
5,000 families were left homeless by the storm, and 6,000 stores were forced out of business. Approximately 600,000 tons of mud, rubble and sewage severely damaged or destroyed numerous collections of books, manuscripts and fine art.
It is estimated that between 3 and 4 million books and manuscripts were damaged, as well as 14,000 movable works of ar.
Artist Marco Sassone, in a 1969 interview, recalled the impact of the flood on Florence's residents: The only thing you could do was watch and be helpless. Nature was master...the women became crazy with fear. They began throwing things from the windows and screaming 'who is going to save my children?'It was reported that 101 people lost their lives in the flood waters.
-Archives of the Opera del Duomo (Archivio di Opera del Duomo): 6,000 volumes of documents and 55 illuminated manuscripts were damaged.
-Gabinetto Vieusseux Library (Biblioteca del Gabinetto Vieusseux): All 250,000 volumes were damaged, including titles of romantic literature and Risorgimento history; submerged in water, they became swollen and distorted. Pages, separated from their text blocks, were found pressed upon the walls and ceiling of the building.
-National Central Library (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze): Located alongside the Arno, the National Library was cut off from the rest of the city by the flood. 1,300,000 items (a third of their holdings) were damaged, including prints, maps, posters, newspapers and a majority of works in the Palatine and Magliabechi collections.
-The State Archives (Archivio di Stato): Roughly 40% of the collection was damaged, including property and financial records; birth, marriage and death records; judicial and administrative documents; and police records, among others.
-Library and Archive of the Italian Unification(Biblioteca e Archivio del Risorgimento): 7,000 volumes were inundated. The facility and collections were restored and the Library and Archive reopened in 1969.
-Academy of Agriculturists (Accademia dei Georgofili)
-Historic Institute of the Resistance (Istituto Storico della Resistenza)
-Hospital of the Innocents (Ospedale degli Innocenti)
-Institute and Museum of the History of Science (Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza)
-Uffizi Gallery
-Book shops and antique book dealers, many in possession of rare materials
-Numerous private collections
-The collections of numerous churches and cathedrals
Regional officials in Tuscany are responsible for organizing a massive project, the purpose of which is to not only protect the area from future flooding but to maintain high water quality and effectively utilize water resources.
Work commenced in 1984, with the construction of the Bilancino Dam, near Florence. The Sieve tributary and spillway at Pontedera are among other developments. The national government has funded a majority of these various subprojects, with the city of Florence being the primary recipient of the money.
Today, The Grandma has received the visit of her closer friend Nuria. Nuria is from Tenerife, CanaryIslands.
They have been talking about their lives and their future projects and Nuria has been explained to TheGrandma an interesting story about Sicutdudum, a papal bull promulgated by PopeEugene IV on a day like today in 1435, which forbade the enslavement of Guanches, the local natives in the Canary Islands who had converted or were converting to Christianity.
Canary Islands have an amazing an exciting history that must be explained and remembered. Their native people, Guanches, suffered all kind of repression -including genocide- by the Spanish colonizers who wanted to submit these peoples to the Spanish culture and religion.
Sicut dudum, in English Just as Long Ago, is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Eugene IV in Florence on January 13, 1435, which forbade the enslavement of local natives in the Canary Islands who had converted or were converting to Christianity.
Sicut dudum was meant to reinforce Creator Omnium, issued the previous year, condemning Portuguese slave raids in the Canary Islands. Over forty years after Creator omnium and Sicut dudum, Pope Sixtus IV found it necessary to repeat the prohibition in his papal bull Regimini gregis, which threatened the excommunication of all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians.
Christianity had gained many converts in the Canary Islands by the early 1430s. The ownership of the lands had been the subject of dispute between Portugal and the Kingdom of Castille. The lack of effective control had resulted in periodic raids on the islands to procure slaves.
Acting on a complaint by Fernando Calvetos, bishop of the islands, PopeEugene IV issued a papal bull, Creator omnium, on 17 December 1434, annulling previous permission granted to Portugal to conquer those islands still pagan. Eugene excommunicated anyone who enslaved newly converted Christians, the penalty to stand until the captives were restored to their liberty and possessions.
Slave raids continued in the islands during 1435 and Eugene issued a further edict (Sicut dudum) that affirmed the ban on enslavement, and ordered, under pain of excommunication, that all such slaves be immediately set free:
We order and command all and each of the faithful of each sex, within the space of fifteen days of the publication of these letters in the place where they live, that they restore to their earlier liberty all and each person of either sex who were once residents of said Canary Islands, and made captives since the time of their capture, and who have been made subject to slavery. These people are to be totally and perpetually free, and are to be let go without the exaction or reception of money.
Eugene went on to say that, If this is not done when the fifteen days have passed, they incur the sentence of excommunication by the act itself, from which they cannot be absolved, except at the point of death, even by the Holy See, or by any Spanish bishop, or by the aforementioned Ferdinand, unless they have first given freedom to these captive persons and restored their goods.
The specific reference to Spanish bishops and Bishop Ferdinand of San Marcial del Rubicón in Lanzarote suggests that the Portuguese were not the only ones engaged in slave raids in the Canaries.
Joel S. Panzer views Sicut dudum as a significant condemnation of slavery, issued sixty years before the Europeans found the New World.
Eugene tempered Sicut dudum with another bull (15 September 1436) due to the complaints made by King Duarte of Portugal, that allowed the Portuguese to conquer any unconverted parts of the Canary Islands. The king suggested that Portugal be authorized to evangelize and civilize the islands, as other less reputable persons were unlikely to heed the pontiff. Political weakness compelled the Renaissance Papacy to adopt an acquiescent and unchallenging position when approached for requests for privileges in favour of these ventures. Without a navy of his own to police the islands, the Pope opted in favor of the Portuguese as the lesser of two evils.
In 1476 Pope Sixtus IV reiterated the concerns expressed in Sicut dudum in his papal bull, Regimini gregis, in which he threatened to excommunicate all captains or pirates who enslaved Christians.
Today, The Grandma and her friends have left Firenze to continue their travel around Tuscany. They have arrived to Prato, a beautiful city capital of the province of the same name, and the second city in number of inhabitants in Tuscany.
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).
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
The famous cantucci, a type of biscotti, was invented here during the Middle Ages and they are still produced by local old bakers.
Archaeological findings have proved that Prato'ssurrounding 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.
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 theRepublic 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
In 1512, during the War of the Holy League, the city was sacked by Spanish troops assembled by Pope Julius II and the king of Aragon, Ferdinand II, to recover the nearby city of Florence for the Medici family.
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.
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.
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
While undertaking study and excavations with Filippo Brunelleschi in Rome (1404–1407), work that gained the two men the reputation of treasure seekers, Donatello made a living by working at goldsmiths' shops. Their Roman sojourn was decisive for the entire development of Italian art in the 15th century, for it was during this period that Brunelleschi undertook his measurements of the Pantheon dome and of other Roman buildings.
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.
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
From 1425 to 1427, Donatello collaborated with Michelozzo on the funerary monument of the Antipope John XXIII for the Battistero in Florence.
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.
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.
(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
In 1420 he was admitted to the community of Carmelite friars of the Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Florence, taking religious vows in the Order the following year, at the age of sixteen.
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 TheAnnunciation 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.
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 June 1456 Fra Filippo is recorded as living in Prato, near Florence, to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral.
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.
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.
Today, Jordi Santanyí and his friends have visited TheCasa di Dante Museum located in one of the oldest areas of the historic center of Florence, on Santa Margherita street.
Jordi Santanyí and TheGrandma love Literature and talking about DanteAlighieri is talking about one of the greatest writers of the history. Danteis the author of The Divine Comedy, a long narrative poem considered a masterpiece of the universal literature.
Before going to visit the museum, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 14).
The Casa di Dante Museum located in one of the oldest areas of the historic center of Florence, on Santa Margherita street. The museum is mainly didactic, with numerous explanatory panels on the Divine Comedy, Dante, his time and his characters. It contains reproductions of documents about the poet, models and dioramas that shed light on some aspects of his life and the historical events of the time, such as the Battle of Campaldino. There are also reconstructions of furniture, costumes and other aspects of the daily life of medieval Florence, as well as weapons, coins and original ceramics of the time.
The Divine Comedy, in Italian Divina Commedia, is an Italian long narrative poem by Dante Alighieri, begun c. 1308 and completed in 1320, a year before his death in 1321. It is widely considered to be the preeminent work in Italian literature and one of the greatest works of world literature.
Dante Alighieri's shield, Firenze
The poem's imaginative vision of the afterlife is representative of the medieval world-view as it had developed in the Western Church by the 14th century. It helped establish the Tuscan language, in which it is written, also in most present-day Italian-market editions, as the standardized Italian language. It is divided into three parts: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso.
The narrative describes Dante's travels through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise or Heaven, while allegorically the poem represents the soul's journey towards God. Dante draws on medieval Christian theology and philosophy, especially Thomistic philosophy and the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas.
Consequently, the DivineComedy has been called the Summa in verse. In Dante's work, Virgil is presented as human reason and Beatrice is presented as divine knowledge.
The work was originally simply titled Comedìa in the first printed edition published in 1472, Tuscan for Comedy, later adjusted to the modern Italian Commedia. The adjective Divina was added by Giovanni Boccaccio, and the first edition to name the poem Divina Comedia in the title was that of the Venetian humanist Lodovico Dolce, published in 1555 by Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari.
The Divine Comedy is composed of 14,233 lines that are divided into three cantiche (singular cantica) -Inferno (Hell), Purgatorio (Purgatory), and Paradiso (Paradise)- each consisting of 33 cantos, in Italian plural canti.
An initial canto, serving as an introduction to the poem and generally considered to be part of the first cantica, brings the total number of cantos to 100. It is generally accepted, however, that the first two cantos serve as a unitary prologue to the entire epic, and that the opening two cantos of each cantica serve as prologues to each of the three cantiche.
Visiting The Casa di Dante Museum, Firenze
The number three is prominent in the work, represented in part by the number of cantiche and their lengths.
Additionally, the verse scheme used, terza rima, is hendecasyllabic (lines of eleven syllables), with the lines composing tercets according to the rhyme scheme aba, bcb, cdc, ded....
Written in the first person, the poem tells of Dante's journey through the three realms of the dead, lasting from the night before Good Friday to the Wednesday after Easter in the spring of 1300.
The Roman poet Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory; Beatrice, Dante's ideal woman, guides him through Heaven. Beatrice was a Florentine woman whom he had met in childhood and admired from afar in the mode of the then-fashionable courtly love tradition, which is highlighted in Dante's earlier work La Vita Nuova.
The structure of the three realms follows a common numerical pattern of 9 plus 1, for a total of 10: 9 circles of the Inferno, followed by Lucifer contained at its bottom; 9 rings of Mount Purgatory, followed by the Garden of Eden crowning its summit; and the 9 celestial bodies of Paradiso, followed by the Empyrean containing the very essence of God.
Within each group of 9, 7 elements correspond to a specific moral scheme, subdivided into three subcategories, while 2 others of greater particularity are added to total nine. For example, the seven deadly sins of the Catholic Church that are cleansed in Purgatory are joined by special realms for the Late repentant and the excommunicated by the church. The core seven sins within Purgatory correspond to a moral scheme of love perverted, subdivided into three groups corresponding to excessive love (Lust, Gluttony, Greed), deficient love (Sloth), and malicious love (Wrath, Envy, Pride).
The Grandma visits The Casa di Dante Museum
In central Italy's politicalstrugglebetween Guelphs and Ghibellines, Dante was part of the Guelphs, who in general favored the Papacy over the Holy Roman Emperor.
Florence's Guelphs split into factions around 1300, the White Guelphs and the Black Guelphs. Dante was among the White Guelphs who were exiled in 1302 by the Lord-Mayor Cante de' Gabrielli di Gubbio, after troops under Charles of Valois entered the city, at the request of Pope Boniface VIII, who supported the Black Guelphs.
This exile, which lasted the rest of Dante's life, shows its influence in many parts of the Comedy, from prophecies of Dante's exile to Dante's views of politics, to the eternal damnation of some of his opponents.
The last word in each of the three cantiche is stelle, stars.
According to the Italian Dante Society, no original manuscript written by Dante has survived, although there are many manuscript copies from the 14th and 15th centuries, some 800 are listed on their site.
The Divine Comedy can be described simply as an allegory: each canto, and the episodes therein, can contain many alternative meanings. Dante's allegory, however, is more complex, and, in explaining how to read the poem, see the Letter to Cangrande, he outlines other levels of meaning besides the allegory: the historical, the moral, the literal, and the anagogical.
Although the Divine Comedy is primarily a religious poem, discussing sin, virtue, and theology, Dante also discusses several elements of the science of his day, this mixture of science with poetry has received both praise and blame over the centuries.
Dante Alighieri's bust, Firenze
The Purgatorio repeatedly refers to the implications of a sphericalEarth, such as the different stars visible in the southern hemisphere, the altered position of the sun,and the various timezones of the Earth. For example, at sunset in Purgatory it is midnight at the Ebro, dawn in Jerusalem, and noon on the River Ganges. The Divine Comedy was not always as well-regarded as it is today.
Although recognized as a masterpiece in the centuries immediately following its publication, the work was largely ignored during the Enlightenment, with some notable exceptions such as Vittorio Alfieri; Antoine de Rivarol, who translated the Inferno into French; and Giambattista Vico, who in the Scienza nuova and in the Giudizio su Dante inaugurated what would later become the romantic reappraisal of Dante, juxtaposing him to Homer.
The Comedy was rediscovered in the English-speaking world by William Blake, who illustrated several passages of the epic, and the romantic writers of the 19th century. Later authors such as T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, C. S. Lewis and James Joyce have drawn on it for inspiration.
The poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was its first American translator, and modern poets, including Seamus Heaney, Robert Pinsky, John Ciardi, W. S. Merwin, and Stanley Lombardo, have also produced translations of all or parts of the book.
In Russia, beyond Pushkin's translation of a few tercets, Osip Mandelstam's late poetry has been said to bear the mark of a tormented meditation on the Comedy. In 1934, Mandelstam gave a modern reading of the poem in his labyrinthine Conversation on Dante.
In T. S. Eliot's estimation, Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them. There is no third. For Jorge Luis Borges the Divine Comedy was the best book literature has achieved.
The Palazzo Pitti is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Tuscany. It is 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 luxurious possessions.
In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919.
Inside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
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. It is divided into several principal galleries or museums detailed below.
The construction of this severe and forbidding building was commissioned in 1458 by the Florentine banker LucaPitti (1398-1472), a principal supporter and friend of Cosimo de' Medici.
The early history of the Palazzo Pitti is a mixture of fact and myth. Pitti is alleged to have instructed that the windows be larger than the entrance of the Palazzo Medici. The 16th-century art historian Giorgio Vasari proposed that Brunelleschi was the palazzo's architect, and that his pupil Luca Fancelli was merely his assistant in the task, but today it is Fancelli who is generally credited. Besides obvious differences from the elder architect's style, Brunelleschi died 12 years before construction of the palazzo began.
Though impressive, the original palazzo would have been no rival to the Florentine Medici residences in terms of either size or content. Whoever the architect of the Palazzo Pitti was, he was moving against the contemporary flow of fashion. The rusticated stonework gives the palazzo a severe and powerful atmosphere, reinforced by the three-times-repeated series of seven arch-headed apertures, reminiscent of a Roman aqueduct.
The Roman-style architecture appealed to the Florentine love of the new style all'antica. This original design has withstood the test of time: the repetitive formula of the façade was continued during the subsequent additions to the palazzo, and its influence can be seen in numerous 16th-century imitations and 19th-century revivals. Work stopped after Pitti suffered financial losses following the death of Cosimo de' Medici in 1464. Luca Pitti died in 1472 with the building unfinished.
Inside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
The building was sold in 1549 by Buonaccorso Pitti, a descendant of Luca Pitti, to Eleonora di Toledo. Raised at the luxurious court of Naples, Eleonora was the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici of Tuscany, later the Grand Duke.
On moving into the palace, Cosimo had Vasari enlarge the structure to fit his tastes; the palace was more than doubled by the addition of a new block along the rear. Vasari also built the Vasari Corridor, an above-ground walkway from Cosimo's old palace and the seat of government, the Palazzo Vecchio, through the Uffizi, above the Ponte Vecchio to the Palazzo Pitti. This enabled the Grand Duke and his family to move easily and safely from their official residence to the PalazzoPitti.
Initially the Palazzo Pitti was used mostly for lodging official guests and for occasional functions of the court, while the Medicis' principal residence remained the Palazzo Vecchio. It was not until the reign of Eleonora's son Francesco I and his wife Johanna of Austria that the palazzo was occupied on a permanent basis and became home to the Medicis' art collection.
Land on the Boboli hill at the rear of the palazzo was acquired in order to create a large formal park and gardens, today known as the Boboli Gardens. The landscape architect employed for this was the Medici court artist NiccolòTribolo, who died the following year; he was quickly succeeded by Bartolommeo Ammanati
The Boboli Gardens, in
Italian Giardino di Boboli, is a park in Florence, that is home
to a collection of sculptures dating from the 16th through the 18th
centuries, with some Roman antiquities.
Outside Palazzo Pitti, Firenze
The mid-16th-century
garden style, as it was developed here, incorporated longer axial
developments, wide gravel avenues, a considerable built element of
stone, the lavish employment of statuary and fountains, and a
proliferation of detail, coordinated in semi-private and public spaces
that were informed by classical accents: grottos, nympheums, garden
temples and the like. The openness of the garden, with an expansive view
of the city, was unconventional for its time. The gardens were very
lavish, considering no access was allowed to anyone outside the
immediate Medici family, and no entertainment or parties ever took place
in the gardens.
The name is a corruption of Bogoli, a family from whom land had been bought to construct the garden.
The
garden lacks a natural water source. To water the plants in the garden,
a conduit was built from the nearby Arno River to feed water into an
elaborate irrigation system.
The
primary axis, centered on the rear façade of the palace, rises on
Boboli Hill from a deep amphitheater that is reminiscent in its shape of
one half of a classical hippodrome or racecourse. At the center of the
amphitheater and rather dwarfed by its position is the Ancient Egyptian
Boboli obelisk brought from the Villa Medici at Rome. This primary axis
terminates in a fountain of Neptune,known to the irreverent Florentines
as the Fountain of the Fork for Neptune's trident. The gardens have passed through several stages of enlargement and restructuring work.
Visiting Giardino Boboli, Firenze
With the garden project well in hand, Ammanati turned his attentions to creating a large courtyard immediately behind the principal façade, to link the palazzo to its new garden. This courtyard has heavy-banded channelled rustication that has been widely copied, notably for the Parisian palais of Maria de' Medici, the Luxembourg.
In the principal façade Ammanati also created the finestre inginocchiate, replacing the entrance bays at each end. During the years 1558–70, Ammanati created a monumental staircase to lead with more pomp to the piano nobile, and he extended the wings on the garden front that embraced a courtyard excavated into the steeply sloping hillside at the same level as the piazza in front, from which it was visible through the central arch of the basement.
On the garden side of the courtyard Amannati constructed a grotto, called the grotto of Moses on account of the porphyry statue that inhabits it. On the terrace above it, level with the piano nobile windows, Ammanati constructed a fountain centered on the axis; it was later replaced by the Fontana del Carciofo or Fountain of the Artichoke, designed by Giambologna's former assistant, Francesco Susini, and completed in 1641.
During the 18th century, two perpendicular wings were constructed by the architect Giuseppe Ruggeri to enhance and stress the widening of via Romana, which creates a piazza centered on the façade, the prototype of the cour d'honneur that was copied in France. Sporadic lesser additions and alterations were made for many years thereafter under other rulers and architects.
Claire visits the Giardino di Boboli, Firenze
To one side of the Gardens is the bizarre grotto designed by Bernardo Buontalenti.The lower façade was begun by Vasari but the architecture of the upper storey is subverted by dripping pumice stalactites with the Medici coat of arms at the centre.
The interior is similarly poised between architecture and nature; the first chamber has copies of Michelangelo's four unfinished slaves emerging from the corners which seem to carry the vault with an open oculus at its centre and painted as a rustic bower with animals, figures and vegetation.
The palazzo remained the principal Medici residence until the last male Medici heir died in 1737. It was then occupied briefly by his sister, the elderly Electress Palatine; on her death, the Medici dynasty became extinct and the palazzo passed to the new Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Austrian House of Lorraine, in the person of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor. The Austrian tenancy was briefly interrupted by Napoleon, who used the palazzo during his period of control over Italy.
When Tuscany passed from the House of Lorraine to the House of Savoy in 1860, the Palazzo Pitti was included. After the Risorgimento, when Florence was briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II resided in the palazzo until 1871. His grandson, Victor Emmanuel III, presented the palazzo to the nation in 1919.
The palazzo and other buildings in the Boboli Gardens were then divided into five separate art galleries and a museum, housing not only many of its original contents, but priceless artefacts from many other collections acquired by the state. The 140 rooms open to the public are part of an interior, which is in large part a later product than the original portion of the structure, mostly created in two phases, one in the 17th century and the other in the early 18th century. Some earlier interiors remain, and there are still later additions such as the Throne Room.
Contemplating the Fountain of Neptune, Firenze
Decorated internally and externally with stalactites and originally equipped with waterworks and luxuriant vegetation, the fountain is divided into three main sections.
The first one was frescoed to create the illusion of a natural grotto, that is a natural refuge to allow shepherds to protect themselves from wild animals; it originally housed ThePrisoners of Michelangelo, now replaced by copies, statues that were first intended for the tomb of the Pope Julius II. Other rooms in the Grotto contain Giambologna's famous Bathing Venus and an 18th-century group of Paris and Helen by Vincenzo de' Rossi.
In the hillside above the amphitheatre is a double ramp, leading to the Fountainof Neptune. The main feature is a large basin with a central bronze statue of Neptune (1565-1568) by Stoldo Lorenzi.
The Isolotto is an oval-shaped island in a tree enclosed pond nearly at the end of the alternative Viottolone axis. In the centre of the island is the Fountain of the Ocean, while in the surrounding moat, there are statues of Perseus and Andromedae. The Isolotto was laid out, circa 1618, by Giulio and Alfonso Parigi.
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