AREZZO, GIORGIO VASARI & REPUBLIC OF FLORENCE

Tina Picotes visits Arezzo, Tuscany

Today, Tina Picotes and her friends have visited Arezzo, a beautiful Tuscan city well-known by being the birthplace of Giorgio Vasari, one of the greatest artists of the Renaissance.

Tina loves Art and she is very interested in knowing more things about this author who invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori.

Arezzo is a city and comune in Tuscany and the capital of the province of the same name located in Tuscany.

Described by Livy as one of the Capitae Etruriae, Etruscan capitals, Arezzo or Aritim in Etruscan, is believed to have been one of the twelve most important Etruscan cities—the so-called Dodecapolis, part of the Etruscan League. Etruscan remains establish that the acropolis of San Cornelio, a small hill next to that of San Donatus, was occupied and fortified in the Etruscan period.

Conquered by the Romans in 311 BC, Arretium became a military station on the via Cassia, the road by which Rome expanded into the basin of the Po. The old Etruscan aristocracy was not extinguished: Gaius Cilnius Maecenas, whose name has become eponymous with patron of the arts, came of the noble Aretine Etruscan stock.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon visits Arezzo, Tuscany

The city continued to flourish as Arretium Vetus, the third-largest city during the Augustan period, well known for its widely-exported pottery manufactures, the characteristic moulded and glazed Arretine ware, bucchero-ware of dark clay and red-painted vases, the so-called coral vases.

In the 3rd to 4th century Arezzo became an episcopal seat: it is one of the few cities whose succession of bishops are known by name without interruption to the present day, in part because the bishops operated as the feudal lords of the city in the Middle Ages.

The Roman city was demolished, partly in the course of the Gothic War and of the late-6th-century invasion of the Lombards, partly dismantled, as elsewhere throughout Europe. The Aretines re-used the stones for fortifications. Only the amphitheater remained.

The commune of Arezzo threw off the control of its bishop in 1098 and functioned as an independent city-state until 1384. Generally Ghibelline in tendency, it opposed Guelph Florence. In 1252 the city founded its university, the Studium.

More information: Visit Tuscany

Arezzo yielded to Florentine domination in 1384; its individual history became subsumed in that of Florence and of the Medicean Grand Duchy of Tuscany. During this period Piero della Francesca (c. 1415-1492) worked in the church of San Francesco di Arezzo producing the splendid frescoes, recently restored, which are Arezzo's most famous works. Afterwards the city began an economical and cultural decay, which ensured the preservation of its medieval centre.

In the 18th century the neighbouring marshes of the Val di Chiana, south of Arezzo, were drained and the region became less malarial. At the end of the-century French troops led by Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Arezzo, but the city soon turned (1799-1800) into a resistance base against the invaders with the Viva Maria movement, winning the city the role of provincial capital. In 1860 Arezzo became part of the Kingdom of Italy.

Visiting Arezzo, Tuscany

City buildings suffered heavy damage during World War II; the Germans made a stand in front of Arezzo early in July 1944 and fierce fighting ensued before the British 6th Armoured Division, assisted by New Zealand troops of the 2nd New Zealand Division, liberated the town 16 July 1944. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission's Arezzo War Cemetery, where 1,266 men are buried, is located to the north-west of the city.

Arezzo is set on a steep hill rising from the floodplain of the River Arno. In the upper part of the town are the cathedral, the town hall and the Fortezza Medicea, from which the main streets branch off towards the lower part as far as the gates. The upper part of the town maintains its medieval appearance despite the addition of later structures.

Arezzo's city proper is near the high risk areas for earthquakes, but located in a transitional area where the risk for severe earthquakes is much lower than in nearby Umbria and Abruzzo, albeit it is slightly more vulnerable than Florence.

Arezzo has a starring role in Roberto Benigni's film Life Is Beautiful (La vita è bella, 1997). It is the place in which the main characters live before they are shipped off to a Nazi concentration camp.

More information: Discover Tuscany

Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511-27 June 1574) was an Tuscan painter, architect, writer, and historian, most famous today for his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of art-historical writing.

Vasari was born on 30 July 1511 in Arezzo, Tuscany. Recommended at an early age by his cousin Luca Signorelli, he became a pupil of Guglielmo da Marsiglia, a skillful painter of stained glass.

Sent to Florence at the age of sixteen by Cardinal Silvio Passerini, he joined the circle of Andrea del Sarto and his pupils Rosso Fiorentino and Jacopo Pontormo, where his humanist education was encouraged. He was befriended by Michelangelo, whose painting style would influence his own. He died on 27 June 1574 in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, aged 62.

Giorgio Vasari

In 1529, he visited Rome where he studied the works of Raphael and other artists of the Roman High Renaissance. Vasari's own Mannerist paintings were more admired in his lifetime than afterwards.

In 1547 he completed the hall of the chancery in Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome with frescoes that received the name Sala dei Cento Giorni. He was consistently employed by members of the Medici family in Florence and Rome, and worked in Naples, Arezzo and other places.

Many of his pictures still exist, the most important being the wall and ceiling paintings in the Sala di Cosimo I in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, where he and his assistants were at work from 1555, and the frescoes begun by him inside the vast cupola of the Duomo were completed by Federico Zuccari and with the help of Giovanni Balducci.

He also helped to organize the decoration of the Studiolo, now reassembled in the Palazzo Vecchio. In Rome he painted frescos in the Sala Regia.

More information: Florence Inferno

Aside from his career as a painter, Vasari was also successful as an architect. His loggia of the Palazzo degli Uffizi by the Arno opens up the vista at the far end of its long narrow courtyard. It is a unique piece of urban planning that functions as a public piazza, and which, if considered as a short street, is unique as a Renaissance street with a unified architectural treatment. The view of the Loggia from the Arno reveals that, with the Vasari Corridor, it is one of very few structures that line the river which are open to the river itself and appear to embrace the riverside environment.

In Florence, Vasari also built the long passage, now called Vasari Corridor, which connects the Uffizi with the Palazzo Pitti on the other side of the river. The enclosed corridor passes alongside the River Arno on an arcade, crosses the Ponte Vecchio and winds around the exterior of several buildings. It was once the home of the Mercado de Vecchio.

Le Vite by Giorgio Vasari

He also renovated the medieval churches of Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce. At both he removed the original rood screen and loft, and remodelled the retro-choirs in the Mannerist taste of his time. In Santa Croce, he was responsible for the painting of The Adoration of the Magi which was commissioned by Pope Pius V in 1566 and completed in February 1567.

In 1562 Vasari built the octagonal dome on the Basilica of Our Lady of Humility in Pistoia, an important example of high Renaissance architecture.

Often called the first art historian, Vasari invented the genre of the encyclopedia of artistic biographies with his Le Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architettori in English Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, dedicated to Grand Duke Cosimo I de' Medici, which was first published in 1550.

He was the first to use the term Renaissance, Rinascita, in print, though an awareness of the ongoing rebirth in the arts had been in the air since the time of Alberti, and he was responsible for our use of the term Gothic Art, though he only used the word Goth which he associated with the barbaric German style. The Lives also included a novel treatise on the technical methods employed in the arts. The book was partly rewritten and enlarged in 1568, with the addition of woodcut portraits of artists, some conjectural.

Vasari enjoyed high repute during his lifetime and amassed a considerable fortune. In 1547, he built himself a fine house in Arezzo, now a museum honouring him, and decorated its walls and vaults with paintings. He was elected to the municipal council of his native town, and finally rose to the supreme office of gonfaloniere. He was made Knight of the Golden Spur by the Pope. He married Niccolosa Bacci, a member of one the richest and most prominent families of Arezzo.

In 1563, he helped found the Florentine Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno, with the Grand Duke and Michelangelo as capi of the institution and 36 artists chosen as members.

Download Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects

 Art owes its origin to Nature herself... 

this beautiful creation, the world, supplied the first model, 

while the original teacher was that divine 

intelligence which has not only made us superior 

to the other animals, but like God Himself, 

if I may venture to say it.

Giorgio Vasari

THE CAPPELLE MEDICEE & THE PALAZZO MEDICI RICCARDI

Visiting the Cappelle Medicee, Firenze

Today, Claire Fontaine and her friends have visited two places very important in the lives of the Medici: the Cappelle Medicee and the Palazzo Medici Riccardi.

Claire loves Art and these two places are good examples of Renaissance.

Before this amazing visit, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 10).

More information: Family and Friends

The Medici Chapels or Cappelle medicee are two structures at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence dating from the 16th and 17th centuries, and built as extensions to Brunelleschi's 15th-century church, with the purpose of celebrating the Medici family, patrons of the church and Grand Dukes of Tuscany.

The Sagrestia Nuova or New Sacristy was designed by Michelangelo. The larger Cappella dei Principi or Chapel of the Princes, though proposed in the 16th century, was not begun until the early 17th century, its design being a collaboration between the family and architects.

The Sagrestia Nuova was intended by Cardinal Giulio de' Medici and his cousin Pope Leo X as a mausoleum or mortuary chapel for members of the Medici family. It balances Brunelleschi's Sagrestia Vecchia, the Old Sacristy nestled between the left transept of San Lorenzo, with which it consciously competes, and shares its format of a cubical space surmounted by a dome, of gray pietra serena and whitewashed walls.

The Grandma visits the Cappelle Medicee

It was the first essay in architecture (1519–24) of Michelangelo, who also designed its monuments dedicated to certain members of the Medici family, with sculptural figures of the four times of day that were destined to influence sculptural figures reclining on architraves for many generations to come. The Sagrestia Nuova was entered by a discreet entrance in a corner of San Lorenzo's right transept, now closed.

Though it was vaulted over by 1524, the ambitious projects of its sculpture and the intervention of events, such as the temporary exile of the Medici (1527), the death of Giulio, now Pope Clement VII and the permanent departure of Michelangelo for Rome in 1534, meant that Michelangelo never finished it.

More information: Visit Florence

Though most of the statues had been carved by the time of Michelangelo's departure, they had not been put in place, being left in disarray across the chapel, and later installed by Niccolò Tribolo in 1545. By order of Cosimo I, Giorgio Vasari and Bartolomeo Ammannati finished the work by 1555.

There were intended to be four Medici tombs, but those of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, modestly buried beneath the altar at the entrance wall, were never begun. The result is that the two magnificent existing tombs are those of comparatively insignificant Medici: Lorenzo di Piero, Duke of Urbino and Giuliano di Lorenzo, Duke of Nemours.

Their architectural components are similar; their sculptures offer contrast. On an unfinished wall, Michelangelo's Madonna and Child flanked by the Medici patron saints Cosmas and Damian, executed by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli and Raffaello da Montelupo respectively, to Michelangelo's models, are set over their plain rectangular tomb.

Claire Fontaine visits the Cappelle Medicee

The octagonal Cappella dei Principi surmounted by a tall dome, 59 m. high, is the distinguishing feature of San Lorenzo when seen from a distance.

It is on the same axis as the nave and chancel to which it provides the equivalent of an apsidal chapel. Its entrance is from the exterior, in Piazza Madonna degli Aldobrandini, and through the low vaulted crypt planned by Bernardo Buontalenti before plans for the chapel above were made.

The opulent Cappella dei Principi, an idea formulated by Cosimo I, was put into effect by Ferdinand I de' Medici. It was designed by Matteo Nigetti, following some sketches tendered to an informal competition of 1602 by Don Giovanni de' Medici, the natural son of Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany, which were altered in the execution by the aged Buontalenti. A true expression of court art, it was the result of collaboration among designers and patrons.

The orb that is on top of the lantern has seventy-two facets and is about two feet in diameter. The orb and cross, that is on top of the orb, are traditional symbols of the Roman and Christian power, and recalls the similar orbs on central dome plan churches like St. Maria del Fiore and St. Peter's. But because it is on a private mausoleum, the Medici family is promoting their own personal power with the orb and cross, laurel wreath and lion heads, which are all symbols of status and power.

More information: Museums in Florence

 

 Men are God’s creation.

Whatever we achieve is God’s glory.

Giovanni de' Medici

The Palazzo Medici, also called the Palazzo Medici Riccardi after the later family that acquired and expanded it, is a Renaissance palace located in Florence. It is the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence and a museum.

The palace was designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo de' Medici, head of the Medici banking family, and was built between 1444 and 1484. It was well known for its stone masonry, which includes architectural elements of rustication and ashlar. The tripartite elevation used here expresses the Renaissance spirit of rationality, order, and classicism on human scale. 

This tripartite division is emphasized by horizontal stringcourses that divide the building into stories of decreasing height. The transition from the rusticated masonry of the ground floor to the more delicately refined stonework of the third floor makes the building seem lighter and taller as the eye moves upward to the massive cornice that caps and clearly defines the building's outline.

Tina Picotes visits the Palazzo Medici

Michelozzo was influenced in his design of the palace by both classical Roman and Brunelleschian principles.  

During the Renaissance revival of classical culture, ancient Roman elements were often replicated in architecture, both built and imagined in paintings.

In the Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the rusticated masonry and the cornice had precedents in Roman practice, yet in totality it looks distinctly Florentine, unlike any known Roman building.

Similarly, the early Renaissance architect Brunelleschi used Roman techniques and influenced Michelozzo. The open colonnaded court that is at the center of the palazzo plan has roots in the cloisters that developed from Roman peristyles.

More information: Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The once open corner loggia and shop fronts facing the street were walled in during the 16th century. They were replaced by Michelangelo's unusual ground-floor kneeling windows or finestre inginocchiate, with exaggerated scrolling consoles appearing to support the sill and framed in a pedimented aedicule, a motif repeated in his new main doorway. The new windows are set into what appears to be a walled infill of the original arched opening, a Mannerist expression Michelangelo and others used repeatedly.

The Palazzo Medici Riccardi was built after the defeat of the Milanese and when Cosimo de Medici had more governmental power. Rinaldo delgi Albizzi had also died giving Cosimo and his supporters even more influence. With this new political power Cosimo decided he wanted to build a palazzo. He was able to acquire property from his neighbors in order to begin the building of the palazzo.

Visiting the Palazzo Medici Riccardi

Unlike other wealthy families however, Cosimo wanted to start fresh and cleared the site before he began building.

It was larger than other palazzi but its more modest design made it less noticeable.

Yet, Cosimo's attempts at modesty did not help later on when the Medici family was scrutinized for their political power. Accused of spending money that was not his, Cosimo's house became part of arguments claiming that the Medicis built the Palazo with money that was not theirs.

Michelozzo had become a favorite of Cosimo due to his attention to tradition and his style for decoration. The courtyard of the palazzo was based on the loggia of the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a Brunelleschian design.

More information: Visit Florence I & II

The Palazzo Medici Riccardi was different for its time, and was the start of several architectural breakthroughs. It was believed to be the combination of Michelozzo's traditional and progressive elements that set the tone and style for future palazzi. The palazzo was the first building in the city to be built after the modern order including its own separate rooms and apartments.

The palazzo itself is based on medieval design with other components added to it. The design was meant to be simpler but set in such a way that it still showed the wealth of the Medici family through use of materials, the interior and the simplicity.

The building materials used for the construction were meant to accentuate the structure of the building through the threefold grading of masonry, rusticated blocks on the ground floor, the ashlar face of the top story, and the cornice.

The Grandma & Claire visit the Palazzo Medici Riccardi

The exterior design of the rusticated blocks and ashlar also create an optical recession that makes the building look even larger by the use of rough texture to smoother textures as the building heightens. The cornice in the palazzo was also the first time it debuted fully developed, giving the palazzo more significance in a historical context.

The Medici were still able to show their wealth on the exterior through their building material choices. The rusticated blocks soon became seen as a status symbol as the materials were costly and rare. They also, later, became a large part of power politics that was believed to have started with the Palazzo Medici Riccardi.

The palazzo is divided into different floors. The ground floor contains two courtyards, chambers, anti-chambers, studies, lavatories, kitchens, wells, secret and public staircases and on each floor there are other rooms meant for family.

Perhaps the most important section of the palace is the Magi Chapel, famously frescoed by Benozzo Gozzoli, who completed it around 1459. Gozzoli adorned the frescos with a wealth of anecdotal detail and portraits of members of the Medici family and their allies, along with Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos and Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund of Luxemburg parading through Tuscany in the guise of the Three Wise Men. 

Regardless of its biblical allusions, many of the depictions allude to the Council of Florence (1438-1439), an event that brought prestige to both Florence and the Medici.

More information: Museums in Florence

For the new leaders to rise the old must fall.

Giovanni de' Medici

GALLERIE DEGLI UFFIZI, ENJOY THE BEST RENAISSANCE

Ready to visit Le Gallerie degli Uffizi, Firenze

Today, The Grandma and her friends have visited Le Gallerie degli Uffizi in Firenze. All of them love art and this visit has been an incredible opportunity to contemplate some of the most important art works of the history.

Visiting this gallery is a must, if you are in Firenze and it is also an homage to all those people who believed in art and worked very hard to promoted it, conserved it and showed to the public.

Before discovering more things about the History of Firenze, The Grandma has studied a new chapter of her Intermediate Language Practice manual (Grammar 48).

More information: Capital Letters and Punctuation

The Uffizi Gallery, in Italian Galleria degli Uffizi, is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany. 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 period of the Italian Renaissance.

Today, the Uffizi is one of the most popular tourist attractions of Florence and one of the most visited art museums in the world.

After the ruling house of Medici died out, their art collections were gifted to the city of Florence under the famous Patto di famiglia negotiated by Anna Maria Luisa, the last Medici heiress.

Joseph de Ca'th Lon visits Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

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 building of Uffizi complex was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici so as to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi, offices. The construction was later continued by Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti; it was completed in 1581. The top floor was made into a gallery for the family and their guests and included their collection of Roman sculptures.

More information: Le Gallerie degli Uffizi

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, emphasised 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. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns of the Loggiato filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.

Jordi Santanyí visits Micheangelo's Hall

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; 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.

Over the years, more sections of the palace were recruited to exhibit paintings and sculpture collected or commissioned by the Medici. According to Vasari, who was not only the architect of the Uffizi but also the author of Lives of the Artists, published in 1550 and 1568, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo gathered at the Uffizi for beauty, for work and for recreation.

More information: Visit Uffizi

For many years, 45 to 50 rooms were used to display paintings from the 13th to 18th century. Because of its huge collection, some of the Uffizi's works have in the past been transferred to other museums in Florence -for example, some famous statues to the Bargello.

A project was finished in 2006 to expand the museum's exhibition space some 6,000 metres square to almost 13,000 metres square, allowing public viewing of many artworks that had usually been in storage.

The Grandma & Claire contemplate Galileo's portrait

The Nuovi Uffizi renovation project which started in 1989 was progressing well in 2015 to 2017. It was intended to modernize all of the halls and more than double the display space.

As well, a new exit was planned and the lighting, air conditioning and security systems were updated. During construction, the museum remained open, although rooms were closed as necessary with the artwork temporarily moved to another location. The major modernization project, New Uffizi, had increased viewing capacity to 101 rooms by late 2016 by expanding into areas previously used by the Florence State Archive.

The museum is being renovated to more than double the number of rooms used to display artwork.

On 27 May 1993, the Sicilian Mafia carried out a car bomb explosion in Via dei Georgofili and damaged parts of the palace. The blast destroyed five pieces of art and damaged another 30. Some of the paintings were fully protected by bulletproof glass. The most severe damage was to the Niobe room and classical sculptures and neoclassical interior, which have since been restored, although its frescoes were damaged beyond repair.

In early August 2007, Florence experienced a heavy rainstorm. The Gallery was partially flooded, with water leaking through the ceiling, and the visitors had to be evacuated. There was a much more significant flood in 1966 which damaged most of the art collections in Florence severely, including some of the works in the Uffizi.

More information: Visit Florence

Florence is perhaps best known for being
the seat of Renaissance art, and rightly so:
A greatest-hits collection of artists passed through
its streets -Michelangelo, Leonardo, Botticelli,
and Brunelleschi among them.
 

Hanya Yanagihara