Tag Archives: Renaissance

Florence News: New Botticelli rooms open in Uffizi

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The long awaited new Botticelli rooms at the Uffizi opened in mid-October after being closed for fifteen months. The heavy dark planked ceiling is gone and the Early Renaissance master’s works are now spread across three rooms with white walls and brighter lighting. While most paintings are still covered in glass, it is less obtrusive. Glare has been minimized.The most famous works, the Birth of Venus and Primavera, are given generous space and recessed into gallery walls.

In the new layout, all Botticelli’s works have been restored and given more space. There is a fresh feeling like a newly constructed home compared to the old dark and crowded spaces. While you can’t actually smell the new paint, you can still see the marks of the suction cups used to place the glass in front of the Birth of Venus.

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Update on the Missing Botticelli

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Botticelli St Augustine restored bannerIt was a stormy afternoon (not night), when I nervously entered Florence’s Ognissanti Church to check if Botticelli’s St. Augustine had finally returned. My last meeting had run late and I was out of breath. Tomorrow my flight was leaving at sunrise, so this would be my last chance. I walked at top speed nearly the whole way, because it was close to closing time. There was no time to take more than a few irresistible last looks at the city (Santa Maria Novella, the Arno).  Luckily, a thunderstorm had just ended, thinning the crowds of tourists, but the stone pavement was slippery in spots along the way.

For the past three years, I had made this pilgrimage, only to experience disappointment. Ognissanti, one of the important neighborhood parish churches of Florence, has quite a few treasures, like its beautifully restored, spectacular 15 foot tall crucifix by Giotto. It is also the final resting place of Sandro Botticelli, his tomb near the feet of his unrequited love, Simonetta Vespucci, the model for The Birth of Venus and other masterpieces. Visitors from around the world leave love notes addressed to the artist there.

But one of my favorite Botticelli frescoes, St. Augustine in his Study (1480), has been missing for years, its place taken by a mounted, fading color photocopy. Just across the aisle hangs a fresco designed to be the other half of a pair — Domenico Ghirlandaio’s St. Jerome in his Study (1480).  St. Jerome appears to be looking across at St. Augustine. Leaning his head in his hand, he seemed to, while trying to be philosophical, share my frustration looking across at the poor copy.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study (1480)

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study,  1480

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The Monk and the Missing Botticelli: A Florence Story

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botticelli closeup

One of the treasures of the Ognissanti Church in Florence has been missing for years. Ognissanti, known for being the burial place of Sandro Botticelli and Amerigo Vespucci, and for its huge and recently restored Giotto crucifix, is a pilgrimage site for art lovers and romantics. In 1480, the Vespucci family commissioned a pair of frescos that face each other across the main nave:on the left, Saint Jerome at his desk, painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio; on the right, Saint Augustine in his study by Botticelli.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, St. Jerome in his Study, 1480.

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study

Sandro Botticelli, Saint Augustine in his Study, 1480.

Sadly, the Botticelli  is no longer there. In its place is a photograph of the fresco. For years now, whenever I visit Florence, I go to Ognissanti hoping to see the original fresco has returned, only to be disappointed. The print at this point is fading badly, its colors turning a pale blue like an old family Kodachrome.

While I always assumed the fresco was only temporarily removed for restoration, about a month ago I decided to investigate. On a cold February morning, I approached a monk who was huddled in a corner near the entrance, wrapped in his robes, a stocking cap under his hood. I recognized him from my previous visits as the guardian of the church. He appears to be Asian, possibly from the Philippines. Even though we have never talked, I had a fond feeling for him because I believed he was responsible for the lovely recorded religious music that fills the church.

I asked in my weak Italian, “the Botticelli fresco, is it being restored?” The question seemed to rouse him. Over the next ten minutes, I would get an earful from the monk in a mix of Italian and English.

“In restauro? (restoration?) That’s what they said. Two years ago! But it is not being restored at all.”

“What do you mean?”

“It is on tour of Japan to earn money for the state.”

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Florence: Mother of the Renaissance and Instagram

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Instagram of Florence from jen.baxter.com

Instagram of Florence from jen.baxter.com

Florence, Italy is known as the birthplace of the Renaissance, but it also is where the Instagram app was born.  Kevin Systrom, the co-founder of Instagram, was a Stanford junior studying abroad in Florence and, like many before him, the lovely city changed the way he saw the world. While taking a photography course, his teacher took away his expensive SLR camera and insisted he use a cheap plastic one instead. Systrom fell in love with the camera’s square format, the soft focus,“the beauty of vintage photography and also the beauty of imperfection.”

Systrom told Time Magazine the story in April 2012:

When I studied abroad my teacher set what I do know in motion by saying, “Give me that camera of yours.” He took my camera away and gave me a little, plastic camera. I was studying in Florence at the time and he told me that I wasn’t allowed to use my camera for the rest of the class. I had to use this plastic camera with a terrible lens. He said I was too focused on sharpness and “I feel like you’re more artsy than that.” He said, “I want you to use this Holga,” this plastic camera with a plastic lens that had this cult following in the ’80s and ’90. I was blown away by what it could do to photos. My photography teacher was totally right. I was too focused on being meticulous with these really beautiful, complex architectural shots. It helps to see the world through a different lens and that’s what we wanted to do with Instagram. We wanted to give everyone the same feeling of discovering the world around you through a different lens.

The Florence experience also may have saved Systrom from taking the wrong direction later in his career.  In 2006, he chose to work the espresso machine at Palo Alto’s Caffé del Doge instead of taking a job offer by Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. Zuckerberg wanted Systrom to build a photo app for the new social media website, which would certainly have earned him millions of dollars in stock options. Only someone infected with the love of Florence would choose perfecting cappuccinos over riches. [He also turned down a high paying position at Microsoft and later quit a job at Google.]

Living in a cheap beach house in Baja California, he began to write the software that would recreate the effects of his cheap camera.  It was Instagram’s first filter. Many more would follow.  In 2010, Instagram was launched as an Apple app and 25,000 people downloaded it in the first 24 hours. Today, it is estimated that more than 100 million people are using it. In April 2012, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook returned and bought Systrom’s company for $1 billion in cash and stock.

Guess What: Michelangelo’s Grocery List

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One of the myths about Michelangelo is that he was a loner who worked without assistants –even on the huge Sistine Ceiling commission.  Here’s a wonderful item from Michelangelo’s everyday life that disproves the myth — a grocery list he handed to an assistant who couldn’t read.

In fact, as William Wallace reveals in his 1999 biography, Michelangelo had a team of trusted and well-paid Tuscans (he didn’t trust Romans), who worked with him most of his career and were among his closest friends. Some lived with him in his home in Rome.  His life story is more like Michelangelo and his Eleven Dwarfs, than Michelangelo the Lonely Genius.

“Almost half of his workforce had some sort of pet name: the Stick, the Basket, the Little Liar, the Dolt, Oddball, Fats, Thorny, Knobby, Lefty, Stumpy, and Gloomy,’’ Wallace writes. “Because he was his own bookkeeper, Michelangelo recorded their names, number of days worked, and the wage of every employee every week. Having grown up in the stoneworking town of Settignano, Michelangelo was personally acquainted with most of his assistants; he was familiar with their talents and employed their fathers, cousins, and neighbors. Such familiarity was a form of quality control and provided an unusual degree of labor stability.”

[Thanks for the grocery list to Beth Wilson.]

“Looking” at the Mona Lisa

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Sergio Velayos/Flickr

Crowd surrounding the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.
Sergio Velayos/Flickr

I recently became upset (or cranky as my family would say) while reading about a broadcast last week on NPR’s Morning Edition.  It featured a Princeton Sociology professor who tried to determine whether it was quality or chance that made an artwork successful.  [After analyzing the data he collected, he concluded that as long as the work met “a basic standard of quality” it was chance that made art famous.]  But another pointless attempt to quantify art wasn’t what disturbed me, it was the photograph of the crowd around the Mona Lisa accompanying the article.

A scene like this can be seen just about any day at the Louvre, with visitors of different ages and races pushing to get a better view of da Vinci’s most famous work.  Yet, if you examine the photograph closely, can you find anyone actually looking directly at the painting?  One can excuse the guards, whose job is to look the other way (though their poses appear sadly indifferent to the masterpiece in their midst).  But even though some of these tourists have traveled thousands of miles at great expense to reach this room, most are looking at the Mona Lisa through the low-resolution screen of their phones or cameras. [Through a glass darkly, indeed!] Others are looking intensely at the results of a snapshot or showing it to a friend. Some are leaving the scene, satisfied that they have captured their prey and moving on to collect others.  I was excited when I noticed the young man on the right actually looking directly at the Mona Lisa, until I realized he was also listening to music with his headphones.

Of course, the large number of people, a layer of thick bullet-proof glass and two rows of barriers do not encourage quiet contemplation of a great work of art.  But the more I look at the photograph, the more I think that it is our celebrated technology enabled global culture that is the most significant barrier these visitors are facing.  Maybe what I read as the guard on the left’s indifference is actually justifiable disdain.

The most famous punch of the Renaissance

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Designed by Johannes Stradanus "Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Sculpture Garden," 1571 Tapestry, 425 x 455 cm (167 5/16 x 179 1/8 in.) Museo Nazionnale di San Marco, Pisa Soprintendenza alle Gallerie, Florence

Designed by Johannes Stradanus
“Lorenzo de’ Medici in the Sculpture Garden,” 1571 [detail]
Tapestry, 167 5/16 x 179 1/8 in.
Museo Nazionnale di San Marco, Pisa

When he was only fifteen, Michelangelo was invited by the ruler of Florence, Lorenzo de’Medici, il Magnifico himself, to live in his palace and be trained in a school that he had established to foster the next generation of Florentine master sculptors.  The sculptors were taught by an old man, Bertoldi di Giovanni, the last living student of the great Renaissance sculptor, Donatello.  When Michelangelo arrived, the school’s star pupil was Pietro Torrigiani, a talented artist three years older than he was.

According to the Renaissance biographer Vasari, the day Michelangelo first visited Lorenzo de’Medici’s garden he noticed Torrigiani making small clay figures.  Michelangelo thought he could do better, found some clay, and preceded to do just that.  Torrigiani learned quickly that he was now facing a formidable rival.  Soon his fellow students were studying the new arrival’s drawings, not his.  At the dinners in the Medici Palace, he couldn’t help noticing that Michelangelo was often found sitting next to Lorenzo de’Medici himself — closer than il Magnifico’s own children.

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