1.
1460s in architecture
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1460 Palazzo Medici in Florence, designed by Michelozzo, is completed. Porto Magna in Venetian Arsenal, perhaps built by Antonio Gambello from a design by Jacopo Bellini is constructed,1462 - Reconstruction of Basilica of SantAndrea, Mantua in Lombardy by Leon Battista Alberti begins. 1463-7 - Fatih Mosque, Istanbul, designed by Atik Sinan, is constructed,1464 - Neemrana fort in India is begun. 1466 - Ockwells Manor in Berkshire, England, is completed, 1466-7 - Neubrügg covered wooden bridge over the Aare between Bern and Kirchlindach is erected. 1468 - Rebuilding of the Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, begun by Luciano Laurana,1469 - Kasımiye Medrese in Mardin, Turkey, begun before 1407, is completed. 1461, November 26 - Severe earthquake in LAquila, C.1464 - Filarete completes his Libro architettonico, a treatise on architecture and the ideal city of Sforzinda
2.
15th century in literature
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This article presents lists of the literary events and publications in the 15th century. See also, 15th century in poetry, 14th century in literature, 16th century in literature,1403 – A guild of stationers is founded in the City of London. As the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, it continues to be a Livery Company in the 21st century, 1403–08 – The Yongle Encyclopedia is written in China. 1408–11 – An Leabhar Breac is probably compiled by Murchadh Ó Cuindlis at Duniry in Ireland, C.1410 – John, Duke of Berry, commissions the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, illustrated by the Limbourg brothers between c.1412 and 1416. 1424 – The first French royal library is transferred by the English regent of France, John of Lancaster, 1st Duke of Bedford,1425 – At about this date the first Guildhall Library is established in the City of London under the will of Richard Whittington. 1434 – Japanese Noh actor and playwright Zeami Motokiyo is exiled to Sado Island by the Shogun,1443 – King Sejong the Great establishes Hangul as the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is first described in the Hunminjeongeum published on 9 October 14461444,15 June – Cosimo de Medici founds the Laurentian Library in Florence,1448 – Pope Nicholas V founds the Vatican Library in Rome. 1450 – Johannes Gutenberg has set up his movable type printing press as an operation in Mainz by this date. 14511 August – A manuscript of Dantes Divine Comedy is sold in London,1452 – Completion of the Malatestiana Library in Cesena, the first European public library, in the sense of belonging to the commune and open to all citizens. 1453 – Pageant of Coriolan staged in the piazza of Milan Cathedral,145523 February – Johannes Gutenberg completes printing of the Gutenberg Bible in Mainz, the first major book printed with movable type in the West, using a textualis blackletter typeface. 5 June – French poet François Villon is implicated in a murder, the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi in Persia is known to be in existence. 1460 – From about this date, Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, begins to form the Bibliotheca Corviniana,1462,8 November – First known sentence written in the Albanian language, a Formula e pagëzimit by Archbishop Pal Engjëlli. Soon after this he prints the first known Biblia pauperum,1463,5 January – François Villon is reprieved from hanging in Paris but never heard of again. 146831 May – The Byzantine scholar Cardinal Basilios Bessarion donates his library to the Republic of Venice, the printers Johann and Wendelin of Speyer settle in Venice, their first book published here, Ciceros Epistolae ad familiares, appears in 1469. 1470 Johann Heynlin prints the first book in Paris, the Epistolae Gasparini of Gasparinus de Bergamo, nicolas Jensons edition of Eusebius, published in Venice, is the first book to use a roman type based on the principles of typography rather than manuscript. 1473 First book printed in Hungary, Chronica Hungarorum, the Buda Chronicle, First known printing in Poland, Almanach cracoviense ad annum 1474, a wall calendar. 1474 – First book printed in Spain, Obres e trobes en lahors de la Verge María, recuyell of the Historyes of Troye is the first book to be printed in English, by William Caxton in Bruges. Rashis commentary on the Torah is the first dated book to be printed in Hebrew,147630 January – Constantine Lascariss Erotemata is the first book to be printed entirely in Greek
3.
Andrea Mantegna
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Andrea Mantegna was an Italian painter, a student of Roman archeology, and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective and his flinty, metallic landscapes and somewhat stony figures give evidence of a fundamentally sculptural approach to painting. He also led a workshop that was the producer of prints in Venice before 1500. Mantegna was born in Isola di Carturo, Republic of Venice close to Padua, second son of a carpenter, at the age of eleven he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter. Squarcione, whose vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art. All the while, he continued undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available, as many as 137 painters and pictorial students passed through Squarciones school, which had been established towards 1440 and which became famous all over Italy. Padua was attractive for artists coming not only from Veneto but also from Tuscany, such as Paolo Uccello, Filippo Lippi, Mantegnas early career was shaped indeed by impressions of Florentine works. At the time, Mantegna was said to be a favorite pupil, Squarcione taught him Latin and instructed him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. The master also preferred forced perspective, the results of which may account for some of Mantegnas later innovations. However, at the age of seventeen, Mantegna separated himself from Squarcione and he later claimed that Squarcione had profited from his work without paying the rights. His first work, now lost, was an altarpiece for the church of Santa Sofia in 1448. After a series of coincidences, Mantegna finished most of the work alone, though Ansuino and this series was almost entirely lost in the 1944 allied bombings of Padua. The most dramatic work of the cycle was the work set in the worms-eye view perspective. The sketch of the St. Stephen fresco survived and is the earliest known preliminary sketch which still exists to compare to the corresponding fresco, the drawing shows proof that nude figures were used in the conception of works during the Early Renaissance. In the preliminary sketch, the perspective is less developed and closer to a more average viewpoint however, despite the authentic look of the monument, it is not a copy of any known Roman structure. Luke and other saints for the church of S. Giustina, as the young artist progressed in his work, he came under the influence of Jacopo Bellini, father of the celebrated painters Giovanni Bellini and Gentile Bellini, and of a daughter Nicolosia. In 1453 Jacopo consented to a marriage between Nicolosia and Mantegna, trained as he had been in the study of marbles and the severity of the antique, Mantegna openly avowed that he considered ancient art superior to nature as being more eclectic in form. As a result, the painter exercised precision in outline, privileging the figure, overall, Mantegnas work thus tended towards rigidity, demonstrating an austere wholeness rather than graceful sensitivity of expression
4.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
5.
Camera degli Sposi
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The Camera degli Sposi, sometimes known as the Camera picta, is a room frescoed with illusionistic paintings by Andrea Mantegna in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy. It was painted between 1465 and 1474 and commissioned by Ludovico III Gonzaga, and is notable for the use of trompe loeil details, then he moved on to the ‘Court scene’ where he used a mysterious oily tempera dry laid out on the surface. The east and south walls followed, with the fresco technique representing heavy curtains. Finally the ‘Meeting scene’ on the west wall was painted, always ‘a fresco’, the Court Scene on the north wall shows Ludovico Gonzaga, dressed informally, with his wife Barbara of Brandenburg. They are seated with their relatives, while a group of courtiers fill the rest of the wall, the figures are interacting in an illusionistically expanded space. On the west wall is the Meeting scene and this fresco shows Ludovico in official robes in an ideal meeting with his son, Cardinal Francesco Gonzaga, the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III and Christian I of Denmark. The commission is far from being explained by scholars, the mature and strongly-built figure of Francesco though, doesn’t seem to match with his age in 1461, which was only 17. For this reason, these frescos could refer to a visit of Cardinal Francesco to Mantua. Mantegnas playful ceiling presents an oculus that illusionistically opens into a blue sky and this was one of the earliest di sotto in sù ceiling paintings. Mantua tourist guide Mantua tourist guide
6.
Ducal palace, Mantua
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The buildings are connected by corridors and galleries and are enriched by inner courts and wide gardens. The complex includes some 500 rooms and occupies an area of c.34,000 m², although most famous for Mantegnas frescos in the Camera degli Sposi, they have many other very significant architectural and painted elements. The Gonzaga family lived in the palace from 1328 to 1707, subsequently, the buildings saw a sharp decline, which was halted in the 20th century with a continuing process of restoration and the designation of the area as museum. In 1998, a room was discovered by Palace scholars. The room is thought to have used for performances of Monteverdis music in the late 16th century. The entrance of the palace is from Piazza Sordello, onto which the most ancient buildings, the Palazzo del Capitano and they formed the original nucleus of the so-called Corte Vecchia. The Palazzo del Capitano was built in the late 13th century by the Captain of the People Guido Buonacolsi. Initially built on two floors and separated from the Magna Domus by an alley, in the early 14th century it received a floor and was united to the Magna Domus by a large façade with a portico. The additional floor consists of a hall, known as Hall of the Weapon Room of Hall of Diet. His commissioner, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, is portrayed in the paintings, the frescoes were rediscovered and restored in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1519 Isabella dEste moved her residence from the Castle of St. George to this sector of the Gonzaga palace. Isabellas apartment included two wings now divided by the entrance to the Cortile dOnore, another hall in the same wing is the Camera Granda or Scalcheria, frescoed in 1522 by the Mantuan artist Lorenzo Leonbruno. Later Guglielmo X Gonzaga, in the 16th century, transformed the rooms of the Corte Vecchia creating the Refectory, facing the Hanging Garden, at the same time was created the Appartamento degli Arazzi, comprising four halls. Three of the latter have tapestries, executed in the Flanders on cartoons by Raphael and they were bought at Brussels by Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga in the early 16th century to decorate what at the time was called the Green Apartment. After decorating the Palatine church of St. Barbara and a period in the Ducal Palaces stores, a further restoration was carried on during the Napoleonic Wars in the Sala dello Zodiaco, also known as Napoleon Is Hall, after the French emperor slept there. The Castle of St. George was built from 1395 and finished in 1406 under commission by Francesco I Gonzaga, designed by Bartolino da Novara and it has as square plan with four corner towers, surrounded by a ditch with three entrances, each one with a drawbridge. The painters decoration creates a space, as if the chamber was a loggia with three openings facing country landscapes among arcades and curtains. The painted scenes portrays members of the Gonzaga family, the Domus Nova was originally designed by Luca Fancelli in 1480–84
7.
Filippo Lippi
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Fra Filippo Lippi, O. Carm. also called Lippo Lippi, was an Italian painter of the Quattrocento. Lippi was born in Florence in1406 to Tommaso, a butcher, 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 and he was 8 years old when he left for the convent and started his education there. In 1420 he was admitted to the community of Carmelite friars of the Priory of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in Florence, taking vows in the Order the following year. He was ordained as a priest in approximately 1425, and remained in residence of that priory until 1432, georgio Vasari, the first art historian of the renaissance, writes that Lippi was inspired to become a painter by watching Masaccio at work in the Carmine church. Lippis early work, notably the Tarquinia Madonna show that influence from Masaccio, in his Lives of the Artists, Vasari says, Instead of studying, he spent all his time scrawling pictures on his own books and those of others. Due to his interest, the decided to give him the opportunity to learn painting. Lippi then went on to visit to Ancona and Naples, where he was captured by Barbary pirates and his skill in portrait-sketching helped to eventually release him. Louis Gillet, writing for the Catholic Encyclopedia, considers this account assuredly nothing, with his return to Florence in 1432 is paintings had became popular, warranting the support of the Medici family, who commissioned of The Annunciation and the Seven Saints. Cosimo de Medici had to him up in order to compel him to work. His escapades threw him into financial difficulties from which he did not hesitate to extricate himself by forgery and his life included many similar tales of lawsuits, complaints, broken promises and scandal. In 1441 Lippi painted an altarpiece for the nuns of S. Ambrogio which is now a prominent attraction in the Academy of Florence and it represents the coronation of the Virgin among angels and saints, including many Bernardine monks. In 1452 he was appointed chaplain to the nuns at the Monastery of St. Mary Magdalene in Florence, in June 1456 Fra Filippo is recorded as living in Prato to paint frescoes in the choir of the cathedral. Lippi asked that she might be permitted to sit for the figure of the Madonna, 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, Vasari accounts for this relationship in his publication of The Lives, which was published soon after. In 1457 he was appointed commendatory Rector of S. Quirico in Legania, despite these profits, Lippi struggled to escape poverty throughout his life. The close of Lippis life was spent at Spoleto, where he had commissioned to paint scenes from the life of the Virgin for the apse of the cathedral. In the semidome of the apse is the Christ Crowning the Madonna, with angels, sibyls and this series, which is not wholly equal to the one at Prato, was completed by one of his assistants, his fellow Carmelite, Fra Diamante, after Lippis death
8.
Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist
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The Stories of St. Stephen and St. John the Baptist is a fresco cycle by the Italian Renaissance painter Filippo Lippi and his assistants, executed between 1452 and 1465. It is located in the Great Chapel of the Cathedral of Prato, geminiano Inghirami, the preposto of the Cathedral of Prato, then capitular church, was at the time an influential man in culture and politics, with important friendships in Rome and Florence. He himself a humanist, he often commissioned artworks to Renaissance artists, the city decided to decorate the Great Chapel in the church in 1440, allocating a budget of 1200 gold florins for the work. Inghirami asked archbishop Antonino Pierozzi to call Fra Angelico, however, the aging friar, perhaps due to the extent of the work or because he was already committed to other works, declined the offer. Next was Fra Filippo Lippi, who accepted and established himself in Prato in 1452, collaborators he brought with him included Fra Diamante, who had been his companion in noviciate. Her name was Lucrezia Buti, after acting as his model for some paintings, the two lived together in a house near the citys Duomo. Once the scandal broke out, Lippi and Buti fled from the city and it was however Pope Pius II that granted them the dispensation allowing them to marry. The frescoes were finished in 1465 under the supervision of the new preposto Carlo di Cosimo de Medici, the following year Lippi moved to Spoleto, with his son Filippino and his apprentice Sandro Botticelli, where he died four years later. In October 1993 the paintings were vandalized with a pen by Pietro Cannata who had already performed vandalistic acts on other works of art among which the David of Michelangelo in 1991. They were restored starting from 2001, the chapel being reopened to public in 2007, the cycle occupies the two lateral walls and the end wall of the Cappella Maggiore, covering a surface of 400 m2 in total. At the left are the Stories of St. Stephen, the saint of the church and patron saint of Prato, at the right are the Stories of St. John the Baptist. The end wall, at the side of the glass window are two saints in painted niches and, below, bent around the corners, are the martyrdoms of St. Stephen. At the top, in the pendentives of the cross-vaults, are the four Evangelists, the two saints stories are to be read from the top to the bottom, and mirror each other on the opposite walls. The Stories of St. Stephen include, Kidnapping of Newborn St. Stephen, at the right is the meeting between the young St. Stephen and Bishop Julian, who, according to the legend, took care of him during his adolescence. It shows the saint leaving Julian to being his mission in Cilicia, stoning of St. Stephen Funeral of St. Stephen. Set in a Palaeo-Christian basilica, it shows numerous characters taking part in St. Stephens funeral. They include portrait of true people Lippis time, such as a red-dressed Pope Pius II, Carlo di Cosimo de Medici behind him, and, next to them, the Joyous Friar — the Story of Fra Filippo Lippi. Disposition as a tool, Fra Fillipo, Mantegna, Piero della Francesca
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Prato Cathedral
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It is dedicated to Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. It is one of the most ancient churches in the city and it was built in several successive stages in the Romanesque style. The church contains a number of works of art, in particular fine sculpture. The church of Saint Stephen was built in a meadow after an appearance of the Virgin Mary near the village of Borgo al Cornio. The first building was a parish church. Which the earliest document dates from AD994, the expansion of the church began in the 15th century and transformed the modest building into one of the most lovely Gothic-Romanesque buildings in Tuscany. The cathedral is documented as early as the 10th century as the Pieve di Santo Stefano, located in the Borgo al Cornio, the first settlement in Prato. The current structure dates from the Romanesque period of the 12th century, the upper stage of the bell tower was constructed in 1356. During the 14th century the cathedral acquired an important relic, the Sacra Cintola or Belt of the Holy Virgin. This brought about the enlargement of the edifice by the addition of a transept which is attributed to Giovanni Pisano, the Cintola Chapel was also built at this time to house the relic. In the early 15th century, a new façade or west front was added in the International Gothic style, in the space between the two was created a narthex or corridor leading to the external pulpit, built by Michelozzo and decorated by Donatello between 1428 and 1438. The seven original reliefs of the parapet were removed from the pulpit in 1967, the façade is divided into three sections by shallow buttresses or pilasters. The façade has a central portal with a lintelled doorway surmounted by a Gothic arch. In the lunette over the door is a terracotta sculpture by Andrea della Robbia depicting the Madonna with Saints Stephen. Below the central gable, a clock is set into the façade. It is surrounded by segments of the marble and forms part of the harmonious design. The frescoes of the chapel are also of the 15th century. Internally, the church, built on a Latin cross ground plan, has a nave and they are separated by elegant columns of green serpentine, the capitals being attributed to Guidetto
10.
Piero della Francesca
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Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. As testified by Giorgio Vasari in his Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its humanism, its use of geometric forms. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo. He was most probably apprenticed to the local painter Antonio di Giovanni dAnghiari, because in documents about payments it is noted that he was working with Antonio in 1432 and May 1438. Besides, he took notice of the work of some of the Sienese artists active in San Sepolcro during his youth. In 1439 Piero received, together with Domenico Veneziano, payments for his work on frescoes for the church of SantEgidio in Florence, in Florence he must have met leading masters like Fra Angelico, Luca della Robbia, Donatello and Brunelleschi. The classicism of Masaccios frescoes and his figures in the Santa Maria del Carmine were for him an important source of inspiration. Dating of Pieros undocumented work is difficult because his style does not seem to have developed over the years, in 1442 he was listed as eligible for the City Council of San Sepolcro. Three years later, he received the commission for the Madonna della Misericordia altarpiece for the church of the Misericordia in Sansepolcro, in 1449 he executed several frescoes in the Castello Estense and the church of SantAndrea of Ferrara, also lost. His influence was strong in the later Ferrarese allegorical works of Cosimo Tura. Two years later he was in Rimini, working for the condottiero Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, in this sojourn he executed in 1451 the famous fresco of St. Sigismund and Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiano, as well as Sigismondos portrait. Thereafter Piero was active in Ancona, Pesaro and Bologna, in 1454 he signed a contract for the Polyptych of Saint Augustine in the church of SantAgostino in Sansepolcro. The central panel of this polyptic is lost and the four panels of the wings, a few years later, summoned by Pope Nicholas V, he moved to Rome, here he executed frescoes in the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, of which only fragments remain. Two years later he was again in the Papal capital, for frescoes in Vatican Palace which have also been destroyed, the Baptism of Christ, in The National Gallery in London, was executed around 1460 for the high altar of the church of the Priory of S. Other notable works of Piero della Francescas maturity are the frescoes of the Resurrection of Christ in Sansepolcro, in 1452, Piero della Francesca was called to Arezzo to replace Bicci di Lorenzo in painting the frescoes of the basilica of San Francesco. The work was finished before 1466, probably between 1452 and 1456, the cycle of frescoes, depicting the Legend of the True Cross, is generally considered among his masterworks and those of Renaissance painting in general. The story in these frescoes derives from medieval sources as to how timber relics of the True Cross came to be found
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The History of the True Cross
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The History of the True Cross or The Legend of the True Cross is a sequence of frescoes painted by Piero della Francesca in the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo. It is his largest work, and generally considered one of his finest, and this work demonstrates Piero’s advanced knowledge of perspective and colour, his geometric orderliness and skill in pictorial construction. The main episodes depicted are, Death of Adam, the Queen of Sheba in Adoration of the Wood and The Meeting of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba. According to the legend, the Queen of Sheba worshiped the beams made from the tree, and informed Solomon that the Saviour would hang from that tree and this caused Solomon to hew it down and bury it, until it was found by the Romans. Constantines Dream Emperor Constantine the Great, before the battle of Milvian Bridge, is awakened by an angel who shows him the cross in heaven, with the cross on his shield, he slew the enemy, and later converted to Christianity. Discovery and Proof of the True Cross, helena, Constantines mother, finds the cross in Jerusalem. It was not easy to get information and when the queen had called them and demanded them the place where our Lord Jesus Christ had been crucified, then commanded she to burn them all or cast them into a dry pit for seven days and there torment them with hunger. The Jew is shown in one fresco being pulled from the pit by a rope, whereupon he confessed that Jesus was his lord, the proof of the cross was that it was used to resurrect a dead man. The cross played a role in battles during the war between the Eastern Roman Empire and the Sassanid Empire, the cycle ends with a depiction of the Annunciation, not strictly part of the Legend of the True Cross but probably included by Piero for its universal meaning. Dating of the frescoes is uncertain, but they are believed to date from after 1447 and it would have been finished around 1466. Most of the choir was painted in the early- to mid-1450s, although the design of the frescoes is evidently Pieros, he seems to have delegated parts of the painting to assistants, as was usual. The hand of Giovanni da Piamonte, in particular, can be recognised in some of the frescoes, the Dictionary of Art, Grove Belton, R. & Kersten, B. Vision and Visions in Piero della Francesca’s Legend of the True Cross, translated into English prose by Lucius Hudson Holt. All images in series and interactive model Institute for Advanced Studies web site, the Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle on YouTube, here and here. Legend of the True Cross fresco cycle at art-threads
12.
San Francesco, Arezzo
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The Basilica of San Francesco is a late Medieval church in Arezzo, Tuscany, Italy, dedicated to St Francis of Assisi. It is especially renowned for housing in the chancel the fresco cycle Legends of the True Cross by Piero della Francesca, San Francesco is the second church built by the Franciscans in Arezzo, an earlier church being located outside the city walls and destroyed during the Occupation. The building work on San Francesco was begun around 1290, the decoration of its façade was never realised. The interior presents as a church of simple unadorned design with a wide single nave, flanked on the left side by some chapels and, on the right side. The tall groin-vaulted chancel is of square plan, beneath the church is a smaller Chiesa inferiore or Lower Church as at Assisi, with a nave and two aisles, now used as exhibition hall. At the chancel entrance is suspended a very large painted crucifix by one Master of San Francesco. It also contains a Maesta or Madonna in Majesty by Guido da Siena, the walls and particularly the niches on the right have some fresco decoration, which dates in part to the 14th century. The Cappella Maggiore, houses one of the masterworks of Italian Early Renaissance, the painting of the chancel began with a commission by the Aretine family Bicci, who called the painter Bicci di Lorenzo to paint the large cross-vault. In 1452, at Biccis death, only the four Evangelists had been painted in the vault, as well as the arch with the Last Judgement. Piero della Francesca was called in to complete the work, according to a document, he did so in two stages, the works halted during 1458-1459, and completed in 1466. The frescoes occupy three levels on the walls and the eastern wall, surrounding a large window. The theme of the cycle is the Golden Legend by Jacopo da Varagine. Piero della Francesca did not follow an order, preferring to concentrate himself in the creation of symmetrical correspondences between the various scenes. Louis, St. Peter, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose, in addition, there is a fine painting of St Mary Magdalene, also by Piero della Francesca, by the door of the Sacristy. Piero della Francesca True Cross The History of the True Cross St. Helen Arezzo Benedetto Sinigardi
13.
Francesco del Cossa
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Francesco del Cossa was an Italian Renaissance painter of the School of Ferrara. The son of a stonemason in Ferrara, little is known about his early works, Cossa is best known for his frescoes. One of his followers was Leonardo Scaletti of Faenza, in conjunction with Cosimo Tura, Cossa is now known for fresco decoration of the summer pleasure villa/palazzo known as the Palazzo Schifanoia, located just outside the city gates. Together, they painted a series of the elaborate allegories around the themes of zodiacal signs and these were only partially restored in the 20th century, and there are three that are reasonably assigned to Cossa. Of these, one of the most remarkable images is the horde of naked toddlers in the Allegory of May – Triumph of Apollo, apparently a sign of springtimes prolific blossoming, the crowded rows of babies mass like a phalanx of infantile Rockettes. The Allegory of April has a depiction of the trio of Graces, sandro Botticellis version in Primavera dates from 1482. See the 1501 version of the Three Graces, assuming the date of death of Cossa is correct, this one must have been completed prior to the others. Unhappy that he had paid by the square foot for his work for Duke Borso and complaining he was being paid the same as the worst dauber in Ferrara. In Bologna he obtained many commissions under the patronage of the Bentivoglio family and he executed stained glass windows in Bologna, the best of which is a circular window, in the church of San Giovanni in Monte, representing St. John in Patmos. In the National Gallery of London there is a picture by him representing St. Vincent Ferrer, there is a fine profile portrait at Locko Park near Derby, said to represent Duke Ercole I of Ferrara. In the Dresden collection there is also an Annunciation that has, however, del Cossa features as one of the two protagonists in Ali Smiths novel How to Be Both, short-listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize. Encyclopedia of Artists, volume 2, edited by William H. T. Vaughan, ISBN 0-19-521572-9,2000 Web Gallery of Art
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Muses
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The Muses are the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts in Greek mythology. They were considered the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, lyric songs and they were later adopted by the Romans as a part of their pantheon. In current English usage, muse can refer in general to a person who inspires an artist, writer, the earliest known records of the Nine Muses are from Boeotia, the homeland of Hesiod. Some ancient authorities thought that the Nine Muses were of Thracian origin, there, a tradition persisted that the Muses had once been three in number. They were again called Melete or Practice, Mneme or Memory, three ancient Muses were also reported in Plutarchs Quaestiones Convivales. According to Pausanias in the second century AD, there were three original Muses, worshiped on Mount Helicon in Boeotia, Aoidḗ, Melétē, and Mnḗmē. Together, these three form the picture of the preconditions of poetic art in cult practice. In Delphi three Muses were worshiped as well, but with other names, Nḗtē, Mésē, and Hýpatē, alternatively they later were called Kēphisṓ, Apollōnís, and Borysthenís, which names characterize them as daughters of Apollo. In later tradition, a set of four Muses were recognized, Thelxinóē, Aoidḗ Archē, one of the people frequently associated with the Muses was Pierus. By some he was called the father of a total of seven Muses, called Neilṓ, Tritṓnē, Asōpṓ, Heptápora, Achelōís, Tipoplṓ, and Rhodía. According to Hesiods Theogony, they were daughters of Zeus, the second king of the gods. For Alcman and Mimnermus, they were even more primordial, springing from the deities, Uranus. Sometimes the Muses are referred to as water nymphs, associated with the springs of Helicon and it was said that the winged horse Pegasus touched his hooves to the ground on Helicon, causing four sacred springs to burst forth, from which the muses were born. Athena later tamed the horse and presented him to the muses, classical writers set Apollo as their leader, Apollon Mousagetēs. In one myth, the Muses judged a contest between Apollo and Marsyas and they also gathered the pieces of the dead body of Orpheus, son of Calliope, and buried them. In a later myth, Thamyris challenged them to a singing contest and they won and punished Thamyris by blinding him and robbing him of his singing ability. He thus challenged the Muses to a match, resulting in his daughters, Pausanias records a tradition of two generations of Muses, the first are the daughters of Uranus and Gaia, the second of Zeus and Mnemosyne. Another, rarer genealogy is that they are daughters of Harmonia, some Greek writers give the names of the nine Muses as Kallichore, Helike, Eunike, Thelxinoë, Terpsichore, Euterpe, Eukelade, Dia, and Enope
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Shen Zhou
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Shen Zhou, courtesy name Qinan and Shitian, was a Chinese painter in the Ming dynasty. Shen Zhou was born into a family in Xiangcheng, near the thriving city of Suzhou, in the Jiangsu province. After the collapse of the Yuan and the emergence of the new Ming dynasty, upon the death of his father, Shen Heng-chi, Shen Zhou decided to forgo official examinations and devote his life to the care of his widowed mother, Chang Su-wan. It is probable that he never intended to become an official and he thus renounced the life of official service while still preserving his reputation in an enduring act of filial piety. In this way, he was able to live a life, free of responsibility, and devote his time to artwork, socializing. Shen Zhou lived at a point in the history of Chinese painting. As Hongwu was notorious for his attempts to marginalize and persecute the scholar class, the dominant style of the Ming court painters was called the Zhe School. However, following the ascension of the Yongle emperor, the capital was moved from Nanjing to Beijing, putting a distance between imperial influence and the city of Suzhou. These new conditions led to the rise of the Wu School of painting, Shen Zhou’s scholarly upbringing and artistic training had instilled in him a reverence for Chinas historical tradition that influenced both his life and his art from an early age. He is most famous for his landscapes and for his boneless renderings of flowers, however, he did not always paint within strict boundaries. His inherited prosperity afforded him the luxury of painting independently of patrons, Shen possessed a large collection of paintings from the late Yuan and early Ming, which he and his scholar-painter colleagues used as models in forging the revivalist approach of the Wu style. He frequently combined experimental elements with the rigid styles of the Yuan masters. Much of his work was done in collaboration with others, combining painting, poetry and it was upon these ideals that his Wu School was founded. For Wu painters, painting was a meditation, rather than an occupation, Shen Zhou never coveted his paintings, although they were frequently coveted and imitated by others. Through Shen Zhous eyes, a painting was not a commodity and this artist should not be confused with another Chinese artist named Shen Zhou who lived 1848-1903. Parting at the Shore, Chinese Painting of the Early and Middle Ming Dynasty, the Field of Stones, A Study of the Art of Shen Chou. Baltimore, Port City Press,1962, xvi, “Shen Chou and the Scholarly Tradition. ”The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol.24, No.1 Oriental Aesthetics, 45-52. Shen Chou’s Collection of Early Ming Paintings and the Origins of the Wu School’s Eclectic Revivalism, four Great Masters of the Ming Dynasty, Shen Zhou
16.
Giovanni Bellini
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Giovanni Bellini was an Italian Renaissance painter, probably the best known of the Bellini family of Venetian painters. His father was Jacopo Bellini, his brother was Gentile Bellini and he is considered to have revolutionized Venetian painting, moving it towards a more sensuous and colouristic style. Through the use of clear, slow-drying oil paints, Giovanni created deep, rich tints and his sumptuous coloring and fluent, atmospheric landscapes had a great effect on the Venetian painting school, especially on his pupils Giorgione and Titian. Giovanni Bellini was born in Venice and he was brought up in his fathers house, and always lived and worked in the closest fraternal relation with his brother Gentile. Up until the age of nearly thirty we find in his work a depth of religious feeling and his paintings from the early period are all executed in the old tempera method, the scene is softened by a new and beautiful effect of romantic sunrise color. Giovannis early works have often been linked both compositionally and stylistically to those of his brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna, none of the masters works of this kind, whether painted for the various schools or confraternities or for the ducal palace, have survived. As is the case with a number of his brother, Gentiles public works of the period, the still more famous altar-piece painted in tempera for a chapel in the church of S. Giovanni e Paolo, where it perished along with Titians Peter Martyr, after 1479–1480 much of Giovannis time and energy must also have been taken up by his duties as conservator of the paintings in the great hall of the Doges Palace. Of the other, the class of his work, including both altar-pieces with many figures and simple Madonnas, a considerable number have fortunately been preserved. The old intensity of pathetic and devout feeling gradually fades away and gives place to a noble, if more worldly, serenity, the full splendour of Venetian color invests alike the figures, their architectural framework, the landscape and the sky. An interval of years, no doubt chiefly occupied with work in the Hall of the Great Council, seems to separate the San Giobbe Altarpiece. Formally, the works are similar, so a comparison between serves to illustrate the shift in Bellinis work over the last decade of the 15th century. Both pictures are of the Holy Conversation type, both show the Madonna seated on a throne, between classicizing columns. Both place the holy figures beneath a golden mosaicked half dome that recalls the Byzantine architecture in the basilica of St. Mark. Stylistically, the lighting in the San Zaccaria piece has become so soft, Giovannis use of the oil medium had matured, and the holy figures seem to be swathed in a still, rarefied air. The San Zaccaria is considered perhaps the most beautiful and imposing of all Giovannis altarpieces, and is dated 1505, the last ten or twelve years of the masters life saw him besieged with more commissions than he could well complete. In 1505 she endeavoured through Cardinal Bembo to obtain from him another picture, what the subject of this piece was, or whether it was actually delivered, we do not know. In 1513 Giovannis position as master in charge of the paintings in the Hall of the Great Council was threatened by one of his former pupils
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Presentation at the Temple (Bellini)
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The Presentation at the Temple is a painting of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple by the Italian master Giovanni Bellini, dating to c. It is housed in the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, in Venice, the commission of the two works is unknown, as well as if the figures, as is sometimes suggested, portrayed members of the Mantegna and Bellini families. The main characters are nearly the same as those in Mantegnas work, in the front is St. Joseph, which, according to some scholars, would be a portrait of Bellinis father, Jacopo. On the sides the painter added two further figures, which make the picture rather crowded, Bellini also replaced Mantegnas bronze frame with a parapet, making the characters nearer to the observer, and omitted their haloes
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Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia
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The Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia is an art collection and museum in Venice, Italy. It also holds prized drawings by Giovanni Bellini, Raphael, Paolo Veronese, Titian, the palazzo was renovated from its original state before the 1960s. From 1961–1963, Carlo Scarpa restored parts of the building, while changing others, Scarpa created a series of islands, and allowed the water to come into the lobby space. He also restored the idea of a garden behind the building. Later additions are by Mario Botta, the palace also houses the Fondazione Querini Stampalia, which sponsors a prominent library and contemporary art expositions. Among the artists from before the 19th century are the artists and paintings
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Transfiguration of Christ (Bellini)
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Transfiguration of Christ is the subject of two paintings by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, who finished them, respectively, in 1454-1460 and 1480. The earlier version is on display in the Museo Correr of Venice, for a long time this earlier work attributed to Mantegna, as attested by the spurious initials in the lower right corner. It shows the Gospels episode of Mount Tabor, with Elijah and Moses flanking Christ, below them are the disciples Peter, James and this version portrays again Christ in the moment in which he reveals his divine nature to his disciples, but with substantial differences. A comparison with the earlier Transfiguration shows Bellinis subsequent abandon of any Gothic painting heritage and this picture shows a more relaxed style, in which the figures are freely inserted within a warmer and more natural atmosphere. The work is signed IOANNES BELLINUS on a small chart hanging from the fence in the foreground, the leaves of the tree on the right, as well as the faces of James and Peter, are from a later restoration
20.
Museo Correr
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The Museo Correr is a museum in Venice, northern Italy. Marks Square, Venice, it is one of the 11 civic museums run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia, the museum extends along the southside of the square on the upper floors of the Procuratorie Nuove. With its rich and varied collections, the Museo Correr covers both the art and history of Venice, the Museo Correr originated with the collection bequeathed to the city of Venice in 1830 by Teodoro Correr. Upon his death, all material was donated to the city. The nobleman also left the city funds to be used in conserving and extending the collections, several collections ended up being bought by foreigners, but in the early decades of the 19th century there were still many pieces on the market. An insatiable collector, Correr, from his youth bought all sorts of objects, Correr would reveal himself to have a sharp eye, putting together a collection that was undoubtedly very original. He was explicit about his intention that the collections should be available to the public. Subsequent bequests, donations and acquisitions would be added to the collection, in 1887, the enlarged collection was moved from Palazzo Correr to the nearby Fondaco dei Turchi, where it was laid out in a new display. However, in 1922, the Museo Correr was moved again to its present location in Piazza San Marco, in the 1990s, the entire civic museums system was redesigned, all under a single municipal administration. In 1996, thanks to an agreement with the Italian Ministry of Culture, the St. Finally, in March 2008, the building that encloses the far end of the Piazza San Marco is known as the Napoleonic Wing. The design and early building works date from the period when Venice was part of the Kingdom of Italy, when the city came under Napoleonic rule, the French emperor and his court realized that public representation of imperial power posed certain logistical and political problems. Having rejected the Doges Palace because of its complex past, these turned to the Procuratie Nuove, the former residence of the Procuratore di San Marco, along the southern edge of the Square. From 1586 to 1596, works were complete on the ten arcades that extended beyond Sansovinos Library, and then, around 1640, and this was the building which, by January 1807, Napoleon decreed should become the Imperial Palace. All the interiors within the Procuratie Nuove were changed with the re-decoration reflecting the taste for Neoclassicism, marks Basilica – which was designed by Giuseppe Soli and Lorenzo Santi and incorporated to the palace. When Venice moved under Austrian dominion in 1814, the served as the House of Habsburg. In 1866, after Venice became part of unified Italy, the passed to the House of Savoy. In 1919, Victor Emmanuel III, king of Italy, handed it over to the State for use by the Ministry of Education. Hence, in 1920, part of the building was used to house the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, an antechamber leads into the Napoleonic Gallery which runs across the end of the Piazza San Marco
21.
Madonna del Parto
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A Madonna del Parto is an iconic depiction of the Virgin Mary shown as pregnant, which was developed in Italy, mainly in Tuscany in the 14th century. Examples include works by Taddeo Gaddi, Bernardo Daddi and Nardo di Cione, the Madonna was portrayed standing, alone, often with a closed book on her belly, an allusion to the Incarnate Word. The works were associated with the devotions of pregnant women, praying for a safe delivery, here the Virgin wears the Girdle of Thomas, a belt of knotted cloth cord that was a relic held in Prato Cathedral, which many depictions wear. The most famous work showing this subject is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca. It is housed in the Museo della Madonna del Parto of Monterchi, Tuscany, Piero della Francesca finished it in seven days, using first-rate colors, including a large extent of blu oltremare obtained by lapis lazuli imported from Afghanistan by the Republic of Venice. The fresco was at one time located in Santa Maria di Momentana, the work was attributed to Piero della Francesca only in 1889. Its dating has been the subject of debate, ranging from 1450 to 1475, the 16th century artist and writer Giorgio Vasari wrote that it was completed in 1459, when Piero della Francesca was in Sansepolcro for his mothers death. The fresco also plays an important role in Richard Hayers novel Visus, in Andrei Tarkovskys film Nostalghia, Piero della Francescas Madonna has neither books nor royal attributes as in most predecessors of the image, nor does she wear the girdle. She is portrayed with a hand against her side to support her prominent belly and she is flanked by two angels, who are holding open the curtains of a pavilion decorated with pomegranates, a symbol of Christs Passion. The upper part of the painting is lost, the two angels are specular, as they were executed by the artist using with the same perforated cartoons. The theological symbolism behind the representation is complex, maurizio Calvesi has suggested that the tent represents the Ark of the Covenant. Mary would be thus the new Ark of Alliance in her role as Mother of Christ, for other scholars the tent is a symbol of the Catholic Church and the Madonna would symbolize the tabernacle, as she is portrayed containing Jesus body. Cassidy, Brendan, A Relic, Some Pictures and the Mothers of Florence in the Late Fourteenth Century, Gesta, Vol.30,2, pp. 91-99, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the International Center of Medieval Art, JSTOR Longhi, Roberto. Gli affreschi di Piero della Francesca ad Arezzo e Monterchi, luogo teologico mariano, Piero della Francesca, Madonna del parto, ein Kunstwerk zwischen Politik und Devotion
22.
Benozzo Gozzoli
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Benozzo Gozzoli was an Italian Renaissance painter from Florence. He is best known for a series of murals in the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi depicting festive, vibrant processions with fine attention to detail and he is considered one of the most prolific fresco painters of his generation. While he was active in Tuscany, he also worked in Umbria. He was born Benozzo di Lese in the village of SantIlario a Colombano around 1421 and he moved with his family, including the painters Francesco, Gerolamo, and Alesso di Benozzo, to Florence in 1427. According to the 16th century Italian biographer Giorgio Vasari, Benozzo Gozzoli was in the part of his career a pupil. Some of the works in the convent of San Marco of Florence were executed by Gozzoli after Fra Angelicos designs, between 1444 and 1447 he collaborated with Lorenzo Ghiberti and his workshop on the Paradise Doors of the Battistero di San Giovanni. On May 23,1447 Gozzoli was with Fra Angelico in Rome, later the pair worked until June 1448 in the Cappella Niccolina for Nicholas V. From 1449 dates a banner with Madonna and Child in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva, in Rome he executed also, in Santa Maria in Aracoeli, a fresco of St Anthony and Two Angels. Benozzos last collaboration with Angelico is the vault of the Duomo di Orvieto in Umbria, in 1449 he left Angelico, and moved to Umbria. From 1450 is an Annunciation in Narni, signed OPU BENOT DE FLORENT, in the monastery of San Fortunato, near Montefalco, he painted a Madonna and Child with Saints and Angels, and three other works. One of these, the altarpiece representing St Thomas receiving the Girdle of the Virgin, is now in the Lateran Museum and he next painted in the monastery of S. This work was completed in 1452, and is marked by the style of Angelico. In the same church, in the chapel of Saint Jerome, is a fresco by Gozzoli of the Virgin and Saints and he remained at Montefalco probably till 1456, employing Pier Antonio Mezzastris as assistant. Thence he went to Perugia, and painted in a church a Virgin, soon afterwards he returned to his native city Florence, the epicenter of Quattrocento art. Gozzoli incorporated portraits of the Medici family into his fresco The Journey of the Magi, Gozzoli also included his self-portrait in the procession, with his name written around the rim of his cap. His Virgin and Child with Saints of 1461, in the National Gallery, London, in 1464 Gozzoli left Florence for San Gimignano, where he executed some extensive works, in the church of SantAgostino, a composition of St. Here his style combined something of Filippo Lippi with its original elements and he stayed in this city till 1467, and in 1469 began the vast series of mural paintings in the Campo Santo of Pisa with which his name is specially identified. There are twenty-four subjects from the Old Testament, from the Invention of Wine by Noah to the Visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon and he contracted to paint three subjects per year for about ten ducats each
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Magi Chapel
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The Magi Chapel is the chapel in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi of Florence, Italy. Its walls are almost entirely covered by a cycle of frescoes by the Renaissance master Benozzo Gozzoli, painted in 1459-1461 for the Medici family. The chapel is on the piano nobile of the palace, and was one of the first decorations executed after the completion of the building, Gozzoli painted his cycle over three of the walls. The Journey of the Magi to Bethlehem is covered in three large frescos, each showing the procession of one of the Three Magi on their way to Bethlehem to see the Nativity of Jesus. On that occasion the Medici could boast to have facilitated the reconciliation between the Catholic and the Byzantine churches, the luxury of the Byzantine dignitaries is manifest, and shows the impression they would have at the time on the Florentine population. In the apse the sides walls are painted with saints and angels in adoration, the altarpiece was Filippo Lippis Adoration of the Christ Child, which was painted for this position. This is now in Berlin, with a copy by a follower of Lippi in the chapel, there are also three thin vertical fresco sections showing the shepherds of the nativity. In the 17th century, parts of the frescoes were destroyed to create access for a new staircase, the lively colors and details of the frescoes are backed by the precious mosaics of the pavement, the gilded ceiling and the wooden stalls designed by Giuliano da Sangallo. Gozzoli portrayed rich Tuscan landscapes, probably influenced by Early Netherlandish artists - perhaps via tapestries, which Piero the Gouty, members of the Medici family and their entourage are shown riding in the foreground of the fresco on the east wall. Caspar, the youngest Magus, leads the procession on a white horse and this figure has often been taken for Lorenzo il Magnifico, who was born in 1449 and so was still a boy when the fresco was completed, he is more likely portrayed by another figure. Closely following Caspar are the head of the family, Piero the Gouty, on a white horse. After them is a procession of illustrious Florentines, such as the humanists Marsilio Ficino and the Pulci brothers, the painter looks out at the viewer and can be recognized for the scroll on his red hat, reading Opus Benotii. Little Lorenzo il Magnifico is the boy directly below him with the distinctive snub nose, bearded Balthasar, the middle Magus, rides a white horse on the south wall. He is portrayed with the facial features as Byzantine emperor John VIII Palaiologos. Melchior, the oldest Magus, rides on the west wall, like Cosimo, he is shown as a peacemaker riding on a donkey. He is preceded by a page in blue with a leopard on his horse - although he leads the entire procession, gozzolis patron, Piero de Medici, felt some of the seraphim were unsuitable, and wanted them painted over. Although the artist agreed to do this, it was never actually done, flagellation of Christ - another painting featuring contemporary portraits, the identities of which have been hotly debated. The Chapel of the Magi in Palazzo Medici, secrets of the Medici Palace and Its Private Chapel, Six Studies in the early Italian Renaissance,2014, San Bernardino, Createspace
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Palazzo Medici Riccardi
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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, Italy. It is the seat of the Metropolitan City of Florence, 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 masonry, which includes architectural elements of rustication. The tripartite elevation used here expresses the Renaissance spirit of rationality, order and this tripartite division is emphasized by horizontal stringcourses that divide the building into stories of decreasing height. Michelozzo di Bartolomeo was influenced in his building of this 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 masonry and the cornice had precedents in Roman practice, yet in totality it looks distinctly Florentine. Similarly, the early Renaissance architect Brunelleschi used Roman techniques and influenced Michelozzo, the open colonnaded court that is the center of the palazzo plan has roots in the cloisters that developed from Roman peristyles. The once open corner loggia and shop facing the street were walled in during the 16th century. The new windows are set into what appears to be an infill of the original arched opening. The building reflects the wealth of the Medici family. Then a garden done in the finest of polished marbles, with diverse plants, Cosimo received the young Sforza in the chapel not less ornate and handsome than the rest of the house. Other decorations included two lunettes by Filippo Lippi, depicting Seven Saints and the Annunciation, now at the National Gallery, when the Medici family returned to Florence after their short exile in the early 16th century, they kept a low profile and exercised their power behind the scenes. This is reflected in the exterior of this building, and is said to be the reason why Cosimo de Medici rejected Brunelleschis earlier proposal. The palace was the site of the wedding reception between Ferdinando de Medici, Grand Prince of Tuscany and Violante Beatrice of Bavaria in 1689
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Florence
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Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence. It is the most populous city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants, Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of the time. It is considered the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has called the Athens of the Middle Ages. A turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family, from 1865 to 1871 the city was the capital of the recently established Kingdom of Italy. The Historic Centre of Florence attracts 13 million tourists each year and it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture, the city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florences artistic and architectural heritage, it has been ranked by Forbes as one of the most beautiful cities in the world, in 2008, the city had the 17th highest average income in Italy. Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe, the language spoken in the city during the 14th century was, and still is, accepted as the Italian language. Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War and they similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome. Florence was home to the Medici, one of European historys most important noble families, Lorenzo de Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century, Leo X, catherine de Medici married king Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future king Louis XIII, the Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de Medici in 1737. The Etruscans initially formed in 200 BC the small settlement of Fiesole and it was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the cardo and the decumanus, intersecting at the present Piazza della Repubblica. Situated along the Via Cassia, the route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century, Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to again and commerce prospered
26.
Agony in the Garden (Bellini)
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The Agony in the Garden is an early painting by the Italian Renaissance master Giovanni Bellini, who painted it around 1459–65. It is in the National Gallery, London and it portrays Christ kneeling on the Mount of Olives in prayer, with his disciples Peter, James and John sleeping near to him. The picture is related to the similar work by Bellinis brother-in-law, Andrea Mantegna. It is likely that both derived from a drawing by Bellinis father, Jacopo, in Bellinis version, the treatment of dawn light has a more important role in giving the scene a quasi-unearthly atmosphere. Until the mid-19th century Early Renaissance paintings were regarded as curiosities by most collectors. 10s and it was bought by the National Gallery for £630 in 1863, still a low price for the day
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National Gallery
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The National Gallery is an art museum in Trafalgar Square in the City of Westminster, in Central London. Founded in 1824, it houses a collection of over 2,300 paintings dating from the century to 1900. The Gallery is a charity, and a non-departmental public body of the Department for Culture, Media. Its collection belongs to the public of the United Kingdom and entry to the collection is free of charge. It is among the most visited art museums in the world, after the Musée du Louvre, the British Museum, unlike comparable museums in continental Europe, the National Gallery was not formed by nationalising an existing royal or princely art collection. It came into being when the British government bought 38 paintings from the heirs of John Julius Angerstein, after that initial purchase the Gallery was shaped mainly by its early directors, notably Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, and by private donations, which comprise two-thirds of the collection. It used to be claimed that this was one of the few national galleries that had all its works on permanent exhibition, the present building, the third to house the National Gallery, was designed by William Wilkins from 1832 to 1838. Only the façade onto Trafalgar Square remains essentially unchanged from this time, wilkinss building was often criticised for the perceived weaknesses of its design and for its lack of space, the latter problem led to the establishment of the Tate Gallery for British art in 1897. The Sainsbury Wing, an extension to the west by Robert Venturi, the current Director of the National Gallery is Gabriele Finaldi. The late 18th century saw the nationalisation of royal or princely art collections across mainland Europe, great Britain, however, did not emulate the continental model, and the British Royal Collection remains in the sovereigns possession today. In 1777 the British government had the opportunity to buy an art collection of international stature, the MP John Wilkes argued for the government to buy this invaluable treasure and suggested that it be housed in a noble gallery. The twenty-five paintings from that now in the Gallery, including NG1, have arrived by a variety of routes. This offer was declined and Bourgeois bequeathed the collection to his old school, Dulwich College, the collection opened in Britains first purpose-built public gallery, the Dulwich Picture Gallery, in 1814. The British Institution, founded in 1805 by a group of aristocratic connoisseurs, the members lent works to exhibitions that changed annually, while an art school was held in the summer months. However, as the paintings that were lent were often mediocre, some resented the Institution. One of the Institutions founding members, Sir George Beaumont, Bt, in 1823 another major art collection came on the market, which had been assembled by the recently deceased John Julius Angerstein. Angerstein was a Russian-born émigré banker based in London, his collection numbered 38 paintings, including works by Raphael, on 1 July 1823 George Agar Ellis, a Whig politician, proposed to the House of Commons that it purchase the collection. The appeal was given added impetus by Beaumonts offer, which came with two conditions, that the government buy Angersteins collection, and that a building was to be found
28.
Portrait of Carlo de' Medici
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The Portrait of Carlo de Medici is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna, executed in 1466. It is now housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, in 1912 a copy of the portrait was included in a genealogy of the House of Medici. This is however in contrast with the identification of Carlo as a character in Filippino Lippis Stories of St. Stephen, also the attribution to Mantegna was not immediate, as for a long time the painting was thought to be by Domenico Veneziano. The work has dated from 1459–1460, when Mantegna arrived in Mantua and was commissioned numerous official portraits, and 1466. The subject is dark-skinned and wears the garments of a protonotary apostolic, the official nature of the painting explains the absence of any psychological element and the attention to details such as the dress and the hat
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Saint Vincent Panels
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The Saint Vincent Panels, or the Adoration of Saint Vincent panels, are a polyptych consisting of six panels that were perhaps painted in the 1450s. They are attributed to the Portuguese painter Nuno Gonçalves, who was active from 1450 to 1471, traditionally, the polyptych is dated to the 1450s due to the putative prominence of Prince Henry the Navigator among the persons represented in the panels. The original retable, during its stay in the Cathedral of Lisbon, contained over twelve panels and they were displayed in the cathedral at least until 1690 and were set aside in the cathedral until 1742. They were then transferred to the palace of Mitra, where they escaped the earthquake of Lisbon in 1755. The panels are now housed in the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, in Lisbon, found during the late 1880s in the monastery of Saint Vicente de Fora in Lisbon, the panels depict scenes associated with the veneration of Saint Vincent of Saragossa. This polyptych consists of six panels of oak painted with oil or tempera. The only reference that art historians can use to support the attribution of the creation of the panels to the painter Gonçalves was written in the 16th century by Francisco de Holanda, the reference mentions a great work of art made by him that is inferred to be these panels. There has also been speculation that the father of Hugo van der Goes collaborated in the painting of the panels, in any case, the Saint Vincent Panels are regarded as the greatest achievement of pre-modern Portuguese art. Since their discovery in the late 19th century, there has been a dispute over the identity of the painter. Some basic questions, still unanswered, are these, What scene, who are the sixty persons portrayed. What symbolism is expressed in the panels, who commissioned these panels to be painted. The majority of experts who have studied this polyptych agree that the panels display several social groups of 15th-century Portugal and they also agree that the children of King John I are represented on these panels, but there is disagreement about their placement and identity. One of the controversial issues concerning the panels is the depiction of Prince Henry the Navigator. However, there are reasons to doubt that this is him. The most basic problem in identifying the man-in-the-chaperon in the Saint Vincent Panels derives from the lack of confirmed portraits of Prince Henry that date from his lifetime. The only other 15th-century image of the man-in-the-chaperon is found in the frontispiece of a copy of Gomes Eanes de Zuraras Crónicas dos Feitos de Guiné, written in 1453. Zuraras book is an account of the early Portuguese discoveries in Africa along with a hagiography of Prince Henry, as a result, it has been assumed that the frontispiece depicts Henry, especially since the motto underneath it seems to have been Henrys own. One alternative hypothesis postulates that the man-in-the-chaperon in Zuraras book might actually be King Edward of Portugal and this alternative hypothesis can be used to help clarify the identity of the figures surrounding St. Vincent in the Panel of the Prince
30.
National Museum of Ancient Art
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The Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga is an art museum in Lisbon, Portugal. The museum is known as MNAA and as the Museu das Janelas Verdes for its location in the Rua das Janelas Verdes. It occupies the Palácio de Alvor-Pombal, a palace of the Count of Alvor. The Museum has its roots in the 1833 abolition of religious orders and confiscation of the monasteries in Portugal, which brought a trove of religious art and ornaments into the public sphere. At the instigation of the liberal politician Passos Manuel, the Academia de Bellas Artes was founded in 1836, an Academia panel selected some 540 paintings for the Galeria. Predictably, most of these were religious-oriented pieces of Portuguese origin, in the chaos and aftermath of the Portuguese Liberal Wars, some of the private art collections of ruined noble families were expropriated or found their way on to the market. Of particular significance was the collection of the disgraced former queen, the late Carlota Joaquina. Nonetheless, the facilities remained inadequate - it was terribly humid, cramped, in 1875, a commission headed by Sousa Holstein recommended the founding of a larger and more permanent museum away from the Academias Chiado building. In 1881, the Academias educational division was split off and turned into the Escola Real de Belas-Artes, later sold to the neighboring Carmelite convent of Santo Alberto, the palace returned to private hands following the 1833 dissolution. Guedes intended to use it as a space for an international exhibition on Iberian ornamental art organized by the South Kensington Museum in London. Following the republican 1910 revolution, the arrangement was overhauled and the museums management stopped depending on the Academia Real, the latter collections cut-off date was roughly 1850, everything prior to that assigned to Arte Antiga. Figueiredo was the first to study and identify the authorship and significance of Saint Vincent Panels, the St. Vincent panels were installed in the museum by 1916 and remain perhaps its best known piece. In 1940, the MNAA expanded its installations by acquiring the old convent of Santo Alberto. The chapel of the convent, an example of 18th Portuguese Baroque art. The English translation of the name of the museum is misleading in that the collection includes no museologically ancient works of art, but rather holdings that are simply old or antique. The collection includes painting, sculpture, metalwork, textiles, furniture, drawings, the collections, especially those for the 15th and 16th centuries, are particularly important regarding the history of Portuguese painting, sculpture, and metalwork. Perhaps the most famous work in the museum is the Saint Vincent Panels, the six large panels show people from all levels of late medieval Portuguese society venerating Saint Vincent, in one of the first collective portraits in European art. There are sixty portraits on the panels, Portuguese metalwork is another highlight of the museum
31.
Antonello da Messina
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His work shows strong influences from Early Netherlandish painting although there is no documentary evidence that he ever travelled beyond Italy. Giorgio Vasari credited him with the introduction of oil painting into Italy, unusually for a south Italian artist of the Renaissance, his work proved influential on painters in northern Italy, especially in Venice. Antonello was born at Messina around 1429–1431, to Giovanni de Antonio Mazonus and this account of his training is accepted by most art historians. Antonello returned to Messina from Naples during the 1450s, in around 1455 he painted the so-called Sibiu Crucifixion, inspired by Flemish treatments of the subject, which is now in the Muzeul de Artǎ in Bucharest. A Crucifixion in the Royal Museum of Antwerp dates from the same period, in his biography of the artist, Giorgio Vasari remarked that Antonello saw an oil painting by Jan Van Eyck belonging to King Alfonso V of Aragon at Naples. Another theory, supported only by vague documentary evidence, suggests that in 1456 Antonello visited Milan, however, neither is known for certain to have been in Milan at the time. Between the years of 1456 and 1457, Antonello proved himself to be a painter in Messina. He also shared his home with Paolo di Ciacio, a student from Calabria, at this date, he was already married, and his son Jacobello had been born. In 1460, his father is mentioned leasing a brigantine to bring back Antonello, also from around 1460 are two small panels depicting Abraham Served by the Angels and St. Jerome Penitent now in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria. In 1461 Antonellos younger brother Giordano entered his workshop, signing a three-year contract, in that year Antonello painted a Madonna with Child for the Messinese nobleman Giovanni Mirulla, now lost. Historians believe that Antonello painted his first portraits in the late 1460s, john Pope-Hennessy described him as the first Italian painter for whom the individual portrait was an art form in its own right. In 1474, he painted the Annunciation, now in Syracuse, Antonello went to Venice in 1475 and remained there until the fall of 1476. His works of this begin to show a greater attention to the human figure. His most famous pictures from this include the Condottiero, the San Cassiano Altarpiece. While in Venice he was offered, but did not accept, Antonello had returned to Sicily by September 1476. Works from near the end of his include the famous Virgin Annunciate, now in the Palazzo Abatellis in Palermo. He died at Messina in 1479 and his testament dates from February of that year, and he is documented as no longer alive two months later. Some of his last works remained unfinished, but were completed by his son Jacobello, Antonellos style is remarkable for its union of Italian simplicity with Flemish concern for detail
32.
Salting Madonna
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The Madonna with Child is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Antonello da Messina, depicting the Madona holding the Child and wearing an ornate golden crown, held by angels over her head. It is housed in the National Gallery, London, the name Salting derives from George Salting, the collector who donated it to the gallery in 1910. The Salting Madonna shows a series of cultural references that in the past have led scholars to classify it variously as a Flemish, Spanish or even Russian work. It is one of Antonellos earlier works, dating most likely from the 1460s and it portrays the Madonna adorned with a series of well-crafted and rendered details, such as the crown and the Venetian-style garments. The Madonna has the attributes of Mary, mother of Christ, the crown with two angels represents her also as the Queen of Heaven. The Child holds a pomegranate in his hands, which symbolize the Passion of Christ, the abstract beauty of the Madonnas face derives from the style of contemporary Provençal artists, especially Enguerrand Quarton. Italian Renaissance painting, development of themes Barbera, K, ed. Antonello da Messina, new York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art
33.
St. Bernardino of Siena between Two Angels
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St. Bernardino of Siena between Two Angels is a painting attributed to the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna and his assistants, dated to 1460 and housed in the Pinacoteca di Brera of Milan. The painting was located in the chapel of marquis Ludovico III Gonzaga, dedicated to St. Bernardino. It was acquired by the Milanese gallery in 1811, the painting portrays the saint in a central position. He holds the IHS monogram on a plate, which he usually displayed at the end of his sermons. He stands on a covered with an oriental carpet. At his sides are two angels, and, above the architrave over his head, are four sitting or kneeling cherubims, the architrave carries the inscription Huius lingua salus hominum, meaning His word is the safety of men. The arch is decorated with festoons with flowers and fruit, an element of Mantegnas paintings in Padua. The basement has a cartouche with the date 1460 and it is currently disputed if the painting was executed by Mantegna and his assistants, or by the latter alone
34.
Pinacoteca di Brera
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The Pinacoteca di Brera is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings, an outgrowth of the program of the Brera Academy. The Palazzo Brera owes its name to the Germanic braida, indicating a grassy opening in the city structure, compare the Bra of Verona, the convent on the site passed to the Jesuits, then underwent a radical rebuilding by Francesco Maria Richini. When the Jesuits were disbanded in 1773, the remained the seat of the astronomical Observatory. In 1774 were added the herbarium of the new botanical garden, the buildings were extended to designs by Giuseppe Piermarini, who was appointed professor in the Academy when it was formally founded in 1776, with Giuseppe Parini as dean. Piermarini taught at the Academy for 20 years, while he was controller of the citys urbanistic projects, like the public gardens, the Academys artistic committee, the Commissione di Ornato exercised a controlling influence on public monuments, a precursor of todays Sopraintendenze delle Belle Arti. Thus in 1882 the Paintings Gallery was separated from the Academy, from 1891 the exhibitions were reduced to triennial events, and architectural projects developed their autonomous course. The Brera Observatory hosted the astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli for four decades, collections of Pinacoteca di Brera Aldo Carpi Brera Gallery official website Accademia di Brera official website
35.
Louvre
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The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is the worlds largest museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the citys 1st arrondissement, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. The Louvre is the second most visited museum after the Palace Museum in China. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II, remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace, in 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nations masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum renamed Musée Napoléon, the collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic, whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with wolf hunting den, in the 7th century, St. Fare, an abbess in Meaux, left part of her Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris to a monastery. This territory probably did not correspond exactly to the modern site, the Louvre Palace was altered frequently throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis acquired what would become the nucleus of the Louvres holdings, his acquisitions including Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, constructions slowed, however, on 14 October 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. Under Louis XVI, the museum idea became policy. The comte dAngiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which contained maps – into the French Museum, many proposals were offered for the Louvres renovation into a museum, however, none was agreed on. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution, during the French Revolution the Louvre was transformed into a public museum. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences, on 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property
36.
Museo Poldi Pezzoli
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The Museo Poldi Pezzoli is an art museum in Milan, Italy. It is located near the Teatro alla Scala, on Via Manzoni 12, the museum was originated in the 19th century as a private collection of Gian Giacomo Poldi Pezzoli and his mother, Rosa Trivulzio, of the family of the condottiero Gian Giacomo Trivulzio. Many of the rooms in the palace were redecorated starting in 1846, individual rooms were often decorated and furnished to match the paintings hung on the walls. The architect Simone Cantoni rebuilt the palace in its present Neoclassical style with an English-style interior garden, in 1850–1853, Poldi Pezzoli commissioned the architect Giuseppe Balzaretto to refurbish his apartment. Pezzoli in his testament left the house and contents to the Brera Academy, Giuseppe Bertini, director of the Academy, opened the museum on April 25,1881. During World War II, the palace suffered grave damage, the museum was reopened in 1951 after reconstruction. The museum is notable for its collection of Northern Italian. The exhibition includes weaponry, glassworks, ceramics, jewelry, and furnishings
37.
Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels
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Dead Christ Supported by Two Angels is a painting by Italian Renaissance painter Giovanni Bellini, created around 1460. It is housed in the Museo Correr in Venice, the panel is one of Bellinis earliest Pietà compositions, together with those in the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo and in the Museo Poldi Pezzoli of Milan. The date in the edge is apocriphal, such as Albrecht Dürers monogram
38.
Dieric Bouts
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Dieric Bouts was an Early Netherlandish painter. Very little is known about Bouts early life, but he was influenced by Jan van Eyck and by Rogier van der Weyden. He is first documented in Leuven in 1457 and worked there until his death in 1475, Bouts was among the first northern painters to demonstrate the use of a single vanishing point. Bouts earliest work is the Triptych of the Virgins Life in the Prado, the Deposition Altarpiece in Granada probably also dates to this period, around 1450–60. The Louvre Lamentation is another early work, the Last Supper is the central panel of Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament, commissioned from Bouts by the Leuven Confraternity of the Holy Sacrament in 1464. All of the central rooms orthogonals lead to a vanishing point in the center of the mantelpiece above Christs head. However the small room has its own vanishing point. The Last Supper is the second dated work to display an understanding of Italian linear perspective, scholars also have noted that Boutss Last Supper was the first Flemish panel painting to depict the Last Supper. This contrasts strongly with other Last Supper depictions, which focused on Judass betrayal or on Christs comforting of John. Bouts also added to the complexity of this image by including four servants, although once identified as the artist himself and his two sons, these servants are most likely portraits of the confraternitys members responsible for commissioning the altarpiece. The Last Supper was the part of the altarpiece in the St. Peters Church. The Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament has four panels, two on each side. Because these were taken to the museums in Berlin and Munich in the 19th century, the reconstruction of the original altarpiece has been difficult. Today it is thought that the panel with Abraham and Melchizedek is above the Passover Feast on the wing, while the Gathering of the Manna is above Elijiah. All of these are typological precursors to the Last Supper in the central panel, after attaining the rank of city painter of Leuven in 1468, Bouts received a commission to paint two more works for the Town Hall. After this, he turned to the commission for the Justice Panels. He completed one panel and began a second, both depicting the life of the 11th-century Holy Roman Emperor Otto III and these pieces can now be seen in the Brussels museum. The remaining two Justice Panels were never completed, many of Bouts authentic works are small devotional panels, usually of the Virgin and Child
39.
National Museum, Warsaw
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The National Museum in Warsaw, popularly abbreviated as MNW, is a national museum in Warsaw, one of the largest museums in Poland and the largest in the capital. The museum is home to numismatic collections, a gallery of applied arts. The National Museum in Warsaw was established on 20 May 1862, as the Museum of Fine Arts, Warsaw, the collection, on Jerusalem Avenue, is housed in a building designed by Tadeusz Tolwiński, developed between 1927 and 1938. In 1932 an exhibition of decorative art opened in the two earlier erected wings of the building, the new building was inaugurated on 18 June 1938. The purpose-built modernistic edifice, was situated on the edge of Na Książęcem Park established between 1776–79 for Prince Kazimierz Poniatowski, from 1935 the museum director was Stanisław Lorentz, who directed an effort to save the most valuable works of art during World War II. The Gestapo headquarters presented Rembrandts portrait of Maerten Soolmans as a gift to Hans Frank in occupied Kraków, after the war the Polish Government, under the supervision of Professor Lorentz, retrieved many of the works seized by the Germans. More than 5,000 artifacts are still missing, in 2008 the Polish Archaeological Mission Tyritake of National Museum in Warsaw commenced works at Tyritake, Crimea. It is headed by Alfred Twardecki curator of the Ancient Art Gallery, in 2010 the National Museum, as one of the first state institutions in the world, held an exhibition entirely consecrated to homoerotic art - Ars Homo Erotica. Since the 2011–12 renovation, the museum is considered as one of the most modern in Europe with a computer-led LED lighting allowing to enhance unique qualities of every painting. In 2012 the permanent galleries underwent revolutionary changes, the curators of the museum re-arranged it and supplemented it with new works from the museums warehouses. Paintings were not hung chronologically, but thematically, genre painting, still lifes, landscapes, cityscapes, biblical, mythological, works by Italian, Flemish, Dutch, German and Polish artists were hung together, making it easy to observe and compare similarities and differences. The Gallery of Medieval Art mainly presents objects from the late Middle Ages, originating from different regions of todays Poland and these works were originally designed almost exclusively for churches. The exhibition was designed to allow the audience to understand the role of art in the life of the Middle Ages. The new techniques implemented in the gallery allow the presentation of large polyptychs, such as the famous Grudziądz Polyptych. The new arrangement of the exhibition was designed by WWAA, the Gallery of Old Masters on the second floor was conceived from the former Gallery of Decorative Art, Gallery of Old European Painting and the Gallery of Old Polish and European Portrait in 2016. It combines species of pictorial art - painting, sculpture, drawings and these social spaces have provided the key to the division of the gallery,1. Church, chapel and domestic altar,3, in the redesigned gallery, the works are presented not according to national schools, but as a confrontation of artistic circles of the South and North. The new system reflects the hierarchy of the created by Renaissance art theory
40.
Royal Chapel of Granada
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The Royal Chapel of Granada is a Isabelline style building located in the heart of Granada, next to the Cathedral. There are buried the Catholic Monarchs, their daughter Joanna of Castile the Mad and her husband, the Nasrid dynasty of Granada was the last Moorish dominion of Al-Andalus to fall in the Reconquista. It occurred in 1492 during the reign of the Catholic Monarchs, the Catholic Monarchs chosen as burial site, Granada, created by Royal decree dated September 13 of 1504, the Royal Chapel. It was built between 1505 and 1517 in Isabelline Gothic style and dedicated to St. John the Baptist, construction began in the year 1505 by Enrique Egas in Gothic. Juan Gil de Hontañón, Juan de Badajoz the Elder and Lorenzo Vázquez de Segovia were also involved in the construction. Privilege Charter of the Catholic Monarchs, First we ordain that in the Cathedral of the city of Granada it made an honest chapel in which are and this chapel will be called of the Kings under the invocation of Saint John the Baptist and Saint John the Evangelist. The 16th century is the century of the fullness of the Royal Chapel, continues to flourish with the Emperor Carlos I. The temple is decorated, the institution is enhanced, the late 18th and early 19th century brings new embarrassments to the institution. They are linked to changes, economic difficulties and the profound change in church-state relations. The liberal regime ended with the Patronage regime and the foundations of the institution becomes a fully ecclesiastical entity. Some stability brought the Concordat of 1851 which was followed by a Royal decree of reorganization of the Royal Chapels, isabel II, who visited the Chapel in 1862, promotes a new organization. With the Restoration a new balance is achieved, is manifested from the years of the centenary of the capitulation of Granada. Are as a result of this period the first scientific publications on the Chapel, in the 20th century grows the historical and artistic, archival and musical interest in the Chapel. The capitulate museum was created by Royal decree in the year 1913, with the development of the tourism in Spain in the second half of 20th century it became one of the centers of tourist attraction of the city of Granada. Recently there has been a restoration with the collaboration of the Ministry of Culture of the Junta de Andalucía, the interior of the chapel follows the same model as the Monastery of San Juan de los Reyes. It has side chapels, a nave in Gothic ribbed vault, the choir is to feet with centered arch and sotochoir. On the way to the presbytery it is created a luminous effect preconceived as idea to symbolize the sun, there is a hierarchy of the transept dedicated to mausoleum separated by a monumental decorated fence forged by Master Bartolomé. In the center of the transept the tombs of Isabella and Ferdinand by Domenico Francelli and Joanna, the graves are high and marked priority and almost at the height of the tabernacle
41.
Rogier van der Weyden
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Rogier van der Weyden or Roger de la Pasture was an Early Netherlandish painter whose surviving works consist mainly of religious triptychs, altarpieces and commissioned single and diptych portraits. By the latter half of the 15th century, he had eclipsed Jan van Eyck in popularity, however his fame lasted only until the 17th century, and largely due to changing taste, he was almost totally forgotten by the mid-18th century. There are few facts of van der Weydens life. What else is known of him has come from records and secondary sources. However the paintings now attributed to him are generally accepted, despite a tendency in the 19th century to attribute his work to others, all of his forms are rendered with rich, warm colourisation and a sympathetic expression, while he is known for his expressive pathos and naturalism. His portraits tend to be half length and half profile, Van der Weyden used an unusually broad range of colours and varied tones, in his finest work the same tone is not repeated in any other area of the canvas, even the whites are varied. Due to the loss of archives in 1695 and again in 1940, Rogelet de le Pasture was born in Tournai in 1399 or 1400. His parents were Henri de le Pasture and Agnes de Watrélos and he married around 1426, to Elisabeth Goffaert, and was made town painter of Brussels in 1436, and changed his name from the French to the Flemish format, becoming van der Weyden. The Pasture family had settled before in the city of Tournai where Rogiers father worked as a maître-coutelier, in 1426 Rogier married Elisabeth, the daughter of a Brussels shoemaker Jan Goffaert and his wife Cathelyne van Stockem. Rogier and Elisabeth had four children, Cornelius, who became a Carthusian monk, was born in 1427, a daughter Margaretha in 1432. Before 21 October 1435 the family settled in Brussels where the two children were born, Pieter in 1437 and Jan in 1438, who would go on to become a painter. On his move to Brussels, Rogier began using the Flemish version of his name, little is known about Rogiers training as a painter. The archival sources from Tournai were completely destroyed during World War II, the sources on his early life are confusing and have led to different interpretations by scholars. It is known that the city council of Tournai offered eight pitchers of wine in honour of a certain Maistre Rogier de le Pasture on the 17th November 1426. However, on 5 March of the year the records of the painters guild show a Rogelet de le Pasture entered the workshop of Robert Campin together with Jacques Daret. Records show that de le Pasture was already established as a painter, only five years later, on the first of August 1432, de le Pasture obtained the title of a Master painter. His later entry into apprenticeship might be explained by the fact that during the 1420s the city of Tournai was in crisis, the late apprenticeship may have been a legal formality. Also Jacques Daret was then in his twenties and had living and working in Campins household for at least a decade
42.
Crucifixion Diptych (van der Weyden)
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1460, today in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The panels are noted for their skill, visceral impact and for possessing a physicality. The Philadelphia Museum of Art describes work as the greatest Old Master painting in the Museum, the paintings provenance prior to the mid-19th century is unknown. Its extreme starkness has led art historians to theorize that it was created as a devotional work and it is not known if the panels comprised a self-contained diptych, two-thirds of a triptych, or originally were a single panel. Some art historians have mentioned that the work seems unbalanced overall, recent scholarship proposes that the panels functioned as the outer shutters of a carved altarpiece. The background to the panels is unknown, the train of the Virgins robe continues onto the right panel, which evidences that the panels were intended to lay side-by-side rather than separated. Art historian E. P. Richardson proposed that they were the panel of the lost Cambrai altarpiece. Some art historians question whether it is in fact by van der Weyden, Art historian Penny Howell Jolly was the first to propose that the diptych was painted for an unnamed Carthusian monastery. Van der Weydens son Cornelis entered the Carthusian Monastery of Herrines about 1449, the artist donated money and paintings to the order during his lifetime, and made a bequest to it in his will. His only daughter Margaretha became a Dominican nun, Art historian Dirk de Vos describes the diptych as a monastically inspired devotional painting whose composition was largely determined by the scetic worship of the Carthusians and Dominicans. In a paper presented at the 2006 convention of the Historians of Netherlandish Art, across the back of each, he found a horizontal line of dowel holes near the base, which strongly indicated a now-missing structural member. The diptychs figures are almost two-thirds life size, the right panel depicts a deliberately unnaturalistic Crucifixion scene. Christs blood is visible on his hands, feet and brow, the impression of blood is amplified by the brilliant red cloth of honor draped behind him. The body hangs heavily from the arms, forming a Y-shaped figure against the T-shape of the cross, the skull and bone at the foot of the Cross refer to Adam, the first man created by God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Christs loincloth flutters in the wind, indicating the moment of death, the left panel shows a swooning Virgin Mary supported by Saint John the Evangelist. Both are dressed in pale folded robes, and again presented before a red cloth of honor. The high stone wall gives the effect of pushing the figures into the foreground, the dark sky conforms with scripture, The dark sky, stark wall, cool light and bare ground contribute to the paintings austerity. In the Philadelphia painting, the faces of the pair mirror each other, nonetheless, the contrast of vivid primary reds and whites serves to achieve an emotional effect typical of van der Weydens best work
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