Sicily’s emblem: the Trinacria

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The three-legged trinacria is an ancient symbol. Researches trace its origins to the Phoenician sun-god Baal, and also to the Greek Apollo: the legs signify the sun’s course through the skies and the three main seasons of the year. They are also taken to represent the triangular shape of Sicily, with its three main headlands. After their successful colonisation of the 8th century BC, the Greeks dedicated the island to Apollo, placing the god’s head in the centre of the symbol, with his totem snakes (he gave two entwined on a stick to his son Asclepius). An alternative interpretation contends that the head represents the Gorgon Medusa. The device was revived in modern times when Frederick II of Aragon had himself crowned “King of Trinacria”, adopting the ancient Greek name for the island. The emblem is famously also used by the Isle of Man (but without the head, and with armour-clad legs). It was perhaps chosen by Alexander III of Scotland and Man in 1266, when he married a Sicilian princess and all things Sicilian were considered worthy of emulation. The emblem set on a red and yellow shield, with three ears of wheat emerging from the winged head, is now the logo of the Regione Siciliana.

The Venice equivalent of the anonymous Tweet?

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Anonymous tweets: essential for protest against oppressive regimes or the safe refuge of trolls and people who make trouble for fun? The Republic of Venice confronted this problem too, and they came up with the Bocca di Leone, or ‘lion’s mouth’, a hole-in-the-wall box where citizens could post denunciations of their foes and neighbours. The illustration at the top on the left shows the Bocca di Leone on the Zattere, placed there for ‘denunciations against public health abuses in the sestiere of Dorsoduro’. There are few surviving bocche in Venice today. The most famous is in the Doge’s Palace. Most of them were destroyed by Napoleon, in his mania for altering the world order, to underline the fact that Venice’s autonomy was no more and that she was subject to the laws of Napoleonic France.

Commentators have often used the Bocca di Leone as an illustrator of how sinister the workings of Venetian justice and government were. But in fact the inquisitors of the republic were circumspect in their treatment of anonymous defamations. A good blog about this can be found at bit.ly/Mw0E48.

The other two illustrations show a surviving bocca in Verona, which elected to join the Venetian republic in 1405. It invites ‘secret denunciations against usurers and usurious contracts of any sort’. It is placed beside the door of the old Palazzo della Ragione. Above it once proudly stood the Venetian lion—until Napoleon’s men hacked it to death.

The Tribuna of the Uffizi reopens

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After some three years of closure for restoration and rearrangement, the exquisite little room known as the Tribuna in the Uffizi was reopened this summer. Alta Macadam (author of Blue Guide Florence) paid a visit.

The Tribuna was built in 1581 by the architect and theatrical designer Bernardo Buontalenti, as a place for Grand Duke Francesco I to display his treasures. Octagonal in shape, it has a dome crowned with a lantern and is lit by windows on the upper walls. Its chief glory is the precious mother-of-pearl decoration against a bright blue ground on the drum of the dome, and the dome itself covered with 6000 shells against a crimson background, all of which have been spectacularly restored on this occasion. The magnificent polychrome marble floor also survives intact. On the walls, the precious red velvet, above a richly painted frieze, has been renewed.

Since 1677 this room has displayed the most famous Classical sculptures from the Medici collections including the Medici Venus (recorded as one of the great sights of Florence during the days of the Grand Tour), the Knife-grinder and the two-figure group of the Wrestlers. These have now all been cleaned, and more delightful marble Roman sculptures have been added (including a sleeping Cupid, a Child with a duck, and various putti and amorini) which are displayed round the walls on low gilded stools. The magnificent 17th-century octagonal table in pietre dure (matching the shape of the room) remains in the centre, as does the ebony cabinet of the same date.

It has been decided, however, that visitors may only view the Tribuna from its three entrances and for this reason the famous paintings which used to hang on the walls have been removed and replaced by other less important works (all of which are nevertheless known to have been displayed here at one time or another since the 16th century). Although it is disappointing that one can no longer enter the room, the visitor’s attention is immediately drawn to the architecture and its exquisite decorations, as well as the masterpieces of ancient sculpture (today rather out of vogue and often overlooked by modern visitors in favour of paintings). A further justification for the re-hanging of the paintings is that we know from past inventories that the arrangement of the room has undergone numerous changes in the past, particularly in the 18th century, and again in 1926 and 1970. The present works date mostly from the 16th and 17th centuries, and tapestries have been hung above the doors, to add to the atmosphere of magnificence.

The adjoining Stanzino delle Matematiche (so called because it was here that the Medici used to keep some of their scientific instruments) has now been opened and renovated with its emerald green walls and grotteschi on the ceiling. Charmingly displayed in little niches are small bronzes, miniature busts, and marble statuettes dating from the antique Roman period right up to the 18th century.

It is a great shame that there is no publication yet on the renovated Tribuna, and the explanatory panels have been kept to a minimum so that the hurried visitor may perhaps neglect this lovely room, now in its full glory, and which for centuries was considered the most important place in the entire gallery.

The restoration was financed by Friends of Florence, a non-profit international foundation founded in 1998 (most of the donors reside in the US).

(The famous works displayed here up until a few years ago, notably the court portraits by Bronzino, as well as works by Andrea del Sarto and Pontormo, can now be seen in recently opened rooms on the piano nobile of the Uffizi).

Luca Signorelli on exhibition in Umbria

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Luca Signorelli (c.1441–1523) was born in Cortona, Tuscany, close to the Umbrian border. It is with Umbria that he is always associated, for his masterpiece in the cathedral of Orvieto and for the fact that the town of Città di Castello proclaimed him a citizen in 1488. This year his work is being celebrated in no less than three venues in Umbria (Perugia, Orvieto and Città di Castello), until 26 August (the last retrospective exhibition dedicated to this major central Italian artist was in 1953).

Perugia: The exhibition in Perugia (at the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria) has a very large number of works, collected together for the first time from museums all over the world, as well as a superb selection of Signorelli’s graphic output (many from the British Museum and the Louvre), which shows that he was also an outstanding draughtsman.

The show opens with one of the greatest works by Signorelli’s master, Piero della Francesca, the Madonna di Senigalliafrom the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino. Visitors can also see another masterpiece by Piero just a few rooms away in the same gallery, the Sant’Antonio polpytych (particularly memorable for the top panel of the Annunciation).

Signorelli’s early period, showing the strong influence of Piero, is documented by a number of works—some of them of doubtful attribution, although the lovely Madonna and Child with three angels from Christ Church, Oxford, seems to reveal the artist’s own hand. The single predella panel from the Louvre, of the Birth and Naming of St John the Baptist, is an exquisite work. The two small panels from the (dismembered) Bichi altarpiece with superbly painted male nudes from Toledo, Ohio, are particularly fascinating and unusual. A number of Signorelli’s famous tondi of the Madonna and Child are included, the best perhaps being those from the Uffizi and Pitti in Florence. There is a tiny portrait of a boy from Philadelphia, which is particularly intriguing even though it seems to have been rather over-restored. The four predella panels of the Life of the Virgin formerly beneath the superb Annunciation from the Pinacoteca in Volterra (also on show) have been reunited for this occasion: two are from a private collection in Scotland; one from Richmond, Virginia; and the last from the National Gallery of Washington. The men just killed by the dragon in the foreground of the St George from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam recall the male nudes in the Cappella Nova in Orvieto. The Madonna and Child on a decorative gold ground from the Metropolitan Museum in New York is particularly poignant, as we know that Signorelli gave it to his daughter Gabriella in 1507.

Orvieto: The exhibition here is understandably much smaller since of course the great attraction is the Last Judgementcycle of frescoes in the Cappella Nova in the cathedral, which has been given longer opening hours for this occasion (the extraordinary video with details of Signorelli’s wonderful frescoes can only be viewed at the Perugia exhibition). His monumental Mary Magdalene, which belongs to the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, is the most important work on exhibition there, but it is also particularly interesting to be able to visit the newly restored Albèri library with its very unusual frescoed decorations carried out around the same time that Signorelli was at work next door in the cathedral. Here is displayed a controversial double portrait (including a self-portrait) frescoed on a terracotta tile (its attribution to Signorelli has been under discussion for decades but recent research carried out for this exhibition suggests it is, indeed, an autograph work).

Città di Castello: Later works are exhibited here, and in particular the two masterpieces owned by the Pinacoteca Comunale: a processional banner and the Martyrdom of St Sebastian. The visit also provides the opportunity to explore the lovely villages in the upper Tiber valley and the little oratory just outside Morra which was in part frescoed by Signorelli.

The Perugia exhibition in particular is well worth travelling from afar to see as it provides a remarkably complete documentation of this great artist’s ouput, an artist who so often seems to be well ahead of his contemporaries in his exploration of the human figure and whose work always contains an element of intriguing eccentricity.

Reviewed by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Central Italy, Blue Guide Tuscany, Blue Guide Rome, Blue Guide Concise Rome, Blue Guide Florence, Blue Guide Venice.

On Canaletto and Guardi and Venetian Light

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In the art of the Venetian artist Canaletto (Antonio del Canale, 1697–1768), Venice returned to one of her oldest habits: the depiction and celebration of her own beauty. Unlike the works produced in Venice’s heyday, however, Canaletto’s art and that of his contemporary Francesco Guardi (1712–93), both of whom were at work in the last decades before the end of the Serene Republic, was a depiction without the glorification of earlier times. And the works attained international fame in the artists’ own lifetimes.

Canaletto’s views of Venice and its canals were exported widely, especially to England through the British Consul, Joseph Smith. Their popularity was due in part to the outstandingly rendered light and shadow which suffused the ordered spaces. His works give remarkable delight to the eye both from a distance and from close to. Canaletto came to London between 1746 and 1754 and painted it: in his views of the northern city, he performed the remarkable feat of making the banks of the Thames look as serenely lovely as the Bacino di San Marco. Stillness is all in Canaletto.

Canaletto: The Grand Canal and Church of the Salute viewed from the Bacino

The works of Guardi are far less serene.

Here, the coruscations of light and vibrancy of atmosphere reveal a diametrically different response to the city’s beauty, a response which was only appreciated many generations later, once European sensibilities had been educated to see things differently by the Impressionists. For Canaletto, the light is the vehicle of his passion for the architecture: for Guardi the architecture is a necessary receptacle for his passion for the light.

Guardi: the Church of the Salute and the Bacino treated in less serene, more Romantic way

The works of both these masters remind us that so much of Venetian art, indeed so much of the fascination of the city, has always depended upon its unique light—immediately, tangibly different from anywhere else in Italy because of the surrounding water which constantly modifies it. It is this that explains the primacy of the the visual sensibility in Venice: it has produced no internationally great writers, poets, thinkers or scientists. Venice has no Dante or Leonardo, no Galileo or Machiavelli; but it produced painters whose universal influence has been incomparable, because of one fundamental lesson they imbibed from the endless modulations of their native light. They instinctively understood how light in painting is the vehicle of human empathy.

An extract from the introduction to Blue Guide Venice. © Blue Guides. All rights reserved