Category Archives: Italy

Hellenistic bronzes in Florence

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“Power and Pathos. Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World” is the penultimate exhibition to be held under the mandate of James Bradburne, Director General of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Bradburne has succeeded in turning the palazzo into Florence’s most important exhibition space.

The Boxer, lifelike portrait of a pugilist.

And no more fitting show could have taken place to mark the end of his tenure: it is filled with great masterpieces, and accompanied by a scholarly catalogue. When it closes in Florence (on 21st June) it will travel first to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles  (until 1st November) and then to the National Gallery of Art in Washington (until 20th March 2016).

Perhaps the most striking feature of the exhibition is the consistency it reveals in the styles of masters working in the Alexandrine world of Greece and during the later Roman era. A map (also reproduced in the catalogue) records the extraordinarily wide geographical area where the pieces have been found, either underground or underwater. The exhibition has deliberately concentrated on the “explicitly ‘un-ideal’: the innumerable contingencies of real-life physiognomy” which are the feature of Hellenistic art. But the curators of course were faced with the fact that so little bronze sculpture (as opposed to marble sculpture) survives because it was so often melted down. A tragedy because the skill (and technical ability) of the sculptors was never again equalled until the Renaissance.

To set the tone of the display (which is not chronological), the first room has just two exhibits. The first is a bare limestone base with its statue missing, which is here because it bears the signature of the greatest Hellenistic sculptor, Lysippus of Corinth, who was Alexander the Great’s court sculptor and who is reported by Pliny to have made no fewer than 1500 bronze statues. Not one of these survives, but other statue bases like this one can still be seen in Greece. The other exhibit is the splendidly-displayed Arringatore, or Orator. Because it normally forms part of the collection of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Florence itself, it seems appropriate that it should be here to greet visitors, its right hand stretched towards us in a gesture usually interpreted as a call for silence. The Etruscan inscription on the toga tells us that the statue was made in Chiusi and it is dated to the late 2nd century BC.

The next room has another magnificent piece from the same museum, the Medici-Riccardi Head of a Horse. Examination of its copper-tin alloy during its restoration for this exhibition has confirmed its date of the second half of the 4th century BC. It belonged to Lorenzo the Magnificent and is to this day perhaps the most important classical bronze in Florence. Beside it is displayed a very well-preserved statuette (found in Herculaneum) of Alexander the Great mounted on his famous steed (the mane worked in just the same way as the larger head), with silver trimmings (one of many important pieces from the Archaeological Museum in Naples loaned to this exhibition).

Two very different but memorable portrait heads dating from the 3rd century BC are also in this room: that of Queen Arsinoë III of Egypt, and an unknown man, much less regal, wearing a flat leather cap (known as a kausia). He was fished up in the Aegean sea in 1997 and it has been lent by the local museum of Pothia on Kalymnos, in the Dodecanese. This is one of numerous underwater finds which have been made in recent years, and it is always good to learn, as in this case, that they have remained close to where they were found. This piece is an almost miraculous survival: its flashing eyes, made of alabaster and faïence, are still intact and it takes an honourable place alongside works of much greater fame and from much more accessible museums.

In the third room we come face to face with the famous, over life-size Boxer (from the Museo Nazionale in Palazzo Massimo alle Terme in Rome), as he sits to regain his strength, his hands strongly bound up in leather and with clear signs (made with copper inlays) of combat on his scarred face with its broken nose. Dating from the 3rd century BC and unearthed in the 19th century on the Quirinal hill, this would have been brought back to Rome as war booty and exhibited in a public place as an example of the highest expression of art known at the time, an accolade it holds to this day.

Close by, in strong contrast, is a little brown statuette from the Metropolitan Museum of Art of an elderly man in a short tunic with a notebook tucked under his belt: he only has one leg and an arm is missing but he is thought to represent an artisan. Also from the same museum comes an exquisite statue with a green patina of Eros fast asleep: depicted as an infant with exquisitely carved wings, this is the forerunner of many depictions of cupids, cherubs and putti in Western art. A statuette of Hermes in his flat hat is a beautiful work lent by the British Museum, somehow typical of that museum’s extraordinary collection of masterpieces, not all of them as well known as one would expect.

The ‘pathos’ of the exhibition’s title is summed up in the portrait of a man from Delos, one of the best-known of all Greek portraits, lent from the Archaeological Museum in Athens. He has a furrowed brow above piercing eyes made of glass paste and black stone. It is exhibited near two other portrait heads: one from an Etruscan votive statue thought to have been found on an island in Lake Bolsena in 1771 (and now in the British Museum) and the other from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, an extraordinarily refined work which retains even its eyelashes and its unshaven chin, also found in Italy (in 1847), and a very early example of Etruscan/Italic/Roman art (late 4th century BC).

The famous Greek bronze Apoxyomenos (the athlete scraping himself down with a strigil) from Ephesus is represented by a replica from Vienna (spectacularly restored in 1902 after it had been found in 234 pieces) and the head of an athlete purchased through Sotheby’s by the Kimbell Art Museum at Fort Worth in 2000 (with a long pedigree including its presence in an 18th-century collection in Venice). A Roman marble statue the Uffizi here is also derived from the Apoxyomenos (wrongly restored in the Renaissance to hold a marble vase instead of a strigil).

Two more statues come from Florence’s Archaeological Museum: the Minerva of Arezzo, derived from a statue of the Praxiteles school (of which numerous copies have survived); and, in the last room, the so-called Idolino, which dates from around 30 BC and would have served as a lamp-stand at banquets. Its very beautiful head shows great similarities to that of the lovely small bust of an Ephebe from Benevento (lent from the Louvre and exhibited beside it) with red copper lips: this is dated a few decades before the Idolino.

Florence’s Archaeological Museum have been involved as partners in this exhibition and in fact have produced their own little show in conjunction with the main one (it also runs until 21st June). Entitled “Small Great Bronzes: Greek, Etruscan and Roman Masterpieces from the Medici and Lorraine Collections”, it shows some of the museum’s most precious possessions, arranged by type

by Alta Macadam. Alta is the author of Blue Guide Florence and Blue Guide Tuscany, available in both print and digital format.

Frescoes in a convent of a closed order of nuns

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In the lovely convent of the Santi Quattro Coronati, in a quiet corner of Rome reached on foot in little more than ten minutes from the Colosseum, frescoes were discovered in a Gothic hall in 1995. Since this was in an area belonging to a closed order of Augustinian nuns (who have been in the convent for some five centuries), many years’ discussion ensued to establish how it would be possible to allow visitors to see the frescoes once restoration had been completed. The difficulties have at last been resolved and the hall is now opened on two days a month by a volunteer organisation which specialises in making accessible places in Rome not normally easy to visit.

Janus, representing the month of January.

Heralded as perhaps the most important medieval cycle of secular subjects to have survived in the entire city, it is indeed a remarkable sight. The cross-vaulted hall was part of a grand 13th-century residence reserved for the Cardinal. In fact a cardinal priest attached to the Carolingian convent became Pope Leo IV in 847 (a chapel from his time survives off the little cloister).

Up until now the most fascinating part of the convent open to visitors was the little Cappella di San Silvestro, approached just off the courtyard, with its charming fresco cycle of 1247 commissioned by Cardinal Stefano Conti and illustrating the life (and legend) of Pope Sylvester (324–35). The Gothic Hall is on the first floor, approached from the opposite side of the courtyard through the convent library. Frescoed at around the same time as the chapel, it was the most important room in the Cardinal’s suite. It was where he would probably have received visitors, administered justice and given banquets. The decoration is divided into two distinct parts. The three walls of the first bay have illustrations of the Months, all with charming stylised trees. January is depicted as a seated Janus figure with three faces while a boy is supplying him with cured pork, and sausages can be seen hung up to dry. Trees are being pruned in February, and in March an eccentric scene shows a languid youth holding out his very long, thin leg to a lady so that she can extract a thorn from his foot. In April shepherds are shown tending their animals. The next wall has an idyllic scene in May, with a man on a horse smelling a bouquet of flowers while children up trees laden with fruit gather them into baskets. In June grain is being harvested with scythes, and in July it is being processed on a circular threshing floor. Figs are being offered to a seated old man in August. The last wall begins with September, with wine barrels being prepared for the grape harvest, depicted in October. November has a ploughing scene and in December pigs are being butchered. The upper register, which illustrates the Liberal Arts, is less well preserved: but a female figure representing Geometry can be made out as well as Music, illustrated by an organ operated by bellows.

The second bay has a frieze of female Virtues and Beatitudes dressed in armour carrying small figures (from the Old or New Testament or a Saint) on their shoulders and trampling under their feet pairs of figures representing the Vices. The qualities personified are explained in long inscriptions. Solomon, representing Justice, is given pride of place, flanked by a pair of exotic birds. Above them are lunettes with even more curious scenes:  a pair of figures suggesting Abundance, with cornucopia and baskets brimming with all sorts of good things (and their nicely rounded rear ends very much in evidence since their cloaks have fallen to their knees!). Another has the Sun (symbolising Christ) and the Moon (symbolising the Church) in chariots drawn respectively by horses and by bulls, separated by a giant ornamental vase.

All of the scenes are separated with delightful friezes: colourful geometric borders, trompe l’oeil patterns, little naked figures playing with ribbons, dolphins with their tails entwined, and a great variety of birds. Little genii with curly tails can be seen fighting each other on either side of flower pots, and amusing young telamones playing in the leaves and holding up festoons of flowers and fruit. A bright emerald green dominates the background of the entire painted surface.

The discovery of these frescoes has caused art historians to revise the entire history of painting in Rome in the 13th century.

by Alta Macadam, author of Blue Guide Rome.

The Gothic Hall (Aula Gotica) is at present open twice a month on a weekday by appointment; to book: archeocontesti@gmail.com; T: 335495248. Explanation in situ given also in English. An offering is expected for the convent. For information, see here.

The Chapel of St Sylvester and cloister are usually open 10–11.45 & 4–5.45; holidays 9.30–10.30 & 4–5.45, although—since they are part of the convent—the opening hours are subject to change according to the availability of one of the nuns. For admission, ring at the old wooden bell of the convent and ask the nun beyond the grille to press the door release. When the nuns are busy or at prayer it is sometimes necessary to ring more than once; if there is no reply, wait and try again a little later. Minimum donation of one euro.

Church open 9–12 & 3-5.30. Services (with sung Mass) are held frequently by the nuns, who are known for their musical talents.

Winter in Florence: a new look at Donatello

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by Alta Macadam (author of Blue Guide Florence)

The wide streets around San Lorenzo, the great Medici church close to their family palace, which in effect form a piazza, have recently been cleared of market stalls so that the exterior of the building has regained its dignity. Inside visitors have been provided with a wonderful opportunity to come face to face with one of Donatello’s pulpits in the nave, now restored. An ingenious scaffold and lighting system has been set up so and if you put one euro into a little machine you can then climb up to the level of the pulpit and examine the details of the gilded reliefs. This is an occasion not to be missed, since the pulpits have always been very difficult to see, being raised up on columns. The pulpit in question is the one on the right, from which the Epistle was read, and the three reliefs at the height of the walkway are the Resurrection, the Ascension (or Christ Appearing to the Apostles) and the Descent into Limbo. Although Christ takes on a quite different appearance in each of the scenes, they were all cast together and they have a more or less continuous background. They date from the very end of Donatello’s long life, around 1460.

In the Resurrection Donatello famously portrays Christ as an anguished, elderly, infirm figure, hooded and still in his grave cloth, supported by his banner. In contrast (and following the familiar iconography of this scene), the soldiers in the foreground are depicted as genial innocents, most of them fast asleep but all in different attitudes, and with their feet carefully modelled. There is one seen from behind who seems to be hanging onto the edge of the tomb in astonishment, having just awakened; and if one looks even closer, there are two more in the far background on the other side of the sarcophagus: it is difficult to make out whether the scene includes six or seven soldiers. The frieze at the top of the pulpit has little playful putti and centaurs in relief around the central signature ‘Opus Donatelli Flo’ (the great sculptor was always touchingly proud of his birthplace), and at the corners are ‘classical’ horsemen, standing holding their horses’ bridles in a manner reminiscent of the Dioscuri.

In the Descent into Limbo Christ is still an elderly man but a much less dramatic figure: it is the scene itself which is particularly harrowing. On the extreme right stands the emaciated Baptist holding out his hand to Christ. All around, some half hidden, are the Saints who await liberation. But the crowd also includes figures without haloes: the head of Eve appears in the doorway and in front of her is Adam, with his arms stretched towards Christ. Two small grotesque devils, one entwined with a snake, and both with webbed feet, are also present. It has been suggested that the iconography of this panel may have been inspired by a miniature Byzantine mosaic which Donatello would have seen in the Baptistery (and which is today preserved in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo.

In the Ascension (or Christ Appearing to the Apostles) scholars have detected the intervention of Donatello’s assistants. Here a more genial Christ is shown in the act of blessing as cherubs help him on his slightly awkward upward journey, leaving behind the crowd of kneeling Apostles and the Virgin. They are seen behind a ‘fence’ which has ramblers on it and there are more roses and ferns on the ground at their feet.

The two end panels cannot be seen at such close range, but they are visible from the steps and are also wonderful works: the Marys at the Tomb and Pentecost. The Tomb scene is very dramatic, taking place as it does in a dark, underground burial crypt with a row of columns which partly obscure the sarcophagus, and one of which gives support to one of the Marys in her astonishment at seeing an angel blocking her way. Another Mary descends the steps but her face is totally hidden from view. A few trees can be seen outside in the background, above the roof. The Pentecost scene, although designed by Donatello, was executed in its final stages by pupils. The elderly Madonna is surrounded by the Apostles who have thrown their Crosses on the ground.

The other long side (which you can still only see from below, but which is now well illuminated) has two panels which are old replacements in wood, but the third is a very fine Martyrdom of St Lawrence, with smaller figures in a room portrayed in deep perspective. It is thought that Donatello worked on this panel before those on the other side, just after his return to Florence from Padua.

The pulpit opposite is still being restored and the idea is to move the scaffolding across to it also once the restoration is completed (probably in around a year’s time).

It is almost certain that the panels were not originally intended for pulpits but were made for a funerary monument or an altar in the church. One wonders if it might be thought legitimate to dismantle them once restoration is completed and display them in a way that they can be seen with ease.

The extraordinary genius of Donatello, so idiosyncratic in his iconography, can also be seen a few metres away in the Old Sacristy, beautifully kept and wonderfully illuminated. Donatello decorated this lovely little domed chapel (designed by Brunelleschi) some decades before he worked on the pulpits. And here on a cupboard is a terracotta bust of the young St Lawrence (or St Leonard?) one of the most charming Renaissance portraits which still mystifies art historians and which in situ is simply attributed to an unknown sculptor. One day perhaps it will join the catalogue of works by Donatello.

It is always somehow surprising that we cannot be sure of certain attributions, and that works which have been known about for centuries can sometimes be convincingly found to be by a master’s hand. This has happened recently to a terracotta relief of a Madonna and Child which belongs to the church of Santa Trinita and which in the early 19th century was moved by the Vallombrosan monks outside onto the campanile (presumably as ‘protection’ for the church). In 2004 it was brought back inside again (and replaced outside by a copy) and since it had been much ruined by the elements was sent to the restoration laboratory of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. It revealed itself to be a very beautiful relief and is now attributed to Donatello himself (there are great similarities between it and a terracotta relief in Florida which is a recognised work of the master). At the same time an oval empty space (flanked by two painted angels) has been noticed inside the church in the niche above the tomb of Giuliano Davanzati and it has been agreed that the relief will be placed there when it returns to the church, in the belief that it must originally have been made for this position.

All this shows how work never ceases to protect and study the works of art in Florence and that restoration projects are carried on apace with all the skill and expertise we have come to expect from the state restoration laboratory here.

Comments on Blue Guide The Marche & San Marino

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A stunningly beautiful region of coast, hills and mountains. As well as the historic town of Urbino, birthplace of Raphael, the region encompasses the former maritime republic of Ancona, the sandy beaches of the Palm Riviera, the dramatic scenery of the Sibylline Mountains, and lesser-known places such as the marble-built town of Ascoli Piceno.

View the book’s contents, index and some sample pages, and buy securely from blueguides.com here »

Giacomo Leopardi: A poet in film

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Reviewed by Alta Macadam

Portrait of Leopardi c. 1820.

Il Giovane favoloso, a film released in Italy this autumn, describes the life of the country’s greatest Romantic poet (in fact its greatest poet, together with Dante and Petrarch). This undertaking, by director Mario Martone, was highly ambitious: Elio Germano as Leopardi re-enacts the life of this great literary figure and philosopher, born in the Marche in east Italy in 1798 and who died at just 38. Germano succeeds superbly in the role, reciting the some of Leopardi’s most famous poems, and letters to his close friend and mentor Pietro Giordani. The film was given its première at the Venice Film Festival in September and was also shown at the London Film Festival in October (hopefully it will soon be on general release in the UK and US). The locations include the poet’s home town of Recanati, as well as Florence, Rome and Naples (where he died during a cholera outbreak), and will be greatly appreciated by all who love Italy. The music, by Sascha Ring, is very beautiful.

The Zibaldone, Leopardi’s notebook and diary full of philosophical observations, which was first published many decades after his death, has now been published in an English edition (Penguin Classics, 2013, eds Michael Caesar and Franco D’Intino). It is the first complete translation into English of this fundamental work.

Despite his fame, Leopardi is difficult to define: fluent in Greek, Latin and Hebrew, he was a Classical scholar as well as a philosopher and in many ways anticipated 20th-century thinking, being critical of the belief in progress and close to existential theories. In some ways he can be compared to Wordsworth, although the English poet is much more joyful in spirit. Leopardi was intensely religious as a boy though his views grew more unorthodox and critical as the years went by: interestingly, the only disparaging review in the Italian press so far has been in the Vatican newspaper, the Osservatore Romano (25th October).

The film takes almost all its dialogue straight from original documents or letters, and Elio Germano’s capacity to immerse himself totally in the role has been much remarked on. In Recanati the film was shot in Leopardi’s family home, where the actor also lived for many months, even learning to write with a quill pen. The Neapolitan director has worked much in theatre (and in fact he recently staged Leopardi’s Operette morali, an allegorical dialogue) and this is evident throughout the film. It was daring to decide to let Germano recite some of the poems as if he was composing them, but these passages of the film are some of the most moving. Very little artistic licence has been taken, although the scene in the brothel in Naples is invented and is perhaps one of the few disappointing moments in the narrative. All in all the film is an honest reconstruction of Leopardi’s life which avoids clichés and shows up his more lively side and underlines his quick ironic humour, managing to get away from the label of ‘pessimist’ which is all too often attached to him and which has perhaps tended to limit appreciation of his deep character.

This is the first time that Leopardi’s poetry has been recited on the big screen and the film ends in a villa on the slopes of Vesuvius during an eruption, while Leopardi composes his last poem, La Ginestra.

The supporting roles are very well played, from his close friend Ranieri (Michele Riondino), who represents the poet’s fragile attachment to the real world, to Leopardi’s father Monaldo (Massimo Popolizio, until now mainly known as a stage actor), whose human side is successfully portrayed alongside his determined ambition to bring up his children imbued with literature. He would have approved, perhaps, of the fact that classes of Italian schoolchildren are being taken to see this film.

Where to find Leopardi in the Blue Guides:

Leopardi’s home town of Recanati is covered in detail in Ellen Grady’s Blue Guide The Marche & San Marino, the new, fully-revised 2nd edition of which is fresh off the press. His former home is now a museum and much of the early part of the film was shot in and around it. The ball game known as pallone al bracciale, re-enacted in the film with Leopardi as a spectator, is described in the same Blue Guide (and also in Blue Guide Central Italy). The poet’s relationship to the English colony in Pisa, where he stayed for a year in 1827, is recorded in Alta Macadam’s Blue Guide Tuscany, available in print and digital. You will find Leopardi’s grave site in Naples in Paul Blanchard’s Blue Guide Southern Italy, also available in print and digital.