Andrew Johnson's RENAISSANCE IN TUSCANY
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CONSTANTINE IN TUSCANY

31/10/2012

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At the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome, on October 28, 312, two rival Roman Emperors fought it out: Constantine was the victor, Maxentius lost and died.  Famously, in Christian history and legend, Constantine won 'in the sign of the cross', inspired by a vision recounted almost a thousand years later by Jacopo da Voragine in his famous 'Golden Legend' compendium of saints' stories.  Certainly Constantine 'the Great' was the emperor whose rule established Christianity as the favoured religion of the Roman Empire.   
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Battle of Milvian Bridge by Giulio Romano after project by Raphael in Sala di Costantino in Vatican from flickr by Mr History
Constantine's triumph consequently features in several great works of art.  Perhaps the most seen -- if not necessarily most recognized -- is in the Vatican, a fresco (above) by Giulio Romano after a project by Raphael.  

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Piero Triumph of Constantine at Milvian Briege Arezzo from flickr by arthistory 390
The most famous, artistically, is Piero della Francesca's painting of Constantine's victory (above) in his fresco cycle 'the legend of the true cross' in Arezzo (Tuscany), in the main apse chapel of San Francesco.  

But another fresco cycle of the story or legend of the cross and the battle of the Milvian Bridge deserves more attention than it usually provokes: the huge cycle by Agnolo Gaddi which fills the walls of the central apse chapel of the great Florentine Franciscan church of Santa Croce, exemplifying the church's name and -- with its contemporary stained glass windows  -- gloriously completing the vista of Santa Croce's magnificent fourteenth century nave.
 

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Santa Croce Firenze from Fratellanza Cristiana Christian Brotherhood site saintmichael.blog.tiscali.it
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Dream and triumph of Constantine at Milvian Bridge by Agnolo Gaddi Capella Maggiore Santa Croce from lib-art.com
                                                                                                  
The single scene here illustrates Constantine's dream on the eve of battle, in which an angel  promises victory in the sign of the cross, with the battle itself  on the right.  

With the entire chapel now cleaned and restored, its windows scintillating and frescoes glowing, take the time to look closely.  And for those of us who cannot drop in, the web site of the Opera di Santa Croce which operates and maintains the church is at least an excellent substitute.

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Santa Croce Firenze central chapel from Rome & Italy Tourist Services www.romeanditaly.com
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RENAISSANCE 100 -- # 1

3/10/2012

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Starting today, an intermittent, cumulative series of my 'renaissance 100' --- see it here. 

What's first?  What else but...

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GILDED GIANTS

3/10/2012

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It was a season of giants. 

In the first few decades of the 1400s, a new race of marble and bronze men, larger than life, populated the centre of Florence.  Orsanmichele was their birthplace, that unique shrine, granary, charity and civic guilds headquarters, all in one: the chief guilds were required by the government of Florence, the Signoria, to provide statues of their patron saints to fill fourteen grand niches marking the four sides of the towering fourteenth-century building.  The cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore was their school, with its governing Opera or board of works determined to fill remaining empty niches in the unfinished cathedral facade and the resplendent bell-tower with apostles and prophets.  

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Their parents -- ‘genitori’ in Italian -- were a competitive, co-operative, bickering, brilliant  generation of rival sculptors of genius probably unmatched at any other time in history: Donatello (to my mind the greatest of them all), Ghiberti (in his spare time while making the momentous bronze doors for the Baptistery), Nanni di Banco (unluckily short-lived), probably Brunelleschi too (before applying his cantankerous talent to constructing the miraculous cupola completing the cathedral).


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A culminating masterpiece of those years was Donatello’s gilded bronze Saint Louis the Angevin, a startlingly innovative embodiment of an ascetic enveloped in weighty luxurious robes, installed in an equally innovative, classicizing aedicule and niche also by Donatello.  It was the first among equals of the Orsanmichele series of giants, presiding from the central niche on the building’s principal face, of the ‘Parte Guelfa’, the prestigious political organization inextricable from Florence’s governing élites.  Yet, ironically, it is the least-known today -- displaced from its Orsanmichele home for political reasons about 1462, later replaced artistically by Verrochio’s masterly Saint Thomas with Christ, residing in splendid isolation on the facade of Santa Croce for centuries, until housed in the church’s undeservedly lesser-known museum, literally gathering dust.

Now, however, this great bronze giant of the renaissance is being painstakingly cleaned in preparation for a starring part in the forthcoming exhibition ‘La primavera del Rinascimento’, springtime of the renaissance, at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence (23 March to 18 August, 2013) and then the Louvre in Paris (23 September to 6 January).  The exhibition will focus on that ‘season of giants’, sculpture of the early renaissance in Florence.  We hope Saint Louis may be re-united with others of his own generation, however temporarily..... to be spared, perhaps, from the inaccessible Museum of Orsanmichele and from the cathedral’s Museo dell’Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore preparing gradually for its own much-anticipated expansion and renovation.  (From Orsanmichele, Ghiberti’s Saint John the Baptist and Saint Peter attributed to Brunelleschi can still be seen together with other splendid works in the Uffizi exhibition ‘Bagliori Dorati’ until November 4.)



In the meantime, however, visitors to Florence can see Donatello’s Saint Louis undressed, so to speak, in disabille, somewhat embarassingly though dignified as always, as he is cleaned by his acolytes -- with due respect to his episcopal stature --  in full view at the Santa Croce museum.   See them here !!

And, yes, take the opportunity to visit or re-visit as well that ‘piccolo grande’ museum of Santa Croce entered from the peaceful green cloister of adjacent to the Pazzi Chapel.





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