Italian customs
A quick primer on accomplishments of the Medici
Quick as in an hour. I found this BBC documentary very enjoyable and informative and a good reminder of how the Renaissance developed under Medici patronage. (I found the tie-ins to art being the hot commodity it is in the modern world less interesting/persuasive). A great, quick visual trip to see the world created by the Medici clan.
Show a little courtesy, per favore!
Saw this sign on the street the other day and thought it was interesting and entertaining. It points out that this place on the street, which just happens to be near a major supermarket, is a spot for “Pink Parking,” un gesto di cortesia (a courteous gesture). It’s obviously meant to call on the public’s morality and generosity to save this space for pregnant women.
I can promise you that in the many times I’ve walked by it, there is never a space saved for a pregnant woman. Too bad!
Cool coffees in Italy for summertime
San Marco, Firenze
The monastery of San Marco, which stood just two blocks north of the Palazzo Medici, had been founded in the thirteenth century. However, it had been completely renovated and considerably expanded by Lorenzo the Magnificent’s grandfather, Cosimo de’ Medici in the 1450s.
Cosimo had used his favourite architect Michelozzo Michelozzi, and incorporated the work of the resident monk Fra Angelico, one of the great early Renaissance artists.
Michelozzi would be responsible for some of the finest early Renaissance architecture in Florence, including the renovation of the Palazzo della Signoria and the design of the Medici villa at Careggi.
For his part, Fra Angelico’s ethereal paintings would heavily influence Michelangelo, whose depiction of God’s finger passing on life to Adam in the Sistine Chapel was directly inspired by the artist-monk.
The work of Fra Angelico and Michelozzi came together at San Marco in the delightful shaded San Antonio cloister, whose delicate pillars and colourful frescoes enclosed a tranquil green garden in the midst of the monastery.
Cosimo de’ Medici had undertaken the renovation of San Marco late in his life, intending it as absolution for the sin of usury, which had enabled him to accumulate his fortune as a banker. Yet there had also been a less manifest reason for Cosimo’s benevolence, one that explained why in particular he chose to lavish his wealth on San Marco, rather than other similarly prestigious monasteries in the city.
Before the 1433 coup which had removed Cosimo from power in Florence, almost costing him his life, he had managed in the nick of time to transfer secretly to San Marco a large quantity of the funds held in the Medici bank in Florence.
After Cosimo’s banishment into exile, his enemies had raided all Medici premises, as well as those of known supporters, but had been unable to discover the whereabouts of these funds, which had been held on trust, without a word, by the monks at San Marco.
In consequence, Cosimo had spared no expense on the rebuilding of San Marco, which eventually cost 30,000 florins – an unprecedented sum at the time.
The monastery had been furnished with a library, together with many hundreds of religious manuscripts, intended for public use – the first lending library in Europe.
Instead of the usual communal dormitory, each monk was assigned his own cell, many of which contained frescoes painted by Fra Angelico and his assistants. These were mainly portrayals of angels and biblical scenes.
A special double cell, sumptuously frescoed, had been created for Cosimo’s personal use, to which he would often retire for periods of contemplation.
However, he had taken a more active role in the creation of the gardens across the street from San Marco: as a man who delighted in retiring to the countryside, he had done his best to create a pastoral space here within the walls of the city. These gardens would in turn become a favourite spot of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who began decorating the shady spaces with pieces of ancient classical sculpture.
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Strathern, Paul. Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, Pegasus. Kindle Edition.
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Lucrezia de Medici
The major influence on the young Lorenzo (de Medici) would undoubtedly be his mother, Lucrezia, an intelligent and resilient woman in an age when females for the most part had little opportunity to assert themselves beyond the restricted domestic sphere.
Lucrezia came from an old and distinguished Florentine family, the Tornabuoni, and although her arranged marriage to a Medici was undoubtedly contracted for political reasons, she appears from her extant letters to have been genuinely fond of her husband, worrying over his health and betraying her concern that he should not ‘give way to melancholy’.
Yet these letters are not the only evidence of her writing, for Lucrezia de’ Medici was also a talented poet and hymnist. Although the conventional religiosity of her verse is of little modern interest, such piety did not stifle the warmth of her sympathetic personality.
Her verse appears to have been the outlet for a wider creative sensibility, which was used to some effect in guiding her husband’s discriminating patronage of such leading early Renaissance figures as the architect Michelozzi, who had designed the groundbreaking Palazzo Medici; the sculptor Donatello, whose innovative realistic sculptures included the first free-standing nude since classical times; and the troubled artist Fra Filippo Lippi, whose colourful larger-than-life portraits echoed his own larger-than-life personality.
All three of these artists Lucrezia came to regard as personal friends. The Medici were amongst the first patrons to recognise that artists were now becoming something more than mere craftsmen, and the family did their best to accommodate the increasingly difficult temperaments and wayward behaviour of these emergent genius-figures.
Lucrezia was also known to have influenced would be she who persuaded Piero to allow certain members of the Strozzi family to return from the banishment they had suffered for opposing Cosimo. This would prove a particularly astute move.
Of similar impact was Lucrezia’s formative influence upon the youthful Lorenzo, who quickly began displaying precocious brilliance in a variety of fields, ranging from classical literature to horseback-riding. He was also said to have had an exceptional singing voice, accompanying himself on the lyre.*
Strathern, Paul. Death in Florence: The Medici, Savonarola, and the Battle for the Soul of a Renaissance City, Pegasus. Kindle Edition.
A sure sign I’ve arrived!
After numerous short visits to Italy of 2 weeks or more over decades, I have finally arrived as an Italian resident! Woo hoo! Since my recent move into my new condo, I finally got to put my name in print on the building’s door bell system. I’m very proud!
June 2, Republic Day in Italy
Festa della Repubblica (Festival of the Republic) is a national holiday celebrated in Italy on June 2 each year. It celebrates the day when Italians voted to abolish the monarchy in 1946 so their country could become a republic.
The day commemorates the institutional referendum in 1946, in which the Italian people were called to the polls to decide on the form of government, following WWII and the fall of Fascism. With 12,717,923 votes for a republic and 10,719,284 for the monarchy, the male descendants of the House of Savoy were sent into exile and Italy became a republic.
Each year, a wreath is laid at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Republic Day. The tomb has an eternal flame that was added on November 4, 1921, even thought the tomb, which was designed by sculptor Alberto Sparapani, was not completed until 1924.
To recognize this holiday, official ceremonies are held, as well as military parades, and the laying of a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, inside the Altare della Patria in Rome.
The Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland), also known as the Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II (National Monument to Victor Emmanuel II) or Il Vittoriano, is a monument built in honor of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy, located in Rome. The monument occupies a site between Piazza Venezia and the Capitoline Hill.
Republic Day is a federal holiday in Italy and organizations and businesses that close include government offices, post offices, banks, schools and other educational institutions.
It’s 8 a.m., do you know where your fruits are?
Or, at least where they’ve been?
One of the thousands of things I love about living in Italy is how seriously they take their food. I have seen conversations in restaurants between customers and waitstaff about where the salami originated before the customer orders. It is endlessly entertaining to me.
But, with every bit of packaged fruit that you buy here, you get a little tag like the one above, telling you where the fruit originated and other info. The variety of nectarine that I purchased this morning, I learn from this tag, is a variety called “Big Bang” in English. (English is taking an evermore firm stand in Italy, which is both good and bad news.)
And best of all, the tag tells me the nectarines were grown in Italy. Sometimes the tag even tells you what province in Italy. I sometimes see foods like these originating in Spain (esp. for oranges) and even Egypt and Turkey. Fun to think about.
Villa Salviati
A couple of weekends ago, I had the pleasure of visiting a famous villa in Fiesole, the Villa Saliviati.
Of course the villa has its own (gorgeous) chapel; here is a detail of the ceiling:
And the villa also has a grotto:
There is a lot of interesting interior detailing:
So, now you’ve seen my pictures, let’s get some info from Wiki on the Villa:
History [ edit | wikitesto change ]
In the 14th century, the castle of the Montegonzi was built on this property land already belonged to the Del Palagio. In 1445, Arcangelo Montegonzi sold it to Alamanno Salviati , the man who introduced the cultivation of salamanna and jasmine grapesin Tuscany.
Alamanno commissioned Mielcozzian workers to reduce the castle to a villa, with a garden and woods . In 1490, the nephews of Alamanno, dividing their uncle’s assets, and gave the villa to Jacopo, who was related to Lorenzo de ‘Medici.
In 1493, new, considerable renovations were undertaken, to which perhaps Giuliano da Sangallo took part and which lasted about a decade.
Giovan Francesco Rustici also took part in the works. Between 1522 and 1526 he created for the villa a series of terracotta roundels with mythological subjects (such as Apollo and Marsyas or Jupiter and Bellerophon ).
Today the Villa’s Limonaia is the the headquarters of the Historical Archives of the European Union.
In 1529, the house was sacked by the anti-cult faction and between 1568 and 1583 Alamanno di Jacopo Salviati and his son Jacopo further enlarged and embellished the villa, with the gardens ( 1570 – 1579 ) and the buildings that border the northern border and create a scenic backdrop connected to the villa.
New Year’s eve, 1638, was an event to remember. That evening, in this villa, the severed head of the lover of Caterina Canacci, was brought to the villa, hidden under the linen that the wife of Salviati, Veronica Cybo, sent him weekly.
The villa then passed to the Aldobrandini – Borghese and on December 30th 1844 it was bought “with a closed gate” (ie with all the furnishings) from the Englishman Arturo Vansittard.
Then came the tenor Giovanni Matteo De Candia aka Mario, who lived there with his wife, the soprano Giulia Grisi , the Swedish banker Gustave Hagerman and finally, in 1901, the Turri.
The grotto:
During the WWII, the grotto was used as the post of an allied command: Lensi Orlandi recounted the memory of nocturnal visits of “kind and rich Florentine, often mature matrons”, who “crossed the threshold of those rooms to give honor to the admired winners” [2 ] .
There followed a long semi-abandonment, in which the villa was not accessible even to scholars (he visited Lensi-Orlandi in 1950, but could not Harold Acton in 1973 ).
In 2000 the monumental complex, together with its gardens, was purchased by the Italian Government to be destined for the European University Institute , which made it the seat of the Historical Archives of the European Union ; one can mention, among the various documents contained in them, the personal papers of the founding fathers, such as Alcide De Gasperi , Paul-Henri Spaak , Altiero Spinelli and Ernesto Rossi .
The end of the renovations took place in October 2009 and on December 17, 2009 the President of the Republic Giorgio Napolitanoinaugurated the Historical Archives of the European Union .
This villa was in communication with Villa Emilia (which was higher up) – which in ancient times was a convent of Cistercian nuns suppressed in 1453 – through an underground gallery : hence the other name with which the villa is known, “del Ponte at the Badia “.
Architecture [ edit | wikitesto change ]
The courtyard
The main body of the villa reveals its military origins, especially in the two crenellated turrets, in the corner, and in the crowning with the walkway on corbels , very similar, for example, to that of the villa of Careggi . It is made up of two adjacent buildings, but with similar architectural features: the east one is more massive and tall, the west one is of smaller volume and height.
The building is arranged around the central courtyard, portico on three sides with columns in pietra serena with Corinthian capitals ;the entablature towards the inside is decorated with graffito friezes, with the rounds of the Rustici inserted into this strip in correspondence with the round arches.
The interiors are often covered by vaulted , barrel and cross vaults .
Gardens [ edit | wikitesto change ]
The gardens
You get to the south facing of the villa through a long cypress avenue that once led to the Via Faentina and that after the construction of the railway was modified, creating a passage on it.
The Italian garden , in front of the villa, is built on three terraces at different levels and, although it is being restored, it is made up of geometric flower beds in boxwood with flowery essences. The property is then surrounded by a large English park , where there are, among other things, a bamboo grove, two ponds and, scattered here and there, various items of furniture, such as statues, temples, caves, fountains, pavilions and more.
Villa Salviati , or villa of the Ponte alla Badia , is located along the homonymous street near via Bolognese in Florence , [1]
get back, lauretta! 
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