Last weekend, my High Renaissance class did some visits around Florence that would not fit into regular class time. Firstly, we went to a hard-stones museum where we saw several examples of a type of mosaic invented during Mannerism here in Florence. There were also displays which endeavored to illustrate the procedures for working in this craft. It looked too tedious even for me.
Next we went to Santa Felicità to look at the Capponi Chapel wherein one finds Pontormo’s masterpiece, The Deposition. I enjoyed this visit so much that I decided to switch my paper topic from an examination of Michelangelo’s three Pietà s to a discussion of this painting, an infinitely more difficult topic as there is not nearly as much scholarship on Pontormo as there is on Michelangelo. To be entirely honest, I had not even heard of him until we began to cover Early Mannerism in this class. But, then, my knowledge of Early Mannerism and the Maniera is admittedly rather scant.
Our next stop was Palazzo Vecchio. Of course we went to the Sala dei Cinquecenti where we saw the Vasaris that cover Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and the place where Michelangelo was to paint his Battle of Cascina. As a matter of major interest, some scholars think that Vasari may have left Leonardo’s work unharmed in the same manner in which he preserved Masaccio’s Trinity when the granduke had him paint over it. There are apparently going to be some tests done to determine if it’s there or not. Also in this room was Michelangelo’s Victory, one of the Julian statues that never made it on the tomb.
We also got to see a secret alchemy study built by one of duke Cosimo’s sons to escape from politics into his favorite subject. It was really neat, with little doors revealing windows and cabinets and even passageways. We followed one of the passages to little tiny reading room which could have been made more cozy only by the addition of a little fire place and some hot soup.
Finally, we saw many frescoes by various Mannerist artists, Bronzino being the one I remember most (probably because we just studied him today in lecture), before going on lunch break. As it had been freezing cold, I rushed home and changed clothing and grabbed a heavier coat before eating and then hiking to the Santa Maria Novella bus stop. We all got on an unbearably crowded bus and headed to Certosa di Galluzzo, a monastery outside of Florence’s city walls which was Pontormo’s home for 3 years during a resurgence of the plague. There we saw some lunette frescoes by him in very bad condition owing to their long exposure to the elements. Most of his compositional elements in the frescoes came directly from a small print series of The Passion by Durer, a source of inspiration for which he was heavily criticized. This is because Italian artists felt that the Germans were barbarians who ought to learn art from Italian, not the other way around. His colors, though I realize they are not all in their original condition, were really amazing. The way he used green for shading pink cloth, or purple to shade yellow was both unexpected and delightful. A lot of his shapes have very abstract qualities, as well, putting the emphasis on the abstraction of composition. I was really impressed and took several photographs.
We wandered around the rest of the monastery, looking into one of the apartment cells open for exhibition. This was a really swanky monastery: each monk had his own garden, well, bedroom, living room/study, and little library area. I guess the catch was that they were sworn to permanent silence. It’s actually still a functioning monastery, just for a different order so that when we went into the little shop, the monks were allowed to communicate with us. I bought some little honey candies.
November 21, 2007
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