Fra Angelico’s frescoes: the treasure of the San Marco Museum

Fra Angelico’s frescoes: the treasure of the San Marco Museum

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This museum occupies an extensive area of the Dominican monastery of San Marco and still retains its original atmosphere. Founded in 1436 and designed by the architect Michelozzo, the monastery played an important role in the religious and cultural life of Florence. The fame of the museum is mainly due to the paintings of Beato Angelico (Blessed angelic one), one of the most representative painters of the Renaissance who embellished with its frescoes various rooms of the building, most remarkably the cells of the monks. A wonder to view also here:
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Cappella Brancacci, the Sistine Chapel of Florence

Cappella Brancacci, the Sistine Chapel of Florence

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Beyond the streets crowded by the omnipresent tourists looking for Florentine gems from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, there are less exploited corners of great historical and artistic richness as the Brancacci Chapel, also known as the «Sistine Chapel of the first Renaissance». The paintings on the walls are among the most popular and influential frescoes at the time. They are distributed in two horizontal levels along the chapel, which is part of the Carmine church and convent, founded in Florence in the mid-thirteenth century by a group of Carmelite monks from Pisa. Located in Piazza del Carmine (Florence-Oltrarno), the Cappella Brancacci is one of the oldest monumental buildings in Florence. The frescoes illustrating the life of Saint Peter are masterpieces by Masaccio and Masolino, painted between 1425 and 1427, just in the early years of the Florentine Renaissance. Later on, Filippino Lippi was called to complete Masaccio’s chapel decoration, which had been left unfinished due to Masaccio’s death in 1428.

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Casa Guidi, poet Elizabeth Barrett´s home in Florence

Casa Guidi, poet Elizabeth Barrett´s home in Florence

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Visiting a house-museum always embraces a closer emotional approach to the artist who lived there than just simply observe the works displayed in the neutral and dehumanized rooms of a museum. Casa Guidi was the Florentine residence of poets Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning for the most part of their married life. Located in the heart of Florence, the apartment has elegant main chambers with an 18th century decoration style and essentially maintains the same furniture that in the Brownings´ age. They resided here for fourteen years, between 1847 and 1861, and these interiors served as inspiration for some of their greatest poems, like Casa Guidi Windows (Elizabeth Barrett, 1851), inspired by her struggle for freedom.…

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Galleria Frilli, the legendary studio and sculpture gallery of Florence

Galleria Frilli, the legendary studio and sculpture gallery of Florence

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Founded in 1860, the family run Gallery-Studio Frilli quickly achieved international recognition for its marble replicas of classical, Renaissance and neoclassical sculptures. Indeed, walking through its comfortable rooms one feels in a Renaissance theme park. The sculptures seem just about to talk. Conceived with the purpose of decorating ostentatious residences in Europe, America and Asia, Frilli has the largest collection of models derived directly from the original pieces, museums and monuments from the Western world. That is why the works are considered real replicas and not mere copies. The family also created the bronze replicas at Lorenzo Ghiberti´s Gates of Paradise in the baptistery of Florence. Perfect for an LSD trip.
Galleria Frilli -Via dei Fossi, 26, 50123 Florence FI 

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Uncommon museums of Florence #2: Stefano Bardini Museum

Uncommon museums of Florence #2: Stefano Bardini Museum

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Stefano Bardini (1854-1922) was a prominent Italian antiquary who decided to transform his collection into a museum and donate it to the city of Florence. The building, a magnificent palace eclectic in style, where the museum has its headquarters, was acquired and restored by Bardini in 1881, in order to be used for his antiquarian trade activity. The antiquary modified the structure adding new gates and stairs, used medieval and Renaissance stones, chimneys, in addition, he affixed painted coffered ceilings. Bardini transformed the old building — the former church and convent of San Gregorio della Pace — into a wonderful neo-Renaissance villa, where, besides the exhibition halls, there were workshops so that the pieces were restored before selling them.

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Uncommon museums of Florence #3: Museo di Casa Martelli

Uncommon museums of Florence #3: Museo di Casa Martelli

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There is always an interesting spot to discover in Florence that keeps us away from the common repertoire, this is the case for the so-called Martelli’s House Museum. The Museo di Casa Martelli was a residential palace inhabited since the beginning of the 16th century by the bankers family Martelli. In 1986, Francesca Martelli, last family member living there, left the house to the Curia of Florence. In 1998, the Curia sold the palace to the Italian State and it became a museum in 2009. From that point on, the palace is a state civic museum that displays the remains of the Martelli family valuable art collection, as well as the house frescoes.…

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«Carlo Cantini. Between realism and imagination,» photo exhibition at Villa Bardini, Florence

«Carlo Cantini. Between realism and imagination,» photo exhibition at Villa Bardini, Florence

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From the artistic to the bucolic; from fashion photography to everyday documentary snapshots, this is the artistic journey of Carlo Cantini, a contemporary Florentine photographer and one of the best Italian photographers of the 20th century. On display until March 17 at Villa Bardini, Carlo Cantini. Between Realism and Imagination exhibits seventy photographs, inspired by Berengo Gardin and Mario Giacomelli, which document some of Florence’s most significant events of the last fifty years of the past century. His photographs document Florentine streets and countryside everyday scenes. Besides that, Cantini´s work is connected to the Pitti fashion shows, theater, contemporary art, enchanted gardens and allegorical nymphs, classical nude paying tribute to sculpture, and architecture. All in all, Cantini´s œuvre is a constant search for equilibrium between realism and imagination.

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«Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo,» retrospective at Palazzo Strozzi

«Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo,» retrospective at Palazzo Strozzi

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The first comprehensive retrospective devoted to Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488) will be on display in Florence from March 9 to July 14 at Palazzo Strozzi, with an accompanying presentation at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello. Verrocchio, Master of Leonardo brings together masterpieces by Verrocchio from collections around the world, contextualized by works from his forefathers and peers, as well as by the pupils he worked intensively with, including Leonardo da Vinci, Pietro Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli.

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«The Cleaner:» Marina Abramović at Palazzo Strozzi

«The Cleaner:» Marina Abramović at Palazzo Strozzi

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Florence is alive and wants to express itself. Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi presents a retrospective of world-wide acclaimed performance artist Marina Abramović. The show opens its doors on September 21, the same day that L’Eredità delle Donne festival begins. During four months, till January 20, 2019, Florence and particularly the Palazzo Strozzi hosts an exhibition that pays tribute to the fifty-year career of one of the heavyweights of Action Art. She is the first woman that has a “solo exhibition” at the Palazzo Strozzi.…

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Primo Conti, exhibition at Villa Bardini in Florence

Primo Conti, exhibition at Villa Bardini in Florence

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The current exhibition at Villa Bardini, «Fanfare e silenzi. Viaggio nella pittura di Primo Conti,» is dedicated to the Florentine painter Umberto Primo Conti. Thirty years after his death, the show wants to illustrate and celebrate the artistic career of Conti, painter, composer and writer who belonged to the Italian avant-garde movement Futurism. In a chronological itinerary through the rooms of Villa Bardini, the display is divided into eight thematic sections, that correspond the different phases of Conti’s artistic career. Besides that, his oeuvre has been contextualized through the dialogue with artworks by other artists — teachers, friends, classmates … — connected with his creations. This relational exhibition responds to Conti’s own attitude, as he wanted to preserve not only his legacy but also the collective memory of an artistic period as extraordinary and flourishing as the Florence prior World War I. Until January 13, 2019.

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