Spectacular collection of Russian icons at Palazzo Pitti in #Florence, the oldest (and possibly largest) collection anywhere outside of Russia and they didn’t arrive in the last century: Some of the icons were collected by the Medici family in the 16th and 17th centuries, and most of them go back to the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty in the 18th century and arrived in Tuscany already in 1761. This double panel is a Menologium, a liturgical calendar from the 1730s, Central Russia.
“Rothko a Firenze” at @palazzostrozzi 🖼️ It’s become a whole genre of exhibitions in Italy to show major American artists and their Italian influences and connections (previously Lewitt and De Kooning), accordingly a precious and compact show of Rothko decade by decade, highlighting his Italian moments: Venice, Pompeii but especially Florence: Michelangelo’s vestibule of the Laurentian Library and Fra Angelico’s frescoes at the convent of San Marco. #painting #modernart
These old school typologies/seriations of Neolithic material from Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia at the Florentine Institute of Prehistory are quite spectacular in their pseudo-rational/colonial vision, the perfectly linear sequences and layers as if anything in archaeological records fit into such neat Cartesian narratives. In the following slides exact same method applied to vast amounts of Paleolithic material from Italy. #archaeology #Florence
Incredible rock art from the end of the Paleolithic, at Grotta dell’Addaura in Monte Pellegrino (Palermo), from the small collection of the Florentine Institute of Prehistory. #archaeology #art
One of the most spectacular things to see in #Florence at @museo_archeologico_firenze : The Sarcophagus of the Amazons, found in Viterbo in 1869 by Bruschi and earmarked by the Savoy government for the museum in Florence. Made in the 4th century BCE, probably in Greece, it’s arare example of tempera painting on marble. #archaeology
A type of Cycladic idol I hadn’t seen before, the pregnant idol, which were presumably made only during the Early Cycladic II as a continuation of some mother goddess tradition? This fragment is from Delos at @museo_archeologico_firenze #archaeology #Greece
A rainy day at the Boboli Gardens in #Florence where Anna Banti fled on foot on August 4, 1944, after the Nazi bombardment of the historical bridges while retreating and that destroyed her house and with it the manuscript of her Artemisia novel. A novel that I would pick up in NY many summers ago and that I sent to @gregorybuchakjian from #Istanbul after the August 4, 2020, explosion in #Beirut. The ghost of the different Artemisias, Banti’s and the real one, hovering over the wet earth: Old Florence in the background and the tiny purple orchids of the garden, the statue of Ganymede’s Fountain by Lorenzi, the strange combination of an Egyptian obelisk from the 13th century BCE that was brought to Rome in the first century CE (long before European colonialism) and brought to Florence in 1788, juxtaposed with a 2nd century Roman labrum, and lastly the statue of Dionysus in a field of roses. #Florence #archaeology
Postcard from #Florence for @gregorybuchakjian : Artemisia’s painting “Judith and Her Maidservant” from 1615, depicting Biblical (Catholic/Orthodox) heroine Judith leaving the scene where they have just beheaded Holofernes, whose head lies in a basket. It is the only Artemisia in Florence (the city where she thrived as an artist between 1613 and 1620) at the Galleria Palatina in Palazzo Pitti, since the painting of St. Mary Magdalene is on loan to Torino’s Royal Museum and the Madonna and Child painting is currently in Rome. #art #Firenze
