Florence, 4 November 1966

This is a photo of the Filistrucchi shop and studio in Via Giuseppe Verdi 9 in Florence, which opened its doors in 1720. I took it in 2006.

Florence, Italy, Photo by N. Moropoulos

In Italy they use the word “bottega” for a studio of a master artist, in which lesser artists, apprentices, or students learn by participating in the work.

Bottega Filistrucchi is a place for the production of wigs, prosthetics and masks, and also a workshop accredited by the Tuscany Region (BS0983) for the training of students in the field of theatrical make-up and the production of masks. A place where one can learn the traditional craft.
There are two windows in the photo. One is open, the other is closed. On the left side of the open window there is an inscription. Until today I had not read it. Today I did.

Here is the detail of the photo.

Florence, Italy – Detail, Photo by N. Moropoulos

The inscription reads:

“Il 4 Novembre 1966

Qui arrive l’ aqua dell’ Arno”

4 November 1966

The Arno waters have reached here

Arno is the river that crosses Florence. You can see it on the lower left side of the map. The bottega is on the upper left side, marked with a red ellipse. the famous Florentine Bridge, Ponte Vecchio, is marked with a blue ellipse on the lower left side.

Detail of Florence – Google Maps

Fifteen years after I took the photo, I managed to spot a detail that tells a story. Better late than never.

First day of the year 2016 – Lunch

 

snow

The day started with snow on the ground and the trees, the bushes, the table, the umbrella, and so on.

The concept of this menu was developed by my alter ego, Niccolo Spiro Salvatore Domenico Francesco Morosini. I confess I have an affinity to the Venetian Republic, la Serenissima, Florence, and Italy in general.

bread
Home made bread

Home baked bread

Made with flour from the region of Macedonia, Drama.

salami

Smoked salami from Corfu

There are still some artisans producing delicious food. This salami is spicy and rich. The best antipasto for a cold day. I can see the traces of the influence of Venetian rule on the island of Corfu. Corfu has never been ruled by the Ottoman Turks.

olives

Olives from Amfissa

I served two types, the juicy salty big ones, and the sweet wrinkled (hamades), the ones made from olives that have fallen on the ground and not picked.   Amfissa is a provincial city 10 km away from Delphi. The breathtaking valley of olive trees that you see from Delphi belongs to the area of Amfissa. That’s where the olives come from.

cabbage

Rolled Cabbage with pork sausage cooked in duck fat

I had some sausages from the Basque country and used them as filling in the cabbage rolls. I served them with a light sauce of coriander and lemon juice.

sauage

The sausage and duck fat were produced by the artisan ANNE ROZES on France, Basque Country. The cabbage is locally produced in Marathon, and it is like silk. Very tender, sweet, the perfect companion to duck fat.

baked.jpg

Tourte with Ewe

I roasted the ewe, cut it to small cubes and then marinated it in a mix of herbs and spices. The tradition of preparing a tourte with meat comes from the island of Crete, another place in Greece that has been ruled by the Venetian Republic.

served1

Cheeses

Both the fresh cheese and the Gruyere come form the island of Crete.

cheeses

New Year’s Gateau

A traditional gateau of the north of Greece, with butter, flour, eggs and lemon zest.

gateau

Wines 
Patrimo, 2001
Feudi di San Gregorio

La Poderina
Poggio Banale 1997
Brunello di Montalcino

Champagne Laurent – Perrier
BRUT

 

Donatello's "The Penitent Mary Magdalene"

Following the trail I started with Titian’s “Pieta”, today I go a few years back to meet another Genius and Master, Donatello.

Donatello's statue outside the Uffizi Gallery in Florence

As I read in PBS’s web site:

“Donatello was not a popular person, but in his sculptures he managed to capture life itself. Every look and gesture was rich in humanity and personality. He was known to mutter “speak, damn you, speak!” at his figures as he worked.

In 1434, following his triumph over the enemies of the Medici, Cosimo requested a special commission from his friend. A statue of an Old Testament hero, symbolizing triumph against the odds. Donatello’s bronze “David” broke all the rules.

Donatello: Davis, Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Firenze

A playful, sensuous, and androgynous hero, “David” was the first life-size nude to be cast in bronze since Classical times.

In the 1450s Donatello began work on a terrifying statue, the most vivid of his career. The “Penitent Mary Magdalen”, carved for the baptistry of Florence, is an eloquent vision of fear and decay, perhaps brought on by the realization of Donatello’s own mortality.”

( The material of the previous paragraphs comes from the web site of USA’s Public Broadcasting Service, PBS.)

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalene, Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, Firenze

From David to Mary Magdalen. It is a path of life.

Mary Magdalene has been the subject of many paintings and sculptures.

Titian: The Repentant Mary Magdalen

Titian has painted a portrait of Mary, which is in the Gallery of Palazzo Pitti, a few hundred meters away from Donatello’s sculpture, which is in the Duomo Museum of Florence.

What a contrast between Titian and Donatello’s interpretation! Is it only Titian portraying Mary as a young woman, repentant or not?

El Greco: Mary Magdalene in penitence

Not really. Look at El Greco’s interpretation. Mary is young, very young, beautiful, with long hair that envelopes her body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The hair is the only common element between Titian’s and El Greco’s paintings and Donatello’s sculpture.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Donatello wanted Mary to be an old woman. A woman approaching the end of her life.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

A woman whose face is pierced by the bones, whose eyes inhabit open dark holes, whose mouth is almost toothless.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

Her hands are almost forming a prayer pair, but not so.  It is as if she was going to pray but she changed her mind as the hands were coming together, but not touching yet.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

The aging woman is standing firmly on her feet. As disconcerting her hace and overall condition may be, she is standing with confidence and without any weakness. She is almost “relaxed” when it comes to her feet.

This in my view is the key to “reading” the work. Reading the body.

Donatello: The Penitent Mary Magdalen (detail)

As the eye travels from the face to the torso, the hands and then to the feet, the ambivalence of the artist manifests itself in a comprehensive way.

This ambivalence is the distinctive feature of the work, a feature that differentiates Donatello’s interpretation from Titian’s and El Greco’s.

In both paintings, Mary is a person wiht a clear attitude and stance in life. Repentant in Titian’s painting, full of devotion in El Greco’s.

But in Donatello’s sculpture, Mary may be skinny and appearing in a state of departure from the worldly affairs, but at the same time she is not fully wholy absorbed by her devotion or repentance. Her body language expresses ambivalence and the coexistence of the worldly stuff with the heavenly. This is what I find amazing in this work. Donatello either consciously or subconsciously is a Modern Master in this work, as he depicts Mary in the state of inner conflict, in the state of Being and Being Not.

What Donatello may have started as a work that would portray his fear of Death, his anguish of getting old, was transformed in the creative process to a work that is full of Life, as Life is ambivalence and contradiction and conflict.

Michelangelo's Bacchus (1497) in the Bargello Museum, Florence, Italy

I recently visited again the Bargello Museum in Florence, and was mesmerized by the Michelangelo sculptures on display.

I therefore decided to write one post for each, in the chronological order they were created. The first one is Bacchus as it was finished in 1497. Bacchus and St Peter’s Pieta are the only sculptures that can be attributed with certainty to Michelangelo’s Roman period.

Michelangelo: Bacchus, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

Bacchus is depicted with rolling eyes, his staggering body almost teetering off the rocky outcrop on which he stands. Sitting behind him is a faun, who eats the bunch of grapes slipping out of Bacchus’s left hand. With its swollen breast and abdomen, the Bacchus figure suggested to Giorgio Vasari “both the slenderness of a young man and the fleshiness and roundness of a woman”, and its androgynous quality has often been noted (although the testicles are swollen as well). The inspiration for the work appears to be the description in Pliny the Elder’s Natural History of a lost bronze sculpture by Praxiteles, depicting “Bacchus, Drunkenness and a satyr” (Source 1: Wikipedia)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

Bacchus is more imaginative, experimental and inventive than either the Pieta or David, the two great sculptures with
which Michelangelo followed it. While the level of the carving and the resolution of compositional problems
in the Pieta is extraordinary by any criterion, the arrangement and attitude of the figures were not new; examples of the Virgin holding her dead son in her lap were known in Florentine painting at least a decade before Michelangelo began work on the group, and his apprenticeship as a painter in Ghirlandaio’s shop in the late 1480s would have made him
fully aware of them. David is astounding for his size, and for the skill with which Michelangelo overcame the difficulties of scale and of a shallow block, but the figure type is well known, and can be traced back through Donatello and Nicola Pisano to antique art. (Source 2: Ralph Lieberman, Regarding Michelagelo’s Bacchus)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

In Michelangelo’s treatment, on the other hand, we understand from the figure’s reeling pose that he is experiencing the effects of his wine, and the stunning conjunction of character and behavior weds form to content at a level unknown in earlier Renaissance sculpture. Michelangelo’s profound exploration of the nature and personality of his subject led
him to create a figure difficult to accept by someone anticipating a more traditional representation, and Cardinal Riario was not prepared for a Bacchus who behaves in a drunken, indecorous way and who, “in brief…, is not the image of a god.” (Source 2)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

The group is prophetic in that in Bacchus, and even more in the satyr who attends him, are to be discerned the origins of the figura serpentinata, to become familiar two generations later, but here the poses Michelangelo gave his figures do not make them exercises in elegant artifice; Bacchus himself is in some ways an example of almost brutal realism. (Source 2)

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

We see the young Michelangelo having fun, portraying the God of Wine in a drunken state. The God is tipsy turvy, but why not?

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

But Dionysus is not the only one having fun. The young Satyr glued to him is devouring a bunch of grapes, his facial expression being the one of utter pleasure.

Michelangelo: Bacchus, detail, Museo del Bargello, Firenze

In addition to the depiction of fun, we have a very sensual depiction of the human body.

Dionysus is depicted as a sensual, hedonistic creature, seeking pleasure in more than one ways.

Michelangelo has taken the Greek Classical style’s line perfection, added the expressibility and character of the Hellenistic period, and crowner everything with his own passion for life, founded on the belief that life is beautiful. After all, this is the work of a 21 year old genius.