Tag: florence

Sergio Cerchi

Paintings by Sergio Cerchi

Born in Florence in 1957, Sergio Cerchi is an Italian painter and musician. Beginning in his teenage years, he started to study in his two passions, the visual arts and music, by attending workshops held by Florence’s artists and playing in musical groups. Cerchi received his Bachelor of Arts from Florence’s Istituto D’Arte of Porta Romana and attended courses at the prestigious Luigi Cherubini Conservatory of Music.

Sergio Cerchi worked through a process of experimentation with various art techniques to develop his own personal style. His influences range from primitive art to the masters of the Italian Renaissance. Cerchi’s figurative and still life works are set in flattened and realist tableaux, similar to theater sets, within which are contained references to popular culture, art history and personal experience.

In Cerchi’s paintings, the pictorial surface as a whole is fractured into multiple quadrants whose portion of the image is rendered with different coloring and lighting. Through this technique, figures and objects are segmented and reconstructed in collages composed from their angled fragments. The resulting canvas, with its shifting, peeling surface and fading horizon planes, presents a unique version of cubist art.

Sergio Cerchi’s paintings are mostly executed in different shades of a dominant hue. Depending on the angle of each fragmented quadrant, the tone of that part of the image may appear softer or bolder. The palette of Cerchi’s oil paints range from warm undertones of red carmine, mixed with shades of green, ocher and blues, to tones of brown and gray. A prominent feature of his work is the use of bold, dramatic shading in the compositions.

Since 2011, Sergio Cerchi has been represented by Galleria Gagliardi located in San Gimignano, Siena, Italy. He presented his work at a 2013 curated exhibition, entitled “Art in Therapy”, held at the Chiesa di Sant’Agala, a national archeological site in Spoleto, Italy.

Note: Images of Sergio Cerchi’s work and information on exhibitions can be found through Galleria Gagliardi’s website located at: https://www.galleriagagliardi.com/en/artist-works/cerchi-sergio

Bottom Insert Image: Sergio Cerchi, “Supereroe”, 2017, Oil on Canvas, 100 x 100 cm, Private Collection

The Gaddi Torso

Artist Unknown, “Gaddi Torso”, Second-Century BCE, Greek Marble, 84 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

This Hellenistic marble male torso was purchased in 1778 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Peter Leopold I, from the Florence’s Gaddi Collection. There is no historical record of this work prior to the sale date; however, it was already in the collections of the Florentine Gaddi family in the early sixteenth-century, as Florentine artists and sculptors knew of it. 

The “Gaddi Torso” is derived from an earlier original work of the second-century BC. Although only the torso exists, it is clear that it was originally a Centaur whose hands were bound behind its back. What remains of the torso exhibits a young, muscled body with a twisted torso, straining against his bonds. This theme was represented several times in Hellenistic art, serving as an emblem of civilized control of Man’s baser nature.

The “Gaddi Torso” was used several times as a model for future works of art, particularly in the period between the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries. An example of this is Italian Renaissance painter Amico Aspertini’s 1515 oil painting on panel, “Adoration of the Shepherds”, also at the Uffizi Museum, which shows the torso on the far left side, pictured resting on a marble base. Inspired by careful study of the “Gaddi Torso”, painter Rosso Fiorentino used it as the model for his body of Christ in the 1526 “Dead Christ with Angels”.

The “Gaddi Torso” remained with the Gaddi heirs until it was sold, still in its untouched fragmentary condition, to Grand Duke Leopold I. Like the fragmentary marble “Belvedere Torso” in the Vatican Museum, it was never restored by being completed, something previously undergone by most other Antique fragmentary sculptures.

Calendar: February 7

Year: Day to Day Men: February 7

Late Morning Riser

The seventh of February in 1497, Shrove Tuesday, marks the day on which supporters of the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola lit the bonfire of the vanities in the public square of Florence, Italy. 

Born in the Duchy of Ferrara in September of 1452, Girolamo Savonarola was an ascetic Italian Dominican friar and an active preacher in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory and his advocacy for the destruction of secular art and culture, as well as his denunciation of both clerical and papal corruption. Savonarola’s education was overseen by Michele Savonarola, his grandfather and a successful physician. He earned an arts degree at the University of Ferrara and prepared for medical school; however at some point, he decided on a life in religion.

In April of 1475, Savonarola traveled to Bologna and entered the Friary of San Domenico of the Order of Friars Preacher. After a year, he was ordained to the priesthood and studied scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology. In 1476, Savonarola was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as an assistant master of novices. Six years later, he was sent to the Convent of San Marco in Florence where, assigned as a teacher of logic, he wrote manuals on ethics, philosophy and prepared sermons. It was during this period that Savonarola, while studying scripture, became to broach apocalyptic themes.

Girolamo Savonarola lived for several years as an itinerant preacher with messages of repentance and reform. In 1490, he was again assigned to San Marco. Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who due to his unorthodox views of the Church was living in Florence under the protection of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, persuaded de’ Medici to bring Savonarola to the city. Savonarola arrived in Florence in the middle of 1490 and began drawing large crowds with his preaching. He made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the people’s freedom and railed against the rich who exploited the poor.

Calling for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge, Savonarola wanted to establish Florence as the New Jerusalem, the center of the Christian world. The people of Florence embraced his extreme moralistic campaign to rid the city of vices. New laws were passed against public drunkenness, sodomy, adultery, and other moral transgressions, including immodest dress and behavior. Savonarola saw sacred art as a tool for his worldview and, therefore, was opposed to secular art which he saw as worthless.

Pope Alexander VI for some time tolerated Savonarola’s criticism of the Church, an undercurrent theme that had slowly been increasing in Savonarola’s sermons over the years. After he refused to appear before the pope in Rome, the Vatican banned him from preaching. Seeing his influence wane, Savonarola resumed his sermons which were becoming more violent in tone. He attacked secret enemies at home whom he suspected in league with the papal Curia and condemned conventional Christians who were slow to respond to his callings. Savonarola held special Masses for the youth, processions, bonfires, and religious theater in San Marco.

The  phrase “Bonfires of the Vanities” refers historically to the bonfire of the seventh of February in 1497 when Savonarola’s supporters gathered and burned thousands of objects in Florence’s public square. Held on Shrove Tuesday, an initial day of the religious observance Lent, the focus of this destruction was on objects that might tempt one to sin, including vanity items such as mirrors, cosmetics, fine dresses, playing cards and musical instruments. Other objects that burned in the bonfire included books Savonarola thought immoral, manuscripts of secular songs, and artworks including paintings and sculptures that were not sacred in nature. Anyone who raised objections against the destruction were forced to contribute by teams of Savonarola supporters.

Notes:  Girolamo Savonarola, invited to Florence at the request of Lorenzo de’ Medici, eventually became one of the foremost enemies of the House of Medici and assisted in their downfall in 1494. Campaigning against what he saw as the excesses of Renaissance Italy, Savonarola’s power grew so much that he became the effective ruler of Florence with soldiers assigned for his protection. 

In 1495, Savonarola refused to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French. When summoned by the Vatican to Rome, he refused to go and continued preaching under a ban imposed by the Vatican. After describing the Church as a whore, Savonarola was excommunicated in May of 1497 for heresy and sedition. He was executed in May of 1498 in Florence’s Piazza della Signoria, the site of his bonfires of the vanities; his body was burnt. By papal authority, Savonarola’s writings were to be given to a papal agent within four days for destruction. Anyone who did not comply faced excommunication.

Wooden Shutters

Wooden Shutters on Merchants’ Stores, Ponte Vecchio, Florence, Italy

The Ponte Vecchio is a medieval stone closed-spandrel segmental arch bridge  over the Arno River, in Florence, Italy, noted for still having shops built along it, as was once common. Butchers initially occupied the shops; the present tenants are jewelers, art dealers and souvenir sellers. The bridge is mentioned in the aria  “O Mio Babbino Caro” by Giacomo Puccini.

Bartolomeo Ammanati

Bartolomeo Ammanati, Statue of Faunus, Fountain of Neptune, Florence, Italy

Born in the city of Settignano in June of 1511, Bartolomeo Ammanati was an Italian sculptor and architect. Of his many works, the best known is the Fountain of Neptune located in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence. 

Though private commissions took place in Florence during the early 1500s , public works were not often produced. Commissioning sculptures for exterior, public areas was a tactic the Republic used in order to portray Florence as a reincarnation of Rome, which had a grand tradition of sculptural works for prominent public spaces. By establishing Rome as a predecessor of Florence, the city was seen as a prestigious, conquering city-state, equal to Rome’s glory and  capable of expanding its reach.

The marble and bronze Fountain of Neptune was commissioned by Florence in 1565 with the initial design work by sculptor and draftsman Baccio Bandinelli. He chose the large block of marble which was to be the central figure; however, he died in 1560 before the work stated. From 1563 to 1565 Bartolomeo Ammanati and his assistants sculpted the block, using Grand Duke Cosimo I as model for Neptune’s face. This statue was meant to highlight the Grand Duke’s goal of establishing a Florentine Naval force.

The majority of the design and sculpture was executed by Ammanati. He continued work on the fountain for a decade and added around its perimeter a collection of demigod figures which contained bronze, reclining river gods, fauns and satyrs, and marble sea horses emerging from the water. All these figures were modeled and cast under Ammanati’s supervision by a team of assistants. The female nude statue personifying Ops, the Sabine fertility deity, as well as the general design and character of the lesser gods are examples of the mature style he developed over the years.

One of the Fountain of Neptune’s bronze satyrs is Faunus, who, in the ancient Roman pantheon, was the horned god of the forest, plains, and fields. He eventually became equated with the Greek god Pan, and was also known among herdsmen as Inuus, the god who embodied sexual intercourse. One of the oldest Roman gods, Faunus revealed the future in dreams and voices to those who slept, while lying on the fleeces of sacrificial lambs,  in his precincts.

Wrestlers

Lysippus, “Wrestlers”, First Century BC, Marble, Height 89 cm, Uffizi Palace, Florence, Italy

Rarely did the architectural finds of the 16th century recover the large groups from ancient statuary in full, but the “Wrestlers” is an exception to this rule. The work was discovered, along with the famous group of Niobids, in 1583, in a vineyard owned by the Tommasini family near Porta San Giovanni in Rome. It represents a unique example, since no further copies are known.

In Roman times, this estate was part of the Horti Lamiani, sumptuous gardens on the top of the Esquiline Hill belonging to the residence of consul Lucius Aelius Lamia. Treasures such as the “Lancellotti Discobolus”, now at the National Museum of Rome) and the “Esquiline Venus”,now in the collection of the Capitoline Museums, were found in the same garden.

The “Wrestlers” depicts two men with pronounced muscular structure, engaged in a wrestling bout, rendered particularly realistic by the firm anatomies and good proportions of the subjects. The balance of the bodies is such that the outcome of the match is not revealed. The lost heads were added during restoration, ordered by Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, who purchased the work.

Exhibited for around a century at Villa Medici in Rome, the sculpture was transported to Florence in 1677, where further restoration work certainly led to the recovery of the top wrestler’s right arm.  The marble group, which dates to the 1st century B.C., is a Roman copy of a lost original in bronze from the 3rd century B.C.. The sculpture can be attributed to Lysippus, a sculptor renowned for many bronze and marble works and, in particular, for his portrait of Alexander the Great.