Florence blog

Until the 26th of February, the exhibition ‘Dante illustrato’ is being presented at Sala del Camino in the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The exhibition is curated by Giorgio Marini and it’s organized around 64 photographs that were used in the illustration of ‘The Divine Comedy’ of 1898. Its aim is to boost the photographic heritage of the cabinet, a process that began in 2002.

The 1898 edition of ‘The Divine Comedy illustrated’ has singular and modern characteristics for its time, since they used photographs that were made by Giuseppe Cremoncini on aspects of life to illustrate the text. The work was published initially in installments and then the complete edition in 1898. The negatives were donated and preserved, which has permitted the engrossment of the photographic heritage.

This effort to illustrate this version of ‘The Divine Comedy’ took Cremoncini on a tour of the whole of Tuscany, where he came across various difficulties, such as bad weather and impassable roads, among other small problems. However, the passion for Dante’s work made him overcome all of the problems to obtain the best images that illustrated the masterpiece of Italian renaissance.

Giuseppe Cremoncini was born in Florence in 1869. He was the second male son of a family that belonged to the local bourgeoisie, and he mainly worked in his father’s businesses, a well-known land owner in the region. From a young age he began to show interest in photography, when it was still a privilege in some social sectors due to the high costs of this activity of leisure. In 1897 an accident with a gas lamp killed Cremoncini, at the age of 28.

Dante Alighieri was born in Florence circa 1265. He was known as the father of Italian language and as an active participant of the political struggles of the time, that tried to unify Italy. He wrote important pieces of philosophy, literature and politics that placed him under the watchful eye of the authorities due to his vision on the necessary separation of the Church and the State. His masterpiece was ‘The Divine Comedy’, which is written in tercets and summarised medieval cosmogony.

Dante was a writer and a poet who renovated literary style by trying to make his own mark, far from all influence. He managed to do so with a vivid use of the language, whose expressive wealth managed to mix symbolic elements with historical characters, to which he added mythology to build a synthesis on the history of mankind until then, from ancient times to the Middle Ages.

Through hell, the purgatory and paradise, Alighieri writes a story on power and life, where he places the characters according to their singularities in one space or another assigned by religion as a punishment or a prize for their behaviour on Earth.

For more information: http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/en/mostre/mostra.php?t=4ec5bbbff1c3bcec13000000

Nancy Guzman

A great place to spend the early months of 2012 is in apartments in Florence There you will enjoy some of the best programmes that this beautiful city offers its visitors.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Florence is a city which has everything so that the visitor can enjoy it: history, culture, good weather and beauty. With all of this we could call it the Pearl of Tuscany, the region where it’s located and which is famous for its excellent cuisine. For this reason, we will give you the best recommendations to eat or dine with all Florence’s charm.

Trattoria Ponte Vecchio is an excellent representative of this culture and the taste to preserve traditions, a restaurant which has the name of the most famous bridge in Italy and is located a few steps away from it. Located in an early 14th century building which, since the 1950s, has become a cult place for all fine dining lovers in Florence, it has inherited that relaxed atmosphere that all trattorias have. Its menu includes starters, typical regional pastas, meat and fish. In the wine list we can find regional wines, sparkling wines and champagne, although the house wine is a Leonardo Chianti of excellent quality. The prices for dinner are quite affordable for all pockets.

Restaurante Il Latini is one of Florence’s favourite places because, to its traditional cuisine, they add the singular way of putting extensive tables where everyone sits, in the pure Italian countryside families, although if you order a more intimate table, it won’t be a problem. The house dish is pasta and nothing better than accompanied by an excellent Caprese salad. The menu has interesting lamb dishes and Florentine fillets with sautéed vegetables among others. It’s located on Via del Palchetti 6.

Osteria della Pagliazza is a place where you can sample classic Tuscan cuisine that the chef Simona Bertaccini compiled from old recipes from the area which she has developed in her kitchen, preserving the traditional procedures in the cooking. It’s located in the old town of Florence, at the feet of the Torre della Pagliazza and on Plaza Santa Elisabetta.

Restaurante La Giostra doesn’t have any exterior sign that indicates that it’s a restaurant, but it’s located on Borgo Pinti 12, not far from the Duomo. Its atmosphere is refined and at any moment you can come across an internationally acclaimed artist dining on the next table. The food is very contemporary, such as its antipasti of prosciutto and melon, or the carpaccio and pastas. The house wine is from the region and it’s in perfect harmony with the flavours on the menu. All of this has the flavour of modernity with a sweet mix of homemade food.

Restaurante Enoteca Pinchiorri offers an exquisite menu of Italian food with fusions of French cuisine which positions it among the 50 best restaurants in the world. Despite this cosmopolitan atmosphere, Tuscan pasta is one of the dishes which predominates its tables. It’s located on Via Ghibellina 87, and we recommend that you book a table in advance.

Nancy Guzman

If you want to relax during this start of the year, rent apartments in Florence and enjoy its history, its fine dining and the pleasure of a city on a human scale.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Those in Florence from the 17^th of December 17, can’t miss the exhibition “Paths of the Destroyer”, by the young Zealander artist Pete Wheeler. This is his first Italian solo exhibition and will take place at Poggiali e Forconi Gallery, an art space that once again shows his international vocation. In fact, this new proposal comes after an extensive series of exhibitions, which has the participation of Youssef Nabil (Egypt) Patti Smith (USA) and the very young English artist Thomas Gillespie.

The opening of the exhibition by Pete Wheeler (www.petewheeler.co.nz), is curated by the Italian Commissioner Lorenzo Bruni. It will start at 18hrs and will end at 21hs30. The gallery is located in Via della Scala 35 / A and its opening hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 10 to 13hs and 15hs30 to 19 (Monday is the day of closing). Admission to the exhibition is free.

Pete Wheeler was discovered by Poggiali e Forconi in the important contemporary art fair in Basel (2011). The artist, who lives and works in Berlin, has accepted the offer to exhibit in this space, and he has dedicated himself to the realization of a series of works made precisely in order to display them in Italy, in his first individual exhibition in this country. The intention of all his works is to create a special atmosphere, a suggestion and an evocation. Its execution was carried out using different techniques, ranging from painting to drawing, through sculptural works. These 15 canvases in large format, depict figurative scenes, whose images are born from a strong conflict between parts of light and darkness painted on canvas. Thus, by the impact generated by the color, create surreal landscapes, dreamscapes.

Previously, Pete Wheeler used in his paintings, very conflicting and aggressive images, often related to the mass media and political propaganda (especially interested aesthetics of Nazi Germany and Islamic fundamentalism). Thus, Wheeler expressed his social awareness and political interest, focusing his painting in the conflicts of contemporary society. However, during his shows in Italy, his pictorial research is enriched with an ontological reflection: What are the “Paths of the Destroyer”? Pete Wheeler replied, “It’s a small part of something larger, a pluralism that you have to recognize yourself.”

He was born in Geraldine in 1978 and lived in Dunedin during the late ’90s and early 2000. He graduated in Fine Arts at Otago Polytechnic, and after his degree, held over 15 solo exhibitions in New Zealand, Australia, USA and Europe.

menschauser

So if you are in Italy at the time of the exhibition, we recommend you to rent apartments in Florence and come to appreciate the work of this important emerging artist. You will like it!

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Translated by: Hans
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Florence deserves one, two and three visits, almost no one can disputed that. If you suffer from Stendhal Syndrome (counted, there are over a hundred people attended medically for having this “disease” per year), the best cure is to travel to the City of Arno, again and again. Thus, the retina will get used to so much beauty to your soul can assimilate without you come to faint. From its beautiful palaces crowded with works of art through its stately squares with marble facades to the Boboli Gardens, authentic green lung, as I said on another occasion, it doesn’t content with just being a park use, Florence awaits the traveler desirous of an encounter with the sublime. If that is inseparable from the place were not enough, from time to time, held an exhibition that comes to dwell further on this concept that the traveler has learned from this corner of Tuscany: the place par excellence of art.

Remember that the Pitti Palace is one of the most impressive buildings in Florence. Its huge Renaissance façade, made of stone and designed by following a rigorous geometric order, holds an enviable collection divided into several galleries. The original of the almighty Medici, is grouped into the so-called Palatine with works by Raphael, Rubens and Titian. But it does not only nourishes the Renaissance of the Pitti Palace since, this is less known, paintings and sculptures are of mixed age and reach even into the twentieth century.

As this was not enough, from October 2011 until the 12^th of February 2012, the Pitti Palace presents one of those exhibitions organized with the sane or insane intention of overwhelm visitors with works of art of all kinds. The title of this exhibition is La Bella Italia (beautiful Italy) and aims to show the artistic vision of various city-states before unification. 1861 is the date of creation of modern Italy as a nation. Previously, cities like Venice, Rome, Florence or Siena, were centers of political and economic independent power of each other and in the odd case facing death in long and bloody battles. The different masters, such as the Medici of Florence, were made to build their palaces, as they were real courts, with an incredible amount of artworks and precious objects of all kinds. The money from the trade and complex financial transactions (this is not something new) had a rich craft industry flourish of fashion, jewelry or furniture. But the release of these vented patrons came much further: the unconditional support to the artists who relapsed or were born in each of these cities. The result is well known: an unprecedented surge of artistic expression in all genres. And this particular view of these city-states by Titian, Michelangelo, Canaletto, Caravaggio, Botticelli, Donatello, Raphael, Veronese … (and so on to complete three hundred different works) is what is in this sample. I leave here the link of exhibition (http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/mostre/mostra.asp?id=239) where you can find all the practical information, because this article was not long enough to describe everything.

Candela Vizcaíno

And remember to book one of the nice apartments in Florence (you can do it online) and slowly enjoy this compelling city.

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Translated by: Hans
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There was a very long time in which airports were able to inspire countless movies and books, perhaps Essays in Love (1993) by Alain de Botton has been one of the last representatives of that era and even legendary music albums as music for Airports (1978) by Brian Eno, his attempt to emulate the effect produced on us by the fine arts, which were used to trace the outlines of an era self absorbed, fragmented and full of confidence.

Some of the criticisms of the work by Eno insisted on what they considered its greatest faults: beatless music, no rhythm and no melody. Eno, predictably, was pleased to read them, because they stated that he had succeeded in his attempt to leave almost everything off the disk. Since few things are so similar to the architecture and music, gifted with a prodigious ability to create space, we might even add without reflecting the status of airports as quintessential non-places, in fact, perhaps even more aristocracy of non-places. Perhaps this is one of the greatest charms of airports, their transient nature, the fact that everything at them seems to be perpetually in transit around the world, coming or going somewhere, in a continuous process of deterritorialization that releases the possibilities and thought.

It is not difficult to confuse the destiny of the planes that we see flashing, incessant and hypnotic in the screens with our own and being overcome by the urge to catch the first plane to appear on them, or submit information to new forms of Oracles that will give us guidance and direction in our lives who suddenly confused is released and suspended outside space and time. No field is presented then more favorable for the random encounters, however, in this context is hard not to notice as completely predetermined.

Unfortunately the pretext of the global war against terrorism, among other reasons, has made traveling by air and stay at the airport in a humiliating and stressful process that has deprived people of its ancient and unique charm, the only advantage of having the time saved in long journeys and a vague residue of the wonderful choreography millimeter of people and objects that work in them, the protagonists of a ritual dance rhythms slow and precise, which continues to fascinate strangely.

Against this, the old pleasure of the road trip, which feels like a pilgrimage or journey of initiation of ancestral echoes our time on earth, perhaps magnetized streams and underground fire at a prodigious eruption formed foundation at some point, according to tradition empedoclea Pythagorean origin, the stars and the cosmos through which aircraft travel today, re-gain followers with promises of slow tempos and auto-dialed to connect us with the cycles of nature and possibility of an adventure open to deviance.

Paul Oilzum

If you rent apartments in Florence you will receive upon arrival the city, in this case perhaps the least thing to worry is the transport used, it is in its unique microcosm that will your delicate trip start

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Translated by: Hans
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Amici della Musica in Florence

Florence is the capital of Tuscany, Italy, and it is known for its art and architecture, but it is also known for an exciting event that has existed since 1919: The Amici della Musica.

The History of the Amici della Musica

Since Florence felt the need to create a music center, the Amici della Musica was born in 1919. This association organizes concerts and cultural events. They are known for hosting very prestigious concerts both in Italy and abroad. The Amici della Musica features big names in the music industry. Oftentimes they include winners of different competitions. Originally the association intended to only host events for a select audience. As time passed by, however, they felt the need to cater to wider audiences in order to increase the number of those who appreciate classical music.

The Main Event

Starting this October 2011, The Amici della Musica will be holding concerts. The season is entitled Friends of Music. Lists of concerts were already lined up to serve visitors and locals with a taste for classical music. Starting in October 2011 and lasting until the month of April 2012, the grounds of Amici della Musica will be filled with music and music lovers. This event has been greatly anticipated by a lot of people who are thirsty for high quality classical music.

Amici della Musica and Its Composition

Amici della Musica has an ensemble that gives concerts in different formats. The ensemble is led by director Claudio Rastelli. It also includes other founding members such as Gabriele Betti, Paçalin Zef Pavaci, and Paolo Vergari. All driven by the love of music, these talented musicians were gathered in order to deliver great music and outstanding concerts.

Those who want to have an evening full of relaxing classical music should not miss the Amici della Musica in Florence. The whole month of November through the month of April will give you an opportunity to enjoy this amazing musical event in Italy. Your accommodations in Florence will allow you to enjoy breathtaking views of Florence and an event that will make your night even more romantic than what you originally planned.

D. Laney

Your apartments in Florence will be even more delightful when you take the time to enjoy Amici della Musica. Music lovers everywhere will enjoy the remarkable concerts at this event. Make time to relax in Florence by attending.

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In an interview in 1988, Leonard Cohen made one of the most intelligent approaches to the figure of Bob Dylan- artist who will perform at Nelson Mandela Forum in Florence (http://www.mandelaforum.it/notizie.php?ID=483 ) next 11^th of November – that has been done before. In it, he compared the music and the paint worlds to conclude on one hand that his genius mind and the importance of his work can only be compared to those of Picasso (with respect to the exuberance of his talent, the wide spectrum covered by this unique, colossal, almost monstrous assimilative capacity of the legacy of the entire history of art) and on the other hand regretted that music critics continue anchored in a merely figurative approach that prevented him from appreciating the high degree of sophistication achieved by Dylan as a singer, his immeasurable talent as a composer and songwriter has seemed forever beyond any doubt.

The citation appears in the magnificent and highly acclaimed two-volume book, Paul Williams, Bob Dylan Performing Artist, from the very extensive and incomprehensible bibliography devoted to the enigmatic and elusive artist from Minnesota perhaps, one of the most unique and outstanding in the world. It is very difficult to talk about Dylan, first ,because it was hard to say something about him that someone had not already published before. His influence on popular music has been so extraordinary and so many of his albums in six different decades and two centuries deserve to be called absolute masterpieces, that paralysis occurs to anyone who tries to approach a study of his work that aspires not to be expendable. On the other hand, however, Dylan continues to be an impenetrable mystery who can only be approached in a multi-faceted and fragmented way, as he has always been presented himself, saying the richness of his multiple and elusive masks. That may not be least of the many virtues of I `m Not There, the Todd Haynes formidable film conducted four years ago.

Williams’s book is fascinating, because it brilliantly goes deep into a mystery through a precise prose that spread its enthusiasm to explore Dylan’s work not only through his official recordings but, above all, the registration of its endless activities, convinced after hear that almost all the best and largest of his work has taken place outside the confines of the recording studio in his live concerts, invested with an ephemeral quality that so very narrow links with the spiritual value always associated with the music and drama.

Famous, puzzling and astonishing is the magic of Dylan’s refusal to play the same song twice in the same way, which not only makes their incomparably exciting concert events but it raises key questions concerning the nature of the art, the artist and the public could experiment in live performances.

Paul Oilzum

For this European tour, Dylan will be accompanied by his powerful band and the prestigious Mark Knopfler, responsible for the distinctive guitar sound that adorned Infidels, one of the best Dylan albums in the eighties. Do not miss this concert if you rent apartments in Florence durings those dates.

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Translated by: Hans
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That the American artist Bill Viola bases one of his most recent exhibitions, ‘Going forth by day’, in ‘The Egyptian book of the dead’, exploring once more through a series of hypnotic and unforgettable projections and sounds the voyage that goes from birth to death, will hardly surprise anyone who is slightly acquainted with is extraordinary work. Although one shouldn’t rigorously do it,  if we look into the history of the brand and the place where the exhibition takes place, the Palazzo della Mercanzia in his idolized Florence, it could be more suprising to some that this work is used to inaugurate the contemporary art rooms of the new Gucci Museum, (http://www.gucci.com/us/worldofgucci/mosaic/think_forever/gucci_museo), with whose opening the last 28th of September, the Italian brand wanted to celebrate its 90th birthday.

As it could not be any different, considering the trajectory of one of the the greatest fashion brands in the 20th century, it’s a singular place which, on a curious and singular wavelength with the work of Renaissance artistic patronage of the city which it’s taking place in, it illustrates and reminds us these days of the wonderful exhibition ‘Money and beauty. The bankers, Botticelli and the bonfire of vanities’ at the Palazzo Strozzi, which observes a policy accordint to which three of the six euros of the entry ticket will be given to a fund whose aim is the preservation and restoration of the artistic heritage of Florence.

The Palazzo della Mercnazi, home of the offices of Gucci up until three years ago, also exhibits permanently in its upper floors, a very important part of the Gucci Archive, which allows us to see, in a continuous dialogues between the past and present, the ninety years of history of the brand, celebrated in style in the last Milan Fashion Week, with a complete success of its latest collection, inspired precisely, although it’s not been accepted as intentional from Gucci, in the 1920s, the time of the opening of the first shop.

One of the indisputable merits of Gucci seems to have been their capacity to adapt to circumstances. It wasn’t east to predict that, in 1921, when Gucci came back from London where he’d been working as a bellboy at the luxurious Savoy – a true flagship of British Art Déco -, and he set up his first shop of objects made of leather which were handmade in Florence, the name Gucci would become one of unavoidable references of 20th century fashion and, even less that, once he’d reached increased popularity in the times of Mussolini, he’d be able to overcome the lack of foreign materials due to the dictatorship and the way, substituting leather for linen, hemp and, above all, bamboo, because the bamboo bag designed in 1947 was the item which definitively consolidated Gucci’s status as the direct brand of the elite of glamour.

Paul Oilzum

The departure of the designer Tom Ford in 2004, responsible for the brilliant resurgence of Gucci in the 90s, has meant their latest new challenge. A more bohemian approach to the world of luxury and the opening of this fantastic museum seem to be their ways of facing it. Don’t forget to visit it when you rent apartments in Florence

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Despite there never having been any evidence that an Italian person has suffered it, the so-called Stendhal Syndrome was born in Italy. Looking into the nature of the phenomenon, the fact that it takes the name of someone who passed way under an adopted name as a tribute in the place where J.J. Winckelmann was born, shouldn’t surprise us. It would be enough, on the other hand, to read ‘The Red and the Black’, for example, to not conceive as something improbable that its author, Stendhal, real name Henri Beyle, felt how his heart was overflowing with hefty palpitations when he went through the Apennines towards Florence, as well as not being able to control his senses and thoughts until the point he thought he had gone mad and lost his self-control, only comparable to that type of love that completely alienates us from everything else.

The reason of such feeling seems to have resided in the anticipation of the artistic wonders that he’d wanted to see for so many years, a dream that he was about to fulfill soon in the city of the Arno, a reason why the phenomenon also has the name of Florence Syndrome.

Like in the case of his compatriot and contemporary, Héctor Berlioz, who had nasal hemorrhages and intense dizziness every time that he experimented a particularly intense and deep feeling, that wasn’t the only time that it happened, however it was the most outstanding one, to situate the happening in the field of imagination. There were many occasions where, before the contemplation of works of art, the deep aesthetic impression that he received, materialized in nervous crisis of different intensity, where sometimes he’d fear for his life because they drove him to a state of commotion that could only be compared to being in a trance. Stendhal left us with a careful and detailed description of these states (which constituted a frame that included episodes of vertigo – caused by the feeling of being before an abyss -, elevated cardiac rhythm, enormous interior restlessness, confusion and even hallucinations) which has allowed us to compare them with other highly related ones, nay, identical ones, that creators have suffered afterwards like, for example, Rainer Maria Rilke, in similar situations. Maybe, the great Czech poet was also referring to them when he overwhelmingly wrote in the Duino Elegies that “beauty is not but the beginning of terrible, that that we still can put up with and admire so much because when impossible it disdains to destroy us”.

The Stendhal Syndrome, which affects many tourists every year, not all of them artists, seems to have a relation with the inconceivable accumulation of so many works of art in such a small place, as well as the sweeping quality of some of the them and perhaps also to some influence to our bodies of some bodies of celestial architectural Pythagorean proportions used in architecture and in art in most of the city.

Paul Oilzum

Renting apartments in Florence isn’t naturally synonymous of feeling similar disorders, but worthy of compassion are those who managed to do it without seeing themselves altered by the experience.

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Translated by: aleixgwilliam
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Until the 22^nd of January next year, the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, successfully exhibits the masterpieces of Italian Renaissance painters in the exhibition: Money and beauty. Bankers, Botticelli and the bonfire of the vanities. The exhibition curated by Ludovico Sebregondi explores the relationship between art and the political transformation process of economic and social renaissance, as well as the the emergence of the bourgeoisie.

Through Botticelli, Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Fra Angelico, Piero del Pallaiolo and Lorenzo di Credi be intertwined history and the emergence of a social class and the relationships they had with the development of the arts to finance, creating a school that gave life to one of the bright periods of art and creation.

Through Botticelli, Luca and Andrea della Robbia, Piero del Pallaiolo and Lorenzo di Credi, the history is being intertwined and the emergence of a social class and the relationships they had with the development of the arts to finance, creating a school that gave life to one of the bright periods of art and creation.

Already in the thirteenth century there was a banking system in Florence, Genoa and Siena, that even though were rudimentary forms of commerce, they built the base of the the banking system to be held more strongly from mid-1400, with the expansion of trade.

In Florence, in addition to bankers and tax collectors among which stand the families Acciaioli, the Bardi, the Peruzzi, the Ugolini, the Anguissola and those who came to have more political influence were the Medici. At the end of the fourteenth century the Medici controlled the largest bank in Europe, as well as the club business in Florence. Also, after defeating the Albizzis politically, they become the ruling family for three centuries. Some of their institutions also were recognized for their banking activities, including: Monte Vecchio.

That is the main reason of the emergence of the Renaissance in Florence and Siena, which then spread to Rome and then throughout Europe. The new powers that focus on the ones who have money, which caused a change in the axis of art, many painters, sculptors and architects built and decorated the villas of these characters.

While this relationship between bankers and wealthy families with the artists of the time gives more freedom to venture into new trends in painting or architecture, it will also be restricted by the tastes of these powerful families, which will create trends that will be replicated by their followers. Is the case of Sandro Botticelli who was the favorite painter of the Medici, making Pier Francesco de ‘Medici for his best works: La Primavera, The Birth of Venus and Pallas and the Centaur.

This exhibition reveals the relationship that has always existed between art and money, which occurred during the Renaissance through the patronage of the bankers who wanted to transcend through art.

For more information http://www.palazzostrozzi.org/Sezione.jsp?idSezione=594

Nancy Guzman

This is an interesting exhibition that teaches us about history in an ingenious way. If you are thinking of spending a few days in apartments in Florence let me invite you to enjoy this magnificent exhibition at the Palazzo Strozzi. Do not forget this important expo

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Translated by: Hans
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