Chi è Federico Giannini, Ilaria Baratta

Macchiaioli patrons: who they were, how they supported the group

It is hard to imagine that the Macchiaioli would have been successful if there had not been a host of patrons behind them, not very numerous but nonetheless ready to support their art, either financially or through less direct support, for example by...
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Tradition and modernity: the Polyptych of Mercy by Piero della Francesca

On June 11, 1445, the ancient company of Santa Maria della Misericordia of Borgo San Sepolcro commissioned Piero della Francesca (Borgo San Sepolcro, c. 1412 - 1492) to paint a panel to be placed in the confraternity's church, obliging the artist to ...
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For the ancient Greeks, all that mattered in the Olympics was winning

The story of the Japanese marathon runner Kōkichi Tsuburaya could be taken as an example to explain how the ancient Greeks, the inventors of the Olympic Games of Antiquity, viewed what we would today call sports competitions, even though a Greek of,...
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Niccolo Puccini, an early 19th century patron: "the rich are the stewards of the poor"

In the heart of Pistoia's historic center, in Piazzetta Spirito Santo, just a stone's throw from the Cathedral, stands a 19th-century monument dedicated to Niccolò Forteguerri, a Pistoiese cardinal who lived in the 15th century and was known f...
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Jacopo della Quercia's Madonna in Anghiari: a sculpture...versatile.

A marvelous Renaissance wooden sculpture has been enriching the state heritage since 1977: it is the Madonna and Child by Jacopo della Quercia (Siena, c. 1374 - 1438), purchased that year by the Superintendency of Arezzo and now the most important wo...
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The Pisa sinopites. what they are, what they were used for, how they were discovered

A collection that is widely described as "unique in the world": that of the Museo delle Sinopie in Pisa, consisting entirely of sinopites. One could define sinopia as the preparatory drawing of a fresco: it is one of the least known elements of medie...
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Titian's Venus of Urbino, a masterpiece of ambiguity

When one thinks of the goddesses of beauty that adorn the walls of the Uffizi, the best known is surely Botticelli's Venus, which has become something of a symbol of the Renaissance itself, but no less important is another apex of Renaissance paintin...
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How Pandolfo Petrucci's patronage changed the face of Siena in the Renaissance

A patron so splendid that he earned the appellation "Magnifico." Pandolfo Petrucci (Siena, 1452 - San Quirico d'Orcia, 1512) was one of the most powerful men in late 15th-century Siena , and his activities in the arts contributed substantially to sh...
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