Lessons in the history of the arts in the church of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence

After a first season that ran from March to May 2022, the second cycle of Brevissime starts again on Sept. 29. Lessons in the History of the Arts, a format conceived and organized by the publishing house Centro Di for the popularization of the arts through 45-minute talks by some of the best-known historians and scholars from Italy and beyond. Lectures on the decorative arts, architecture, design, costume and fashion, landscape and botany, music and theater are then scheduled at the end of the second cycle.

The second cycle will kick off on Thursday, Sept. 29, and conclude on Nov. 17, and will feature Laura Lombardi, Cristina Acidini and Carlo Falciani. The lectures will be held in the deconsecrated church of Santo Stefano al Ponte, hosted by Crossmedia Group, with times from 6:45 to 7:30 p.m. For reservations write to edizioni@centrodi.it or info@cattedraledellimmagine.it. For information and ticket purchase visit www.centrodi.it (full ticket 13 euros, student ticket 5 euros; six-lesson subscription 70 euros, six-lesson student subscription 28 euros.

Following is the program.

Sept. 29-Oct. 6
Laura Lombardi
From the fake to the fake

In recent decades, interest in and awareness of the complex and nuanced intersection between authenticity, fake, copy and reproduction have greatly increased. These themes run through-perhaps more than in the past-every sphere of culture and society, manifesting themselves in fact in literature, visual arts, cinema, music, not to mention the production of industrial artifacts and technology, with strong reflections in the historical perception of events, politics, information and religion, thus in our social life. The two meetings will address the topic starting with the distinction of the concept of ’fake’ from that of ’copy’ and ’replica,’ and then following theevolution of the fake from the Renaissance to today’s fake, emphasizing the mutations of meaning and reception, over the centuries and in different fields of expression (painting, sculpture, video art, as well as restoration), where digital technologies have determined a relationship with the work of art that looms profoundly iconoclastic in nature: Indeed, due to its easy multiplication and translation, the difficulty of recognizing the “original” in the ephemeral and dematerialized character of sources has been accentuated.

Thursday, September 29
The forgery between deception and interpretation

Ever since the episode of the god of love sculpted in his youth by Michelangelo and sold in Rome as an object of excavation, the practice of forgery has marked various moments in art history, expressing itself in different ways related to the taste of the time. In the 19th century, for example, skilled restorers/artists knew how to fool the greatest experts, rivaling the art of the masters of the 14th and 15th centuries, and in 1922 Riccardo Nobili, who was alsohimself devoted to forgery, wrote The gentle art of faking illustrating the virtues of the fake in its mode of “making” and outlining its ability to reread and understand ancient centuries, of which forgeries merely accomplish what we might today call a re-enactment. From Vermeer’s famous forger, Han van Meegeren, to the forgers of Modigliani’s heads and beyond, the meeting will explore the meanings that the use of fakes takes on, depending on the sphere and historical moment in which they occur.

Thursday, October 6
The fake in contemporary art

The Internet, media and globalization are reshaping society, profoundly changing our lives and also the perception of past art, cultural sites, and museums. Moreover, because of the virtual nature, the image reopens and reactualizes the long-debated question of the status of the work of art. Many contemporary artists (including, citing in bulk, Sherrie Levine, Thomas Demand, Jeremy Deller, Damien Hirst, Douglas Gordon, Rossella Biscotti, Moira Ricci, and Joan Fontcuberta), through the forms of appropriation, re-enactment, and re-staging, make the fake a declared and explicit practice. In short, the fake is characterized as an agent of unveiling the mise-en-scene that each image represents by taking itself for true. Indeed, fiction (of events, works, testimonies, documents) becomes an integral part of life and also, perhaps, the only way to take possession of the real.

Oct. 20-Oct. 27
Cristina Acidini
Artist’s vendettas

The messages expressed by an ancient work of art or concealed in it are innumerable, not always peaceful, never neutral. In particular cases, a painting can turn out to be a mute but formidable tool for the artist, who manifests a denunciation or carries out a revenge. Famous is the case of Michelangelo Buonarroti, who retaliated against the pontifical master of ceremonies Biagio da Cesena-who had criticized his Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel for its nude figures-by giving his face to the infernal judge Minos, complete with donkey ears. These long asinine appendages, characteristic of the villainous judge par excellence who was the mythical King Midas, unite the arrogant and conceited potentates at the center of two disturbing 16th-century paintings, which are worth deciphering. One by Sandro Botticelli, here not the author of elegant goddesses or suave Madonnas but a passionate defender of a cause; and one by Federico Zuccari, a painter, writer and polemicist with an eventful biography.

Thursday, Oct. 20
Slander

With the great mythological allegories, Apelles’ Calumny in the Uffizi Gallery is Sandro Botticelli’s most investigated painting, which never ceases to intrigue scholars and the public. Indeed, the motive that prompted the elder Botticelli to paint, around 1505, the crowded ancient-inspired scene, set in a room historiated with sacred and profane images, remains mysterious. Here an innocent young man is dragged by wicked men before a presumptuous re-asino, waiting for Truth to triumph. With this elegant and complicated painting, Botticelli perhaps intended to avenge a dear friend, or perhaps to clear himself of an unjust accusation.

Thursday, Oct. 27
Revenge

A disturbing painting by Federico Zuccari in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, the Porta Virtutis, bears witness to an extraordinary affair that had its climax in an authentic ’artist’s revenge.’ Angered by the rejection of one of his paintings, Zuccari pilloried the patron-asino by exhibiting in Rome, on October 18, 1581, a large cartoon with this satirical scene, later copied on a smaller scale for the Duke of Urbino. He paid dearly for his revenge: tried, he defended himself by claiming the expressive freedom of every artist, but was sentenced to exile. He returned, pardoned, in 1583.

Nov. 10-Nov. 17
Carlo Falciani
Words and images

The mingling and reverberation between image and word is one of the broadest themes addressed in Renaissance and Baroque painting since the initial assumption of Ut pictura poesis. Like a silent poem, the image speaks by translating into figures what is clearly expressed on the page through words. However, this mode is not always flatly legible and there are many forms in which signifying words are translated. Among the many possibilities this endless field offers, we have chosen two examples seemingly distant but both linked to a reflection on time and the role of art in this unstoppable flow. Two themes connected by a red thread that reaches to contemporary expression: the first related to portraiture, the second to vanitas.

Thursday, Nov. 10
Talking portraits

Beginning with humanism, the new conception of man at the center of the universe and thus the awareness of one’s individual role in history revived the portrait genre, in ancient times the preserve only of royalty, and spread it across society. Indeed, works of art were produced that expressed in multiple ways, whether overt or cryptic, the identity and innermost thoughts of the person portrayed, figuring his physiognomy, or his soul, or even his ideas through written words, visual symbols, coded objects or gestures. Works in which the likenesses of men and women were crystallized in such a way as to speak for centuries not only of the political or military power, but also of the aspirations, amorous disturbances and private feelings of the portrayed person, so as to somehow overcome the impassive passage of time. We will follow some of the different ways through which ancient and contemporary portraits still express the thoughts of men and women who chose to entrust a work of art with their survival through time.

Thursday, November 17
Vanitas

The theme of vanitas is central to art’s desire to figure the role of time in relation to the earthly lives of individuals. Countless from ancient to contemporary works are dedicated to figuring the impassive passage of time, yet its representation is ambivalent and complex. And while the destructive power of Kronos devouring his children is from the origins of myth an image of the destructive power of time in relation to the lives of men, beauty and the languages of art have since the Renaissance offered a barrier and a possibility to overcome such fury. The depiction of earthly loveliness, of blooms, but also of the sanctimonious splendor of objects called upon to comfort the existence of men, dialogue in Baroque still lifes or contemporary works with poetry and art itself in order to mitigate, overthrow and overcome the action of time.

Lessons in the history of the arts in the church of Santo Stefano al Ponte in Florence

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