Excerpts from the book “Inspiration Tuscany”

The cultural landscape of Tuscany exerts a special pull on art lovers. As if it was a painter’s composition, its scenery tempts them to embark on a hedonist art and culture tour from town to town. With the rhythmical wave shapes of its cypress and pine studded hill ranges and its unequalled light, it is so much more than your regular holiday destination. Drawing on ideas from the ancient world, the Italian Renaissance also heralded the separation between crafts and fine arts. As the creative act became art’s central focus, people’s understanding of what “art” meant underwent a significant change.

In this spirit, at the occasion of Michelangelo’s 550th birthday, 44 artists from 23 countries have come together to honor the revolutionary change in how the arts were perceived with their open-minded imagination. Michelangelo’s “David” is said to be the most famous of all sculptures. The editor of this book has divided the artworks from around the world into chapters and added verses by Michelangelo, quotes, art related slogans, and illustrations.The result is a multifaceted homage from the animated perspective of modern artists.

In Memory of Michelangelo and the Florentine Renaissance

The text and the poems in this post are excerpts from the book “Inspiration Tuscany“.

Youtube playlist: Michelangelo and the Florentine Renaissance

One of the most beautiful pieces of Renaissance art is Sandro Botticelli’s painting “Spring”. The famous art patron Lorenzo de’ Medici commissioned this round dance of mythological allegories for his country villa in Castello near Florence. Today, the painting is displayed at the Uffizi: On a flower meadow in the middle of an orange grove, Venus appears. A woman sprinkles roses across the love garden. Together with the painting “Pallas and the Centaur”, this work is interpreted along the lines of new-Platonic philosophy. The latter depicts the victory of chastity over lust. Both paintings embody the dualistic idea of love as both a physical, worldly desire, and an intellectually oriented longing of the spirit. Originally, the scene was drawn from Ovid’s “Fasti”, which, in his Roman Calendar, depicts the beginning of spring in the form of the nymph Chloris turning into Flora, the goddess of flowers. “Florentia”, “the blossoming one” can also be found in the name of the city of “Florence”. Over time, the city has blossomed into the queen of Tuscany, and continues to be one of the most important art metropoles in the world. The conscious differentiation between a landscape’s significance as an artistic motif and its arability led to a new culture, the blossoming of the “villeggiatura”. Its inhabitants began to reflect deeply, write poetry, make music, cultivate lemons and oranges, and spent time in their pleasure gardens dedicating time to the Muses. Florentine cities like Siena, Lucca, and Pisa have their own architectural charm. Similarly, the walled picture book villages on the hill ranges of Tuscany resemble organic structures. In a tasteful and subtle sense, even the landscape around them seems to follow the rules of aesthetic composition.

The Birth of Free Artistic Creation during the Italian Renaissance

The incredible cultural variety of Tuscany came about because wealthy and powerful autonomous citizens with a Humanist background commissioned art. Their quest for representation promoted the blossoming of art and science. Lorenzo de’Medici, one of the most significant humanists and pioneers of the Renaissance, and patron of the “Platonic Academy”, took 15-year-old Michelangelo into his palace. In its sculpture garden, artists were free to study antique motifs to their hearts’ content. Returning to a worldly sense of reality, art and its beauty came to be understood as educational forces. Besides appreciating the ancient world, Florence was also a site of poetry. The depiction of nature can also be found in the works of Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio. While Friar Savonarola sharply rejected art and burned everything that represented worldly joy on the “pyre of vanity”, artists became much more respected members of society. The irony of fate saw Savonarola himself burn on the pyre.

Painters and sculptors were celebrated as geniuses and freed from the dogmatic restraints of the Middle Ages to go ahead, be inventive, and create highly individual and refined art. Artistic content was no longer exclusively religious. Leonardo da Vinci’s sfumato style of painting had figures blend into their natural environment, which was later taken up again in Turner’s landscape paintings. This innovative air and color perspective is also reflected in many Renaissance paintings like Raffael’s “Madonna of the Goldfinch” (Uffizi), and Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus” (Alte Meister, Dresden). With her smile, finally, Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” continues to whisk away thousands of Louvre visitors into her dream-like background landscape.

The art writer Giorgio Vasari, finally, gave this art a professional grounding. Founder of the Florence Academy of Art and the Uffizi, he was the first person to compile a book of artist’s works and biographies, which went on to become the foundation of modern-day art criticism. He painted artists’ portraits in a Mannerist style onto the walls of his house in Arezzo. In the “Room of Fame”, we can also find Michelangelo’s image. As a sculptor, painter, architect, and poet, he embodied free art in its purest form. He also transferred the teachings of harmony used in music to architecture, and the proportions of the human body as Leonardo had drawn it. Leonardo’s notebooks feature the back-to-front sentence: “The sun doesn’t move.” Inventions came to be highly valued, cult images became transportable panels. Napoleon took Paolo Veronese’s monumental painting “The Wedding at Cana” (9,94 × 6,77 m) to Paris. Raffael’s fresco “The School of Athens” at the Stanze di Raffaello play a major part in art history not only for the color perspective with its shades of blue but also for the discovery of linear perspective.

Michelangelo also took up Plato’s cosmological thought. In Florence, he was given access to post-mortem dissections and studied anatomy. He took great care to depict every muscle of his “David” most accurately. All Renaissance nudes are marked by the precise study of nature. Even baby Jesus was no longer depicted in an idealized way. In Michelangelo’s early work “Madonna of the Stairs”, the baby does not even look at us, the stair rails seem like the erect stem of the cross, the stairs like a hangman’s ladder. In his world-famous “Pietà” at St. Peter’s Basilica, he has managed to take every ounce of hardness out of the marble she was made of, the folds of her robes seemingly following her human movements. (The dome of the Basilica was built according to Michelangelo’s plans.) The horned figure of Moses appears double life-sized at the gravesite of Julius (San Petro in Vincoli, Rome) and looks different from every possible angle.

While Savonarola stubbornly continued to reject the sensual world, Michelangelo chiseled away at his “Bacchus”, who seemed to wobble… and finally fall. His “David”, too, was created in his youth. Chiseled out of a 5-meter marble block, he looks focused and determined, holding a barely discernible weapon behind his back. The gigantic guardian of unlimited self-empowerment simultaneously expresses the sculptor’s pledge to follow his ideals of individual freedom, creative spirit, and courage.

Michelangelo’s intentionally unfinished works (“non finito”) are another sign of the enormous changes the art world underwent in his day and age. Originally intended for the gravesite of Julius at St. Peter’s Basilica, his unfinished “Slaves” now stand in the main hall of the Galeria dell’Accademia in Florence (as well as the Louvre). As if freed from prison, they emerge from the stone, expressing the artist’s unparalleled suffering vis-à-vis the fetters of this world. In his “Dying Slave”, he erects a body that has been lying down, the “Awakening Slave” clearly breaks free from the boundaries of form, the “Bearded Slave” ’s hands are fully hidden by marble, the “Young Slave” clenches his fists. Like “David”, all of them are epitomes of liberation, although, in this case, the idea shines brighter than its execution, which could also be seen as a precursor of modern art.

Combining pagan and Christian imagery, Michelangelo also created the illusionist paintings at the Sistine Chapel, surrounding his humans with painted architecture, as pagan figures accompany the main scene drawn from the Old Testament. It was this work that eventually led to the height of Michelangelo’s fame. Against his will, and powerless in the face of his authoritarian employer, he provoked the Pope into telling him “Do whatever you want!”, and went on to depict the naked figure in every possible gesture. To him, however, sculpture remained the highest art.

The Sack of Rome and the breakdown of the free, democratic rule of Florence, however, as well as the absolute monarchy of the younger Medici installed by Charles V, eventually rang in the age of Mannerism. When Europe found itself torn apart between madness and perversion, the confidence of the Renaissance crumbled. The 16th century was shaken by countless catastrophes. The “linea serpentina” initiated by Michelangelo, however, still came to be applied to masterful works of art, and the artistic productivity of this unnerving transitional period remains awe-inspiring: The end was also the beginning. Which, looking at our own tumultuous times, is quite encouraging.

On Dante Alighieri

No tongue can tell of him what should be told,
For on blind eyes his splendour shines too strong;
Twere easier to blame those who wrought him wrong,
Than sound his least praise with a mouth of gold.

He to explore the place of pain was bold,
Then soared to God, to teach our souls by song;
The gates heaven oped to bear his feet along,
Against his just desire his country rolled.

Thankless I call her, and to her own pain
The nurse of fell mischance; for sign take this,
That ever to the best she deals more scorn:

Among a thousand proofs let one remain;
Though ne‘er was fortune more unjust than his,
His equal or his better ne‘er was born.

translated and rewritten by John Addington Symonds (1840 – 1893)

Memorial Sites of the Renaissance

ITALY

Casa Natale di Michelangelo – casanatalemichelangelo.it
In the village of Caprese near Arezzo, Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475 – 1564) was born into a respected Florentine middle-class family. Even as a boy, and against his father’s will, he was bent on becoming an artist. This small but excellent museum shows plaster casts of his works and invites visitors to take a contemplative stroll through its sculpture park featuring contemporary artworks, while enjoying the gorgeous landscape of Tuscany..

Casa Buonarroti – casabuonarroti.it/
The Casa Buonarotti is a house museum dedicated to the genius of Michelangelo, featuring his early works “Battle of the Centaurs” and “Madonna of the Stairs”, as well as an extensive collection of his drawings. Built by one of the artists’ nephews, the site later became part of a foundation that includes a public library. Michelangelo himself never lived there but, following his own wish, was later buried in Florence. His grave is located in the Renaissance Pantheon Basilica of Santa Croce.

Casa Petrarca – padovamusei.it/it
Petrarch‘s former home in Padua is decorated with beautiful frescoes related to his works. You can visit his study, his former library, and, among other things, his legendary stuffed cat.

Museo di Casa Vasari – museiarezzo.it/museo-casa-vasari/
Giorgio Vasari bought a house in a garden suburb of Arezzo and painted it with portraits of artists. The author of „Le Vite“ was a good friend of Michelangelo. His artist biographies describe Italian painters, sculptors, and architects in chronological order.

Casa Natale di Raffaello – casaraffaello.com/
Raphael spent the first years of his artistic education in his birthplace in Urbino..

Museo Casa del Boccaccio – enteboccaccio.it/
Giovanni Boccaccio spent the last years of his life in Certaldo near Florence. The poet Marquise Carlotta Lenzoni de‘ Medici had the house decorated with a fresco depicting Boccaccio by the neoclassical painter Pietro Benvenuti.

Museo Dante – museionline.info/musei/museo-dantesco
The Dante Museum in Ravenna uses various themed tours to illustrate the role of the city of Ravenna during the poet‘s years of exile.

Museo d’Arte Moderna Vittoria Colonna – cultura.gov.it/luogo/museo-d-arte-moderna-vittoria-colonna
In addition to a permanent exhibition (including Miro and Picasso), the museum in Pescara also features temporary exhibitions of modern art.

Villa Farnesina in Rom – villafarnesina.it/
One of the first true Renaissance villas! The frescoes depict scenes from ancient mythology (including those by Raphael). Baldassare Peruzzi painted the famous Room of Perspective, which gives the impression of gazing at the surroundings of Rome.

FRANCE

Château Villandry – chateauvillandry.fr
The last large Renaissance castle on the banks of the Loire also hosts changing art exhibitions.

Musée Rabelais – musee-rabelais.fr
François Rabelais made his birthplace, Seuilly, and its surroundings the epicenter of his novel cycle „Gargantua and Pantagruel.“ The surrounding landscape in Touraine was even named after him.

UNITED KINGDOM

The Shakespear Center – shakespeare.org.uk
William Shakespeare‘s birthplace is located in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon. In the surrounding area are other Shakespeare-related sites managed by the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

GERMANY

Albrecht Dürer’s House – museen.nuernberg.de
Albrecht Dürer lived and worked in this largely original Renaissance artist‘s house from 1509 to 1528. It also bears witness to the bourgeois living culture of Nuremberg‘s heyday. A special attraction is the print workshop, where the artistic techniques of the time are demonstrated.

SPAIN

El Greco Museum – cultura.gob.es/mgreco/en/museo/el-greco.html
El Greco, born in Crete, spent a large part of his life in Toledo, where he created most of his masterpieces. The museum offers a chance to delve into the artist‘s life and explore his extensive oeuvre.

Sources: Please see the authors, poet and bibliography in the above link to the online book (imprint at the end of the book)!