GUCCI: PRET-A-PORTER..... ET MANGER

Gucci cafe on the ground floor

The brand Gucci turned 90 last year. They celebrated by inaugurating the Gucci museum in Florence. The location -  The medieval fourteenth century palazzo della Mercanzia (the court house for business cases).

Palazzo della Mercanzia

This large splendid building is located in the piazza della Signoria behind the bronze equestrian sculpture of Grand duke Cosimo I. The building’s origins are eluded to by the series of terracotta coat of arms on the facade, they are of the city’s 21 guild corporations (the original stone coats of arms are on display inside the building on the ground floor).

Giglio ( the Florentine lily)  on shield located on the ground floor of  Palazzo Mercanzia

 The building was once where the elected 6 non Florentine judges, along with 6 local judges from the major guilds, would meet to adjudicate on cases related to business affairs in the mercantile republic of Florence. Inside the main room were seven fabulous large paintings by Piero del Pollaiuolo and Botticelli depicting the personifications of the seven virtues, currently housed in the Uffizi gallery. 

Botticelli, Fortitude, tempura on wood, 1970, Uffizi gallery.

Piero del Pollaiolo, Charity, tempura on wood, 1470s, Uffizi gallery

Gucci has taken over the whole building, three floors. They renovated the interior and created a museum which narrates the history of the brand. The museum is divided into thematic rooms inspired by the brand’s iconic motifs and symbols. Also, there is a contemporary art space on the first floor where an art piece on rotation from the Pinault foundation will be on display. Francois Pinault is one of the largest collectors of contemporary art in the world.  He is the head of the company PPR (Printemps-Pinault-Redoute), owner of the Gucci Group, amongst many other luxury goods companies such as Yves Saint Laurent. Adjacent, a room will feature video and film installations as well as landmark films that Gucci has helped to restore through its collaboration with Martin Scosese’s Film Foundation. On the ground floor, there is a bookshop (in collaboration with Rizzoli publishing house), a restaurant and cafe. The idea to create a museum and Gucci space was conceived by the current creative director of Gucci, Frida Giannini, originally from Rome. She has held the creative director position over the whole house of Gucci since 2006.

Frida Giannini

Headhunted from Fendi, Giannini arrived at Gucci and designed handbags under Tom Ford, the creative director at the time. In 2011 Giannini designed the Fiat 500 for Gucci in collaboration with Lapo Elkin (of the family Agnelli, owners of Fiat). 

As mentioned above, Gucci is a huge company owned by a corporation but it was started by Guccio Gucci and began very much as a family business. In 1921 Guccio opened the first shop in Florence selling leather goods and luxury luggage in via della vigna nuova. Prior to this he had worked at the Savoy in London and saw a need for sturdy but stylish luggage for the affluent international clientele. He returned to his native Florence and combined the sophistication of the English traditional with the unsurpassable the Florentine leather artisanal tradition. In 1938 he opened a shop in Rome and his sons, Aldo, Vasco, Ugo and Ridolfo and joined the business. During the second world war when confronting a leather shortage, he developed woven hemp printed with small interconnected brown diamonds, this the first Gucci signature.

 In 1951, the shop in Milan was inaugurated and it is around this time that the red-green-red web design became a hallmark of the company.

In 1953, Gucci went international with the opening of the Manhatten shop.  They rented a space in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel and it was managed by Aldo. He concocted a romantic tale that they had come from an illustrious line of noble saddle makers and began incorporating equestrian themes. The Gucci loafer was born with the metal horse bit.

  In the 1960s the GG logo on the hemp and on buckles on bags and luggage was used.

Jealousy and rivalry began to destroy the family and the company, and there was scandal after scandal from the 1970s onwards. Paolo, Aldo’s son, reported his father for tax evasion and his father went to prison in Florida. Paolo then tried to get rid of Maurizio, his cousin (Ridolfo’s son), who had come to work with Aldo in America and had taken control of the company. Maurizio, tired of his scheming family, found an investor for the family business and here begins the end of Gucci as a family run empire and the beginning of Gucci the brand and international company. In the 1980s Gucci went almost bankrupt and Maurizio, in debt, sold all of his shares and was, in the 1990s, shot in a plot organised by his ex-wife. In 1990 Tom Ford began to work at Gucci in Milan in women’s fashion when the brand was in hardship both monetarily and creatively. In 1994 he was promoted to creative director and revamped, modernised and sexed up the fashion and accessories. Gucci took off. From near bankruptcy when Ford joined. The company was valued at $4.3 billion in 1999 and $10 billion in 2004 when he left.

The other day I had a wonderful lunch at the Gucci caffe and loved the whole experience; the service, the meal and the location. The menu has a good selection of first, second and salad dishes. The table cloths are with classic diamond design and the sugar is in the shape of G (loved this touch). We had a mixed mushroom and pumpkin soup with barley, spaghettini alla botarga, maccheroni with black cabbage pesto and crispy bacon, and spelt pasta with mixed mushrooms, peeled tomatoes and marjorum herb. We sat outside and, being November, the piazza della Signoria seemed all ours with very few people walking around, it was perfect. As yet, there is no heating outside but there are plans to add it soon, I was told by the waitstaff.

Maccheroni with black cabbage pesto, crispy bacon and croutons

The museum is open daily 10am-8pm, the ticket is 6euro (half of the ticket proceedings go to the city of Florence to restore the major monuments). The caffe, restaurant and bookshop is open daily 10am-11pm.

RENAISSANCE BRONZES - HOW ARE THEY CAST?

Mercury, Benvenuto Cellini, bronze 1550s, Bargello Museum, Florence

During the renaissance, bronze sculptures cost a lot of money and few patrons could afford such expenditure in commissioning substantial bronze works for their private collections. Bronze cost about ten times as much as marble, and marble cost a lot. Bronze artefacts were associated particularly with antiquity. The Greeks had worked primarily in bronze, and elite renaissance society loved to emulate the ancients.

Athlete Crowning Himself, Greek, bronze, 300-100 BC, Getty Museum LA

In the high renaissance, small statuettes would be very much in vogue as collectors’ items. The ancient Romans made marble copies of the superb bronze Greek original statuary and then melted down the bronze statues, using the metal for weapons and other more practical things. This helps explain why there are very few original Greek statues and so many copies of them. Due to the high tensile strength of bronze, statues of this material don’t need as much support base as the same statue in marble or stone. Knowing this, you can often guess when an ancient marble statue was a copy of a bronze. The marble statue will often have a tree trunk next to the leg of the figure which is purely structural; without it, it wouldn’t stand. What bronze statues did survive were often melted down during the medieval period to make church bells and canons. 

The Discus Thrower, Roman copy of Greek bronze, Hellenistic period

Cosimo de Medici (known as Cosimo the Elder), in the first half of the 1400s, commissioned his favourite sculptor, Donatello, to cast a bronze David from the Old Testament. It was the first free standing nude bronze since antiquity.

David, Donatello, bronze, 1440s, Bargello museum, Florence

It is often referred to as the first renaissance statue as, in many ways, it shows that the Middle Ages were a thing of the past. But how is bronze cast? It is commonly known how marble is carved, with different shaped chisels and hand drills, but bronze casting is something of a mystery to many. Understanding how it is done renders the works of art even more fascinating. 

In the renaissance, as in Antiquity, the artists used the lost wax technique. In the Middle Ages this technique wasn’t entirely lost, but such artefacts were rarely commissioned due to expense and a lack of demand due to the lack of a sophisticated market. There is the direct method and the indirect method of the lost wax technique.

THE DIRECT LOST WAX TECHNIQUE: the sculptor first moulds the desired sculpture shape out of clay. This is called the core. He then covers the whole core with a thin layer of wax and makes all the small details of the sculpture on the wax. Then he attaches wax rods (called sprues) perpendicular to the wax surface covering the core.  These will be the chanels from which the air and gasses will escape during the casting process. Iron or bronze pins (chaplets) are also inserted into the wax and the core and remain sticking out. Another layer of clay is then placed over the entire wax covering. The whole structure is then baked and the wax melts. The chaplets are necessary to hold the two clay shells together when the wax melts. A mould has now been created. The whole structure is then banked up with earth or sand to hold it steady and help the mould resist the pressure created when the molten metal is poured in. The mould should also be hot when the metal is poured so that it won’t crack and that the metal won’t cool too quickly and not fill all the mould.

The molten bronze, an alloy of circa 90% copper and 10% tin, is poured into the mould where the wax was, explaining why the technique is called the lost wax technique. The gasses and air escape through the sprues and vents so as not to create air bubbles. The bronze is heated to about 800 degrees celsius (1350-1450 fahrenheit). When the bronze has cooled, the outside clay is chipped off revealing the bronze, which is of course as thick as the wax covering over the core was. Bronze alloy expands before it sets which means that it takes all of the details that were incised onto the wax and picked up by the inner part of the outer clay covering. The clay core is most often scraped out to avoid interior corrosion. The bronze is rough and needs to be finished, which is called chasing. Finally a patina is applied to the chased surface in order to achieve the desired colour. Small statues were directly sculptured in wax, so that when it is invested (covered) with clay and the wax melts, the interior is completely hollow, so the bronze statuette is solid. The limitation of the direct method is that the sculpture is a one off original. There is no possibility for multiple copies to be made as the core and the wax which made the actual detailed statue is ruined during the construction.

Indirect lost wax technique

THE INDIRECT LOST WAX TECHNIQUE: By the end of the 1400s, the indirect lost wax technique was developed. This enabled copies to be made of the bronze object or statue and it involves a few more steps than the direct method. A second model in wax is required, the so called intermodel, from the original model made by the sculptor. The sculptor takes the original bronze work, or the wax model (in the case of a small object or statuette) and divides the surface mentally into different parts. He then places plaster of Paris (gypsum plaster) or clay over the wax or bronze in the designated segmented areas. It is like a jigsaw puzzle around a 3D. This system is called piece moulding. When the pieces harden and are taken off the surface, the wax or bronze object is saved for further use. The pieces are reassembled and securely bound together and the now empty mould is filled with molten wax to cast the desired intermodel . The wax intermodel will not stick to the piece mould if the plaster is dampened before filling it. After the intermodel is freed from the piece mould, the wax rods which form the sprues are attached. From here, the process proceeds as the direct method. Another option is not to make the core out of solid wax but make the wax a line layer over the piece mould and then to fill the rest of space with clay to make the core. The result will be a hollow bronze object

This was an extremely dangerous process which the artisans performed without all the advanced equipment of today. It also required precision and a huge working knowledge of metals. Armed with the knowledge of the technical process it makes the bronze statues and artefacts all the more precious.

BRANCACCI CHAPEL

The Brancacci chapel represents a turning point in art history, and thus is reflective of a change in society. It was studied and admired by all the great artists who lived in or passed through Florence almost immediately after it was frescoed in the second decade of the 1400s, and there are many deliberate nods to many of the figures depicted by the great, and very young, Masaccio on the chapel walls which appear in other works of art.

Andrea del Sarto, Baptism of the Multitude, 1917, Chiostro dello Scalzo, fresco.

In 1424 Felice Brancacci commissioned an established artist nicknamed Masolino to fresco his family side chapel in the Carmelite church, Santa Maria del Carmine, with scenes from the life of St Peter.

Brancacci Chapel in Santa Maria del Carmine church

The chapel narrates the fall of Adam and Eve and redemption through St Peter, the first pope and one of the twelve apostles of Christ. This choice of subject matter was personal as it had been the name sake of his ancestor, Piero di Piuvicchese, who in 1367 founded the chapel and had left money in his will for the decoration. Felice Brancacci was a wealthy silk merchant and was very much a member of the powerful and wealthy mercantile society of one of the greatest Italian city-states, the Florentine republic.

The chosen artist, Masolino, had trained in the International Gothic style, the leading artistic style of the day and, upon receiving the prestigious and time consuming commission, called upon another artist for the job so as to divide the work load between them. Work share was not an uncommon practice and one explanation for Masolino’s decision to collaborate with another could be that he already had other commissions lined up and he was concerned about his work load. This much younger artist, with whom Masolino decided to collaborate, was nicknamed Masaccio. Both Masaccio and Masolino were named Tommaso and their nicknames were derived from its abbreviation, Maso. Their similarities stopped here however as their styles differed considerably. The scenes of the chapel were divided up more or less equally between the two artisans and, for the most part, they each worked wholly on individual parts rather than interchangeably working on the project as by the same hand. They would work on the chapel until 1427 and then would both leave it unfinished and go to Rome. Masaccio died shortly after in the eternal city at the age of 27.

There is very little primary source documentation regarding the chapel, the nature of the collaborative relationship and how they decided to divide the work is unknown. Art historians have deduced the hand of each artisan through stylistic analysis. The chapel is a stunning example for a comparative study of the two great artists during the first half of the quattrocento; Masolino is the exponent of the established leading style, International Gothic, as mentioned above, and Masaccio, the first to paint in the new style, which would supersede the former, the renaissance style. If we compare the scenes of the expulsion of Adam and Eve from paradise by Masaccio and the Temptation of Eve by Masolino, located at the top of the piers at the entrance to the chapel before the narrative scenes of St Peter on the inner chapel walls, we can sum up the characteristics of each style.

Masolino, Temptation of Adam and Eve, 1425-27, Brancacci chapel, fresco.

Masolino expressed all the detached elegance that the international gothic style is known for, as well as the flowing graceful line of the bodies and the wonderful attention to detail of nature, seen here with the tree leaves. The international gothic style was a European style and visually expressed the refined elegance and elite nature of the courts and the lifestyle that the aristocracy led. The sense of detached aloofness of Adam and Eve reflects the elitist nature of court etiquette, the inclusion of the natural element reflected the life of the country villa and hunting, the preciousness in the execution and the grace in the figures embodies the overall sense of superiority and sense of self importance of the ruling classes. Lastly, there is no background, the scene exists in an isolated world.

Opposite is something quite different. Masaccio’s Adam has lost all his composure and he is so ashamed that he has lost the power of speech and he hides his head in his hands. Eve howls like an animal at the consequence of their actions, leaving all good etiquette of bon ton behaviour behind in Eden. Their bodies are drawn with a keen eye for the realistic rendering of the human anatomy in the physical description of their silhouette and in the realistic portrayal of their step.

There is a detached sense of refinement and isolation of scene in Masolino - the figures seem to exist in an isolated world, heightened by the black background. This is juxtaposed with the Masaccio fresco opposite, where Adam and Eve are part of the physical world, making shadows on the ground created by their real forms. Indeed, this is one of the first examples of shadow depiction in the history of art. They exist in the real, everyday world, the here and now.

Masaccio is referred to as being the first renaissance painter. Details of his personal life and training are virtually unknown. However, it is assumed that he knew Filippo Brunelleschi (the first renaissance architect and inventor of mathematical perspective) and they could even have collaborated on the Trinity fresco in Santa Maria Novella, as he was the first painter to use special perspective and realistically render the three dimensional world on the flat surface.

Masaccio painted what Donatello had already begun to do in sculpture, depicting the here and now of the real world, the maimed in the streets and the contemporary street scenes, just as Donatello was able to superbly portray the psychological presence of his subjects and thus creating a sense of immediacy and realism.

Masaccio documented the world around him. Today, we take photos of what we think is important and for the first time since antiquity, art was favouring the depiction of what was around - the good, the bad and the ugly - because man was the central focus now. Figures would no longer be depicted in an abstract isolated world as Masolino had done with his Adam and Eve, they would be placed in an existing tangible environment. Life on earth had suddenly become important again, and man's achievements in this life alone were now being celebrated as feats in their own right, rather than in relation to God. The individual was something that was being discussed and valued once again. All of this being now important, it of course needed to be visually recorded, and this new thought process and way of placing oneself in the world is echoed in art. Art imitates life.

For Masaccio, the human action is the central focus, as can be seen in the Tribute Money (see top) with Christ's action and gesture, the realistic attention to life, not just nature, as can be seen with the water dripping from the hair in the baptism of the neophytes (see above), or the sensational rendering of the baby’s anatomy in the Distribution of alms and death of Ananias.