MICHELANGELO’S FUNERAL

Today in Florence, March 6, there will be a procession from the town hall to the Santa Croce Church in honour of the birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti who was born on this date in 1475. They will place a wreath on his tomb which is located on the inside of the Santa Croce church. This was his parish church as his family had their family home close by in via Bentaccordi.

Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89 on 18 February in 1564. He was first buried in the SS. Apostoli church after a very modest and small funeral organised by the compagnia di Giovanni decollato (the confraternity of the decapitated John) to which he had been a member for about fifty years. Many of the Florentine artists resident in Rome were members. His nephew, Leonardo, his heir, came to Rome some days after his death and stayed some weeks in order to organise his deceased uncle’s estate and belongings. He organised for Michelangelo’s body to be transported back to his hometown, Florence. The body was smuggled it out of the city of Rome hidden in a bale of merchandise. It arrived in Florence on March 10 and held in the campagnia dell’assunta and was then brought to Santa Croce church on March 12. Thirty two artists from the newly founded Accademia del Disegno along with Vincenzo Borghini (the judicial overseer of the Accademia) carried Michelangelo’s body to the church accompanied by torches. The body was placed in the sacristry of the church and the procession had attracted a huge crowd. Leonardo Buonarroti then began the organisaton of a tomb for the great artist. He had planned on the tomb being designed and planned by Michelangelo’s friend, Daniele da Volterra, who had been one of the few people who had been with Michelangelo when he died, and some of the Roman artists in his circle, however Vasari forced him to use Florentine artists from the newly founded Accademia del Disegno. The tomb was finished some years later.

Five months after Michelangelo’s body had been brought to Florence, there was a huge funeral staged for him in San Lorenzo. Never before had there been a funeral for an artist such as this, the next funeral that would be as big would be that of the Grand duke Cosimo I. The whole of the San Lorenzo church was decorated with huge paintings depicting episodes from the artist’s life with a fifty three foot long catafalque under the transept crossing. Michelangelo, who disliked pomp and ceremony, was given a funeral of a princely scale.

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.

GIROLAMO SAVONAROLA - THE FRIAR WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE

 Girolamo Savonarola by his follower Fra' Bartolomeo

The Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, originally from Ferrara, was hanged and burnt in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence on the 23rd May 1494. Every year, on the morning of the anniversary of his death, there is a renaissance parade from the Palazzo della Parte Guelfa to the Piazza della Signoria, where a wreath is laid over the plaque which marks the spot where the burning took place. Savonarola died, along with two of his most ardent followers, in the same square where he had held the infamous 'Bonfire of the Vanities' during the period of Lent in 1497 and 1498. Non-Christian books and art (drawings and paintings), and objects of earthly passion and distraction, such as cards, precious fabrics, make-up and wigs, were burnt in the square on a platform made of seven steps, symbolising the seven vices. Savonarola was an extremely influential preacher who called for great reforms of the church which provoked anger from the pope at the time, Alexander VI. 
In 1491 he was made prior of San Marco monastery in Florence and began to preach in the cathedral. With the expulsion of the Medici family from Florence in 1494, due to a sharp decline in popularity after the death of Lorenzo the Magnificent de Medici and the incompetence of Piero de Medici, his son, to gain support from the people, Savonarola filled the power void and substituted humanist thought and neo-platonic philosophy with a theocratic government and an austere religious atmosphere for four years. Savonarola reorganised the government and, inspired by the Venetian model, increased political representation to 1500 people. He then commissioned an extension to the town hall, the 'Salone del '500' (Room of the 500), where the newly enlarged government could meet, in three sittings of 500 people at a time, giving name to the room. He referred to it as the Hall of Christ. 
His sermons increased in religious fervour and he claimed that Christ was speaking through him, he being a prophet of Christ. He attacked the papacy, who initially offered him a cardinal's hat to silence him, which he rejected, before excommunicating him. Cesare Borgia, the head of the papal army and the pope's son, came to Florence where a forced confession was taken from the friar, followed by his death in the square. 
Due to the austerity and fanatical nature of his reign, opposition had grown in Florence. The opponents of Savonarola, dubbed the Arrabbiati (Angry Ones), called the Dominican's closest followers the Piagnoni (Wailers) as they complained incessantly and spoke endlessly of the end of the world. After Savonarola was burned, his ashes were gathered and sprinkled over the Arno to avoid them being collected and kept by his believers, although the cult of Savonarola continued throughout the sixteenth century. 

Savonarola's cell in San Marco, Florence

Visitors to the beautiful San Marco monastery can enter his cell where many of the sermons would have been written and can see the bell that called the Florentines to hear him speak. This bell was exiled to outside the walls, to the dreaded enemy of the Dominicans, the Franciscan church San Salvatore al Monte, after his death. A few years later the Gonfaloniere Pier Soderini, head of the Republic, in an act of clemency, returned the bell to the Dominicans.

The hanging & burning of Savonarola in Piazza della Signoria - an anonymous painting from 1498 in the Museo di San Marco

Never judge a book.......



Cardinal Leopoldo de' Medici by
Il Baciccio, 1670



Leopoldo de Medici (1617-1675) was the youngest brother of Grand Duke Ferdinando II de’ Medici. He is possibly one of the ugliest of the Medici family during their three hundred year long rule of Florence and Tuscany (and they were a particularly ugly bunch on the whole) but what he lacked in looks he certainly made up for in smarts, and he is one of my favourite Medici’s.

This portrait is by one of the artists of whom he was very fond, Il Baciccio, and he is shown here in his cardinal robes. He was elected cardinal at the age of fifty after the death of Giovan Carlo, his older cardinal playboy brother. It was necessary for all influential and ruling families to have a close relative in a high placing in the church and Leopold was a good candidate to fill the newly papal Medici void as he was a bachelor and extremely intelligent, a formidable diplomat, well connected and very amiable. What is so fascinating about the Medici family of Florence is that there is a long list of family members who were outstanding patrons of the arts and learning, Leopold is one of the least talked about however even though he was one of the most significant in this respect.

Through out the family history so many of them were up to date, avant-guard supporters of new discoveries, technologies and  were addicted to knowledge. Sure, the heads of the family played dirty in order to sustain power, eliminate enemies and displayed ruthless acts of merciless violence in order to carry forth their projects of expansion and political desires but Renaissance Europe was a jungle and success in the field required that any successful player played with jungle tactics. However, the Medici family weren't simple brutes but they endlessly sought knowledge and spent tirelessly for the expansion of the mind, the beautification of the Florence and the patronage of talent in all fields making changes that were felt world wide. Leopold didn’t rule the duchy of Tuscany and so could dedicate more time to philanthropy than others. Galileo was the official court mathematician and scientist during the first half of the 1600's and Leopold was one of his most promising students. After his teacher’s death he personally sanctioned and supported Europe’s very first scientific academy, the Academia del Cimento (the Academy of the Daring), which met at his home, the Ducal palace (the modern day Pitti Palace), and he was the Academy’s CEO. He used his diplomatic skill to smooth out the differences between the various different strong characters in the group thus fostering a productive environment producing, amongst other  scientific advancements, the first barometer. He was a prolific letter writer to all heads of state in Europe, royal members, philosophers, writers, artists and politicians. He supported literary movements and was an extraordinary patron of the visual arts, in particular a collector of drawings, miniatures and self portraits of the artists (currently displayed in the Vasarian corridor). Over the years he built up a network of over eighty agents predominately in Italy but also in Paris, Flanders and Holland and elsewhere, who were perminately on the look out for artistic works and collections for sale and always kept him up to speed with developments and negotiating on his behalf.

He displayed his collection in his personal apartments on the third floor of the Ducal palace and upon his death it was, for the most part, taken to the Uffizi gallery. Of the 50,000 circa drawings in the Uffizi gallery collection today, 8,000 circa are courtesy of Leopold. He was particularly sensitive to the Venetian style, their unique colour palate and free brushwork, thus beginning the city's real display of the other great artistic Italian school along with that of Florence.  The love of the Venetian school was then continued by his great nephew, Gran Prince Ferdinand, another fascinating character…. the subject for another blog….