Category Archives: art & architecture

art & architecture

Under the Tuscan Budget Crisis: Florence’s Churches at Risk

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updated Thu. April 15 10:07 am
by Nicole Martinelli

Down the street from Michelangelo’s David but just far enough out of the public eye to be neglected, one of Italy’s most beautiful Renaissance churches, Santissima Annunziata, is being heavily damaged by a leaky roof, art historian James Beck denounced.

Italian media reported that it is ‘raining’ inside the church, but city council member Simone Siliani said there is no money for repairs. The city government is responsible for 12 churches; repairing the damage to this church would eat up 25% of the 2004 maintenance budget.

This is the latest alarm over the cost of keeping up the art-laden capital of Tuscany, though the cash crunch for maintaining art is felt by cities throughout Italy. In 2003, Monsignor Timothy Verdon, who works in the main Cathedral, denounced lack of upkeep as the “suicide” of Florence; in 2002 a bureaucratic snafu over an unpaid electricity bill threatened to turn lights off on works by Michelangelo, Botticelli and Leonardo in the Uffizi Gallery.

Architect Dario Notari, who visited the church to eye the damage, said the key can be found in the all-too-ordinary proportions of leaky patches visible in a chapel.

“What’s visible right now is not that serious,” Notari told zoomata. “That’s exactly the problem: we’re talking about damage that may be considerably more serious but not in a place that a sponsor is going to get much satisfaction from financing it.” Florence’s most recent restoration project, announced March 17, will be a one-of-a-kind fresco fixed up with Italian state lottery funds.

Beck has long protested over both methods and the media circus surrounding restorations in Italy. His website, ArtWatch International, shows photos of heavy water damage in Santissima Annunziata dated 2002. In an article titled ‘Where are the Friends of Florence Now?” Beck maintains that timely maintenance would have kept costs down and prevented further damage.

Built by architect Michelozzo in 1444, the church is not one of the city’s most famous but contains art treasures spanning the Renaissance including murals by Pontormo and Andrea del Sarto and paintings by Perugino and Andrea dal Castagno.

The church of Santissima Annunziata (Holy Annunciation) is especially important to Florentines. It is home to celebrations of the Annunciation, a church festival in commemoration of the announcement of the Incarnation to the Virgin Mary, that also marks the beginning of the local New Year. Florentines celebrated March 25 as the beginning of the year until 1749 and revived it as an historic commemoration in 2000. This year’s celebration, which featured a concert in the church and an art exhibit in the cloister, was a bittersweet one. @text/photos 1999-2007 zoomata.com

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Related resources:
Florence: a Delicate Case

artwatchinternational.org

Poet Lost His Head, Italian Scientists Say

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posted Mon. April 5 14:13 pm zoomata staff
Poets may have a better connection between head and heart than most, but 14th-century Italian poet Petrarch may have been separated forever from his skull.
Scientists, who dug him up in November 2003 in hopes of learning more about one of the most prolific bards of the Italian Renaissance, discovered after DNA testing that the skull found in his tomb most likely belongs to a woman.

The skull switcheroo is sending shock waves through the Italian scientific community where dramatic celebrity exhumations have become frequent. Over the last decade or so, figures like painter Giotto and Dante’s ‘Cannibal Count’ Ugolino della Gherardesca have made headlines and become the object of exhibits, books and documentaries following DNA testing.

Petrarch’s exhumation was timed in order that he might ‘star’ in celebrations for the 700th anniversary of his birth in November 2004. Scientists wanted to reconstruct his face and determine his age, diet and general health. There was no immediate comment from officials about how the fete might carry on if the poet’s body remains headless.

“I hope that whoever may have the skull will give it back,” said scientist Vito Terribile Wiel Marin. “We’re 100% percent sure it’s not his, but we can’t date the skull with certainty yet.” Getting back Petrarch’s head may not be a simple matter — the tomb, in Arqua Petrarca near Padova had been opened once in the 1600s and in more recent times, when someone made off with an arm and fractured the skull.

Romantics are already speculating that the woman buried with Petrarch might be his mystery love Laura, to whom he dedicated the lines, “I feed on sadness, laughing weep:death and life displease me equally:and I am in this state, lady, because of you.” ?1999-2004 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

Italians Debate ‘Cloning’ Art

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updated Thu March 18 10:25 am by Nicole Martinelli

Two magnificent warrior statues are at the center of a heated debate in Italy on cloning artwork.
The Riace bronzes, 6.5-foot tall Greek statues found in the 1970s off the coast of Calabria, are credited with creating tourism in this impoverished Southern area.
Although remarkably well preserved, they are too fragile to be sent abroad for exhibits, so authorities argue that instead of holding them hostage, high-tech super copies would act as a sort of itinerant travel brochure for the region.

More than just passable copies, clones are created using a laser scanning technique that copies and reproduces the surface on resin, including minute details like chisel marks. Models, first made in foam, are molded into plaster and then cast using resin filled with marble dust. The price tag for cloning the Riace statues is estimated at 500,000 euro. Italian officials wanted them ready to send to Athens for the 2006 Olympics.

The tug-of-war over cloning the statues is passionate, even by Italian standards.
After 3,000 grass-roots protesters turned out in a candlelight vigil to protest the operation, cloning was blocked by a regional court. Federal government overturned the local sentence, then Culture Minister Giuliano Urbani stepped into the fray by ordering an investigation into the ramifications of cloning the statues. Press reports claimed, with typical Italian drama, that it was too late — that partial clones have already been made in secret.

“It’s insane, they’re throwing what we have away,” said Calabrian architect Michele Servidio, who spent his university years studying Renaissance masterpieces first-hand in Florence. “Art shouldn’t always come to you. In this case they are also taking the art and leaving us with very little.”

According to Italy’s national tourist board, Calabria owes “eternal gratitude” to the bronzes for creating a flow of “hundreds of thousands” of visitors to the country’s poorest region, better known for an unforgiving rocky landscape and organized crime. Locals fear visitors would not travel all the way down to the toe of Italy to see the statues if clones made a world tour.

Debates over these exact copies will likely become more common as technological advances meet a country that UNESCO estimates holds 60% of the world’s art treasures. In May 2002, two statue clones of Priapos and Flora by Baroque sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini were installed in the Garden of Delights at Rome’s Borghese Gallery, filling a gap left when indebted heirs sold the originals over 50 years ago.

Cloning has also been proposed for the Dancing Satyr, another statue coughed up by the sea between Sicily and Tunisia after 2,400 years in 1998. After five years of restoration, the Greek bronze left Sicily for a temporary exhibit in Rome in 2003, sparking a still unsettled debate over ownership and ‘parking rights’ to the masterpiece.?1999-2004 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

Related resources:
Stolen Figs: And Other Adventures in Calabria

http://www.museionline.it/museicalabria/eng/cerca/museo.asp?id=1718
The National Museum of Archaeology in Reggio, current home to the Riace bronzes

Italian Mayor Immortalized on Church Doors

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zoomata staff posted: Thu Jan. 15 17:49 am

Art patrons throughout the centuries have often indulged in having their portraits put in larger works, but an Italian mayor is the first present-day official to have himself sculpted with the saints.

Vanity got the better of mayor Fedele Melas when a local artist asked to portray him in bronze on church doors in the village of San Gavino, on the Italian isle of Sardinia. Cost of the doors, more than three meters high (9.8 feet) and two meters wide (6.5 feet), was 60,000 euro ($76,000).

Melas is easy to spot in the tableau gracing the outside of Santa Chiara church, unveiled to incredulous villagers recently. He’s depicted in a modern suit and tie, grinning as he offers a basket of local civraxiu bread and saffron flowers to San Gavino, a third-century Sardinian martyr and protector of the town.

Parish priest Fiorenzo Pau also succumbed to the desire of sculptor Pietro Longu to use “realistic images,” since he, too, appears in the doors next to Melas in a bottom corner. Longu maintains that to avoid abstract faces, he chose the only people he knew in the town as models.

Inhabitants of the town of 9,500 have been quick to protest, though most recognize there is no point in whining over cast bronze, even if they are governed by a faccia di bronzo, a ‘bronze face,’ a brazen or cheeky person.

“It’s in very bad taste, having the mayor on our church doors,” said Mauro Casu. “We were happy to finance the new doors, but this is just uncalled for.”

There has been a constant line of locals waiting to see this one-of-a-kind portrait, but many stop for a quick jaw-drop without taking in the details. An inscription in Latin on the inside serves to remind future generations about the man in strange clothing. It explains that the city government paid for nearly a third of the bronze doors. ?1999-2004 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

Former Axum Site in Rome to Honor Victims in Nasiriyah

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zoomata.com staff posted:Tue Nov. 25 17:32 pm

The Italian government is considering building a monument to Italian soldiers and civilians killed in the Nov. 12 bombing in Iraq where the Ethiopian obelisk used to stand in Rome.

It would be a peaceful resolution for the future of the square now that the much-contested monument formerly in the center of Piazza Capena is on its way home. Italians agreed to send back the stolen monument over 50 years ago, but even as the stele was being taken down some were loath to part with it.

A massive outpouring of grief accompanied state funerals held last week in Rome and many called for a permanent way to remember the fallen. Rome’s city council voted unanimously yesterday to rename the square in honor of the victims and a project to create a new monument for the 19 Italian carabinieri and 14 civilians killed.

“It’s the best way to remember the incident, without rhetoric but with action,” said Sergio Marchi, member of the neo-fascist National Alliance party, which protested giving back the Axum obelisk to Ethiopia. “These were soldiers working for peace and victims of terrorism, this is a tangible way for Italians to show support.”

?1999-2003 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

Contested Obelisk Leaves Italy for Ethiopia

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by Nicole Martinelli posted:Thu. Nov. 6 11:12 am

It’s been a long and winding road, but the Axum Obelisk is finally leaving Rome for Africa. Italian news agency ANSA reported that a large moving truck and crane were getting busy late last night in Piazza Capena, where the stolen monument has been a fixture for 66 years.
The pre-Christian treasure is expected to crown the UNESCO-protected heritage site of the same name by mid-November.

The late-night move of the 80-foot, 150-ton obelisk may be in part to ongoing protests by Italians about giving back what the fascists took as war booty. Despite media hubbub that predicted possible violence, protests have been more cerebral than physical — as the monument was being taken down about 300 members of neo-fascist party Alleanza Nazionale gathered only once. The Italians had agreed to give back what they took from Ethiopia over 50 years ago, but intentions don’t always match actions as the African country learned in 1998 after printing commemorative stamps for the expected return of the obelisk.

The lively intellectual debate surrounding other Ethiopian treasures will be harder to put to rest. On opposite sides of the issue are two men whose grandfathers participated in Italy’s war with Ethiopia. The first, Duke Amedeo D’Aosta, defending the honor of his forefather of the same name who fought and lost in the bitter battle of Amba Alagi, claims that the Italian government had no right to decide to return the obelisk.

In a long interview entitled ‘Valid Regrets’ published in leading daily Corriere della Sera, D’Aosta also said that ruler Haile Selassie told him in 1969 that the Italians might as well keep the stele. The royal also maintains that the obelisk was a ‘gift’ from Ethiopian clergy and that the mayor of Rome, not the national government, should have decided whether to give the monument back.

The opposite reasons led Nicola DeMarco, an Italian American teacher, to become active in the campaign to return the monument.
"I was named after my grandfather Nicola, a very compassionate and loving man. He told me about his years in Addis Ababa when I was a child," DeMarco told zoomata. "I became involved in the effort to return the Axum Obelisk in part to honor the memory of my grandfather as well as that of all the victims of Fascism." DeMarco got involved in 1996, when he met Dr. Richard Pankhurst, leader of the movement to return Ethiopian treasures, during a training program for local teachers.

For Pankhurst, whose most recent victory includes the recent return of an ancient holy book looted by British troops over a century ago, D’Aosta’s arguments for keeping the monument are ‘improbable.’ He cites the coercion of Italian occupying forces into giving such a precious item as a ‘gift’ and cites Selassie’s official autobiography, which calls the snagging of the obelisk as one of the most serious crimes of the fascist government against his country.

The return of the obelisk is not likely to put to rest all disputes over artifacts between the two countries. Italians still have to send back at least two other items, both covered by the 1937 agreement to return historical objects looted from Ethiopia.
Foot-dragging by the Italian government is even less understandable in these cases — since neither present the fragility or bulk of the obelisk. Haile Selassie’s prewar airplane, the first ever assembled in Ethiopia in 1936 and named after his beloved daughter Tsehai, is still in the Italian historical aviation museum and Rome still holds part of Ethiopia’s prewar national archives, the so-called Ministry of the Pen, or imperial archives, are still in Rome. ?1999-2003 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingual journalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire. *stamp image courtesy Nicola DeMarco

Italians Protest Return of Axum Obelisk

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zoomata.com staff updated:Wed Oct. 22 7:51 amWith a dramatic last-minute timing worthy of opera, Italians are protesting the return of the Axum Obelisk to Ethiopia.
The Italian government agreed to give back this enormous chunk of fascist booty over 50 years ago, but only got around to taking it apart earlier this month. Slated to arrive in Africa in early November, the 80-foot, 150-ton obelisk is wrapped in scaffolding and once again the center of controversy.

Italian wire services reported that a mysterious ‘protest committee’ plans try to stop the delicate work to take apart the monument.
No details about committee members were provided but just that the group believes the ‘obelisk should stay in Rome’ and that some sort of protest was planned for this week in Piazza Carpena.
One thing is certain — Italians have mixed feelings about doing the right thing. Newsweekly Panorama published a mock-up photo to show what the ‘naked’ square will look like and several newspapers have published letters from readers who feel the plunder has become part of the Italian patrimony.
Piazza Carpena won’t be left empty, however. According to Nicola DeMarco, whose grandfather was a colonist in Ethiopia under Mussolini, a group of Italian and international artists will create a peace monumenton that site to commemorate the years of peace between Ethiopia and Italy and as a reminder of the evils of Fascism.

The granite monument will be sent back as damaged goods — it was partially shattered by lightning in 2001.
Taken by order of Benito Mussolini in 1937, the Ethiopian government has been trying to get it back for over half a century. Lightning struck the deserted piazza around 1 a.m., probably attracted as much by the shape as the steel braces added when the monument was transported. The incident also shattered the argument by Italian officials that the relic was in better hands in the Bel Paese.

The pre-Christian relic once crowned the city of Aksum, then center of trade in ivory, animal skins and grain in the ancient Ethiopian empire. The Obelisk was the latest in a series of heated arguments for return of stolen art — one that found Italians as the accused. Owning over 60% of the world’s art treasures, according to UNESCO, usually places Italy in the position of petitioning for its own looted treasures. One recent example: after years of negotiations, the Getty Museum in California was prevailed upon to return 500 terracotta and bronze pieces to a Calabrian museum in 2001.

Foot-dragging by Italian authorities meant that agreements to return the obelisk to Ethiopia, signed as early as 1947, never amounted to action. Italian government officials, most vocally Vittorio Sgarbi, have protested the restitution both because of political instability in the African region as well as complications in shipping the heavy monument.

Placed at the center of piazza di Porta Capena, close to the Circus Maximus, Italian Culture Minister Giulio Urbani told newspapers after lightning struck that the sculpture would be restoredand sent home — and it only took two years to sort out the shipment. ©1999-2007 zoomata.com

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Italian Genius Leonardo Da Vinci Invented Plastic?

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by Nicole Martinelli posted:Thu Oct. 2/2003 15:12 pm

Chalk up another one for Renaissance genius Leonardo Da Vinci — he just may have invented plastic. A couple hundred years before Alexander Parkes debuted with man-made plastic at the 1862 Great International Exhibition, Leonardo had already developed a material similar to bakelite.

In addition to painter, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer and scientist, Leonardo may well be remembered as a jewelry maker and kitchenware designer. Professor Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Museo Ideale in Vinci (Tuscany), has recreated some of the objects described in Leonardo’s copious notes — and they look strikingly like modern craft-fair baubles.

Leonardo, however, was working with intestines, cauliflower leaves, paper and plant dyes. His studies to create ‘a glass that doesn’t break when it hits the floor’ led him to discover materials he thought might suit for knife handles, chessboards, salt shakers, lanterns, pendants and necklaces.

Called ‘the man who wanted to know everything,’ Leonardo is credited with inventing the helicopter, parachute, a flying machine, machine guns and a tank. The plastic experiments, found by combing the Arundel, Forster and Atlantic codes, are likely just some of the lesser-known discoveries in the 5,000 surviving pages of Leonardo’s notes. ©1999-2008 zoomata.com

*images courtesy Museo Ideale of Vinci

Related resources:
www.museoleonardo.it

The Da Vinci Code

Italians Lose Tuscan Island Auction Battle

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zoomata.com staff posted:Thu Oct. 2 15:12 pmItalian environmental groups stopped the impending auction of a Tuscan island — only to have a new isle put up for sale instead. Days after Giannutri, one of three islands up for grabs in November, had its ‘for sale’ sign taken down after protests by Legambiente, government officials put Cerboli on the list of 322 properties for sale in Tuscany.

In 2002, the Italian government announced it was selling off state-owned property to balance the budget. Critics wondered if someone would turn the Coliseum into a shopping mall or make Romeo and Juliet’s balcony into a drive-thru — and they weren’t too far off.
Of the historical properties conservationists raised the alarm against selling, buyers have already snapped up Palazzo Correr in Venice (on the block twice, sold with a 25% discount), Palazzo Artelli in Trieste and Villa Manzoni in Rome.

What else is for sale in bella toscana? The former prison colony of Pianosa Island has a price tag of slightly more than 8 million euro, comes with its own police station and is home to a national park with strict limits on tourist numbers. Considerably more secluded is Gorgona, the smallest island of the Tuscan archipelago, 18 miles off the coast of Livorno. Not looking for isolation? The spiaggia dell’ottone (brass beach) in Portoferraio, fully equipped with umbrellas and other beach paraphernalia, is priced at 4,970 euro. The lighthouses of Formiche di Grosseto, Capraia, Fenaio al Giglio are also up for grabs but prices haven’t been announced.©1999-2003 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingual journalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire. Related resources:
www.gazzettaufficiale.it
Weekly official government publication where auctions are announced. Italian only.

Buying a Property: Italy
Practical guide for the negotiating the real-estate maze of the Bel Paese…

La Fenice Opera House to Reopen — Finally

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The Fenice opera house of Venice, one of Italy’s most important venues, will finally reopen in December 2003 for a series of concerts.
In February of this year, it seemed that Italian officials were trying to convince themselves as much as everyone else about the never-ending restoration by putting up a website documenting the reconstruction.

The Italian opera house, razed by fire in 1996, was first promised to be rebuilt by 1998. A series of snafus have delayed the "Phoenix" (La Fenice in Italian) from rising out of its ashes. A three-year investigation into the causes of the fire, which lead to arson convictions for two electricians working on the wiring, dragged things out. And then in 2000 the discovery of Roman ruins and subsequent cataloging of them also caused notable delays. Work was halted in Spring 2001, when Mayor Paolo Costa decided the work was taking to long and should be given to another construction company.

Although opera won’t ring through the rebuilt halls until fall of 2004, the week of December 14-21 2003 will find music once again in the Fenice with maestro Riccardo Muti leading a homecoming for the house orchestra and chorus.

The theater,site of many memorable performances, was responsible for commissioning works like "La Traviata" and "Rigoletto" from Giuseppe Verdi.?1999-2004 zoomata.com

Zoomata is the brainchild of a bilingualjournalist based in Italy who thinks out of the box. This brain is for hire.

Related resources:
www.ricostruzionefenice.it/foto/home.asp
Take a look at the work & where its going.

www.teatrolafenice.it
For the concerts or productions at the the temporary PalaFenice (Teatro Maliban); online booking available.

A Thousand Days in Venice: An Unexpected Romance