Vanità II

The House of Medici‘s fingerprints are all over Florence and its history.  In 1560,  Cosimo I de’ Medici had construction started on a complex of offices (“uffizi”) for the Florentine magistrates.  This complex is now the Galleria degli Uffizi and home to one of the world’s great art collections.The double portrait of Battista Sforza (yes, of the Sforzas  in Milan) and Federico III da Montefeltro.
Stories from the Lives of the Holy Fathers in the Desert… Botticelli‘s The Birth of Venus… …his St. Augustine in His Study…. …and his Calumny of Apelles.A magnificent view of the Arno and the Vasari Corridor stretching out to the Ponte Vecchio.Stunning rooms of stunning statuary…The presentation of this 1st century BCE Roman statue–in a darkened alcove, lit to show the gleam of the the marble–was magnificent.  But how am I just learning now that Hermaphroditus was the son of and Hermes and Aphrodite?Between The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence here, my beloved Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the bust of Christ in the church above the catacombs of San Sebastiano, and the Fontana del Tritone in the Piazza Barberini, I have concluded that Gian Lorenzo Bernini is my absolute favorite sculptor.Jacopo Pontormo‘s The Supper at Emmaus (with an eye of providence at the top, which makes me think of Freemasonry and $1 bills.)Bronzino‘s portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Giorgio Vasari‘s portrait of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Jacopo Pontormo’s portrait of Cosimo de’ Medici……and Giorgio Vasari‘s portrait of Alessandro de’ Medici.This School of Fontainebleau painting Two Ladies Bathing has the same finger-pinching imagery I noticed back in Bologna.Young family favorite El Greco‘s St. John the Evangelist and St. Francis Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio‘s Medusa