Tuscany Holiday rent BLOG

In Florence something special, the exhibition “The Gallery of Tapestries. Epiphanies of precious fabrics” started on March the 20^th and  going on up to June the 3rd, 2012. It is a good opportunity of admiring the prestigious tapestries of the stored collections of the Uffizi. They had been hanging along the Uffizi Galleries and the Vasari’s Corridor up to 1987, when the princely manufactures, in need of restoration, were rolled in dark storage rooms, away from the public.

Tapestries are  precious works of craftsmanship relentlessly damaged by time, being their surface easily attacked by dust, insects and the law of gravity. Light, in particular, the main enemy of their brilliant colours, has to be checked up. A permanent exhibition hall, technologically arranged, is going, in a shortwhile, to be set up on the ground floor of the Uffizi to tell this peculiar passion of the Medicis. At first they had  these works of art  sent from the Flanders  they had banking business with. Later, in 1545, Cosimo the 1^st established a Florentine tapestry manufacture under the guide of Niccolò Karcher and Giovanni Rost respectively from Mantua and Ferrara.

On show in the exhibition six Flemish tapestries from Brussels or Antwerp  of the cycle of Jacob’s life, of the Battles of Hannibal and of the festivities held at the French  Valois court  in the second half of 16^th century. These last are probably the most surprising ones for richness and details. Probably owned by Catherine de’ Medici they were presented to her granddaughter Christine of Lorraine on her wedding to Ferdinando de’ Medici, Gran Duke of Tuscany. Catherine de’ Medici believed in the sumptuous court rituals, in the entertainments recorded in the tapestries. As written accounts of historical events they had to fulfill a precise political meaning. They were supposed to cunningly assess the enduring prestige and magnificence of the Valois dynasty after the past glories of Henry the 2^nd or Francis the 1^st . Thence the tapestries recording the French court festivals at Fontainbleu and Bayonne during Charles IX’s royal voyage around France or at the Tuileries ball for the Polish Embassy when Catherine’s son, Henry, was shortly appointed king of Poland before becoming Henry the 3^rd of France. The exhibition includes,  moreover, nine tapestries made in Florence, chosen among the ones of devotional subject, from the so-called Salviati cycle. Let’s remember as well  the magnificent Ecce Homo, The Hunts on the cartoons by Vasari  and Christ’s passion on the drawings of Alessandro Allori.

An exhibition not to be missed.

The hectic search of Leonardo’s lost masterwork  “The Battle of Anghiari”  has been  going on for many years.

The site  is the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio,  Florence. The story started  in 1563 when  Vasari,  commissioned  to renovate the hall  with a large fresco,  featuring the Battle of Marciano,  might  have preserved the work of  Leonardo,  hiding it under a juxtaposed new wall .  On top of  Vasari’s battle,  12 meters above the ground,  a soldier waves a green flag with the following written  words ” Chi cerca trova” (“He who seeks, finds”).

Could  these obscure words be  hinting   at Leonardo’s fresco ?

An intriguing suggestion.

Leonardo was commissioned  the Battle of Anghiari by the gonfaloniere  Pier Soderini to proudly celebrate the victory of the Florentine troops against Milan in 1440. The work,   dating back to 1503,  was never completed,  Leonardo abandoned the project  because of technical difficulties.
Many preparatory studies of  Leonardo’s work  still exist. The size of the Battle of Anghiari was impressive. Meant to deal with the various moments of the battle, Leonardo focused mostly on the scene representing colliding horses and cavaliers.  Its central section about four cavaliers, fighting for a standard,  is best known through a drawing by Peter Paul Rubens , at  the Louvre, Paris, known as The Battle of the Standard,  based  on an engraving of 1553 by Lorenzo Zacchia.  Rubens succeeded in portraying the detailed dramatic movements,  presumably present in Leonardo’s  original painting.

Maurizio Seracini,  professor at San Diego University, California,   has,  at present, been following his dream for many years,  chasing after  the Renaissance masterwork,  hidden,  according to him,  behind  Vasari’s  fresco. The professor,  a highly technological engineer,  in the survey of the area,  has implemented  non-invasive techniques,  such as a high-frequency, surface-penetrating radar and a thermographic camera.

He found a gap  between the two walls, large enough for the older fresco to be preserved. Through an endoscopic camera probe the team discovered fragments of pigment on the plaster of the inner wall, an  evidence of Leonardo’s  fresco wall,  being their chemical composition similar to black pigment of Mona Lisa and St. John the Baptist in the Louvre, Paris, as from  recently published scientific papers by the French museum.  Recently,  on March the 12^th, 2012  Seracini publicly announced the evidences,  however still controversial.

The challenge is still going on.