Attributed to Michelangelo Buonarotti, 1513, terracotta, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. The work is a study of a male torso, conceived to be without the head and upper and lower limbs. The work has been identified as a preparatory model for one of the figures of the Prisoners, intended to decorate the tomb of Julius II in Rome. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/torso-virile/zQGx46asE5jBIg?hl=it&ms=%7B%22x%22%3A0.5%2C%22y%22%3A0.5%2C%22z%22%3A9.086882915528859%2C%22size%22%3A%7B%22width%22%3A3.3866676762513332%2C%22height%22%3A1.2375000000000005%7D%7D – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Madonna della Scala, 1490. Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. Though it is small-sized the relief subject of the Madonna and child presents a monumental scope. The female figure fills the entire space. The meaning of the ladder (“scala”) in the title is ambiguous and may have reference to the children playing and holding a drape behind the Madonna. The date of the relief has been much discussed. However, a placement around 1490, before the Battle of the Centaurs, seems to be confirmed.see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/madonna-della-scala/xQF2nwLhAXd26w?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo Buonarotti, Nude female, 1533, Casa Buonarroti, Florence, Italy. This figure of a female nude is linked to the New Sacristy in Florence to accompany the marble effigy of Giuliano de’ Medici. It has been linked to the figure of the Earth that, together with the Sky, was to be part of Giuliano’s marble effigy. The project of building a proper Medici family mausoleum was conceived in 1520, when Michelangelo began work on the New Sacristy upon the request of Cardinal Giulio de Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, who expressed a desire to erect the mausoleum for some members of his family including Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano assassinated in Florence’s Duomo in 1478. After completing the architectural works in 1524, Michelangelo worked until 1533 on the sculptures and the sarcophagi that were to be featured on the chapel walls. The only ones actually completed were the statues of Lorenzo, the Duke of Urbino; Giuliano, the Duke of Nemours; the four statues of the allegories of Day and Night, and Dawn and Dusk; and the group representing the Madonna and Child. see – https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/nudo-femminile/xgHfNWIKU6r13g?hl=it – retrieved March 6, 2025 and http://www.museumsinflorence.com/musei/Medici_chapels.html#:~:text=The%20project%20of%20building%20a,the%20Magnificent%20and%20his%20brother – retrieved March 6, 2025. Michelangelo, crucifix, 1493, wood, Santo Spirito, Florence. It was placed by the artist in 1493 above the lunette of the high altar and has been there since.
The Italian Renaissance artist was born in Florentine territory in Caprese in the provinces of Tuscany where his father was a government bureaucrat. The family soon relocated to Florence where Michaelangelo grew up. Becoming friends with Francesco Granacci (1469-1543) who saw Michaelangelo’s drawing talent, at 13 years old Michelangelo announced he wanted to be an artist. Despite his parents objection, they eventually yielded to their son’s aspirations, and he was apprenticed to Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494) for the next three years.
Domenico Ghirlandaio (1448-1494), Expulsion of Joachim From the Temple, fresco (detail), 1486-1490. Santa Maria Novella, Cappella Tornabuoni, Florence. In the background, the mitered high priest receives sacrificial lambs at the altar where a fire burns. Joachim, according to sacred tradition, father of the Virgin Mary and grandfather of Jesus Christ, is sent away at this time since he is childless. He is married to Anne. To the right Ghirlandaio depicts an assembled group of contemporary Florentines including, second from right, Ghirlandaio himself. In 2nd century apocryphal writings, childless Joachim left for the desert where he prayed and fasted for 40 days. Angels appeared to Joachim and his wife Anne, and promised them a child. Joachim then returned to Jerusalem and embraced Anne at the city gate, a scene popularly depicted in medieval and Renaissance art. After this, Anne became pregnant and became the mother of the Virgin Mary and Jesus’s grandmother. This apocryphal relating of Joachim and Anne to Biblical figures Elizabeth and Zechariah and the birth of their son, John the Baptist (Luke 1) and Abraham and Sarah and the birth of their son, Isaac (Genesis 21) was a popular subject depicted in Christian art until the Council of Trent (1545–1563) when the church restricted public displays of these simple stories and events from apocryphal sources in a severe reaction to the Protestant reformation.
Michelangelo’s training was erratic, likely having left Ghirlandaio before his contract was complete, and working under the city’s ruler, Lorenzo de Medici for his contracted master, Bertoldo (1420-1491). Later in life Michelangelo did not advertise his training credentials as he believed art – such as freeing subjects from stone – emerged by the sheer artistic power of the individual. In this period, as a teenager, Michelangelo learned the art of fresco painting and drawing, copying previous masters such as Giotto (1267-1337) and Masaccio (1401-1428). Michelangelo absorbed the artwork of the naturalists, such as Paolo Uccello (1397-1475), whose artwork looked to present subjects with a viewpoint like a scientist interested in objective fact rather than looking to convey some established figural attitude. Where young Michelangelo was materially as great as Giotto and Masaccio, he also possessed a new means undreamt by those previous masters, as he drunk of the art of Donatello (1386-1466), Pollaiuolo (1429-1498), Verrocchio (c.1435-1488) and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Further, Michelangelo understood better than these others, that the epitome of these Renaissance artistic studies was to be expressed by one subject above all: the human nude.
Bernard Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.”
Giotto, The Arrest of Christ (Kiss of Judas ), 1304, Padua, Scrovegni Chapel.
The Arena, or Scrovegni Chapel, was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni in 1303. A nobleman of Padua, Enrico dedicated the chapel as an act of atonement for the sins of his father, Reginaldo, a moneylender whom Dante placed among the damned in the Inferno. The exterior of the chapel is austere, but its interior is filled with Giotto’s frescoes, completed by the time of the chapel’s dedication in late March 1305, with remaining work finished by March 1306. By this point, Giotto—then in his late thirties—was already a mature master, and in this cycle he transformed the course of Italian painting.
What had appeared as youthful brittleness and restlessness in his frescoes at Assisi in the late 1290s—works that had secured his fame and led to the Padua commission—has here developed into a fully realized visual language of narrative concision, solemnity, and decisive, almost fatalistic, plastic form. Although the subjects of the Life of the Virgin, the Life and Passion of Christ, and the Last Judgment draw upon a venerable medieval tradition, Giotto renders them with a striking immediacy. Human emotion, individualized gesture, and the presence of everyday life infuse the sacred narratives with a naturalism that conveys profound dignity and emotional gravity rather than rhetorical flourish.
The dramatic center of the Betrayal fresco is the confrontation between Christ and Judas. Once Christ accepts His fate in the agony of the garden, the world wastes no time in presenting Him with the cross He has embraced. One of His own apostles—an unsettling reminder of the failures of religious leaders across the ages—betrays Him with a kiss. Christ’s body nearly disappears beneath Judas’s enveloping cloak, yet His classical profile remains visible, fixed in a calm, penetrating gaze upon His betrayer. Judas’s pursed lips embody the chilling intimacy of treachery. As John 13 recounts, the devil—whether through possession or the alignment of Judas’s will with Satan’s designs—provides the impetus for the betrayal.
Giotto had previously depicted Judas as youthful and handsome, but here the apostle’s features bear the accumulated marks of moral decay. At the left, Peter lashes out at Malchus, the high priest’s servant, severing his ear; at the right, the high priest himself gestures toward the betrayal, yet his posture suggests a momentary hesitation before the full enormity of the act. Through these figures, Giotto constructs a scene of moral and emotional complexity, capturing the decisive moment when divine purpose and fallen humanity collide.
Michelangelo after Giotto, Drawing from “Ascension of the Evangelist,” 1490-1492. Louvre. see – https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020001224 – retrieved March 6, 2025. Paolo Uccello, Sacrifice of Noah And Noah’s Drunkenness (detail), 1447-48. Uccello was not interested primarily in conveying in art the possible “artistic” intention of this story’s scene. Instead, as Bernard Berenson described it, the artist produced “nothing but the scientific intention to find out how a man swooping down head-foremost would have looked if at a given instant of his fall he had been suddenly congealed and suspended in space.” These studies of reproducing objects as they really are, in anatomy and perspective, had a great bearing for the art of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. quoted in Berenson, p.54.Masaccio, Distribution of Alms and Death of Ananias (detail), 1425-1427, Brancacci Chapel, Florence. An episode from Acts of the Apostles (4:43-37 and 5: 1-11) depicting Ananias’s wife and child whose husband withheld their tithe from the early church leaders with the outcome being that Ananias dropped dead in divine retribution. When it was painted, viewers in the 1420’s and afterwards, read it as an artistic display of a New Testament endorsement of the equitable redistribution of wealth and the divine punishment of death forthwith for those who falsely withheld their fair share. 67% 7.95mb
When the Medici fell and Florence became a theocracy under Savonarola (1452-1498), 19-year-old Michelangelo decided to leave Florence. He lamented the fall of Lorenzo the Magnificent, his artistic patron, and the young artist lived hand to mouth going to Bologna, then to Venice, and back to Bologna, and finally to Rome in June 1496. The popes’ tremendous influence in capitalist Italy started in the 13th century and augmented into the 17th century, leading to what art critic Bernard Berenson (1865-1959) called an encroachment of “soulless Vaticanism” towards modern art. But clearly Rome had no use for a firebrand friar who refused to support the pope’s troops against the invading French army. As Columbus set out to discover America, It was the unpleasant chapter of the Italian War of the 1490s that helped fill the times with ongoing brutality, duplicity, complicity, intrigue, opportunism and expedience. A looming danger of looting and violence of the invading French army were emphasized by the impassioned sermons of Girolamo Savonarola that frightened the people and led to their heightened resentment against the ruling Medici. Florence was traditionally pro-French, but Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medici (“Piero the Unfortunate”) (1472-1504), son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, had deployed against them to defend Naples. Under pressure from citizens and outside French forces promising church reforms and civic transparency, the Medici was forced to flee and the city was proclaimed a Republic. The Florentines, with Savonarola in the lead, facilitated the invasion of French king Charles VIII (1470-1498) and against the pope which they considered corrupt. Pope Alexander VI (1431-1503), a Borgia and one of the most corrupt popes in history, ascended to the papal throne in 1492 and was immediately condemned in fiery sermons by Savonarola. Yet all was not well between “liberator” Charles VIII and his Florentine supporters. Immediately the French king demanded a huge sum of money, a ransom payment of sorts, from the Florentines in appreciation, as well as to pay for, the pro-French liberation. The Florentine government refused and the king threatened to loot the city. Faced with a backlash and real threat of popular revolt, the French bully relented and continued onto Rome. Charles postured, but was constantly fearful of antagonizing the European powers and announced his decision that he would not depose the corrupt old pope after all. By having kidnapped the pope’s mistress Giulia Farnese, wife of the pope’s military ally Orsino Orsini, who commanded 4,000 Neapolitan soldiers freshly landed to defend papal interests on the peninsula, Charles VIII was able to extract full entry into Rome in exchange for her release. Once in Rome the French troops looted the city. The pope, in a panic, arranged a quick safe passage for Charles VIII out of the Papal States towards Naples during which the king’s army massacred many hundreds of local inhabitants.
Charles VIII, roi de France, anonymous, c. 1550. Entering Florence in a power vacuum the invading French king demanded a huge sum of money from the citizens who refused to pay and leading to a stand-off. Public Domain. Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 15th century portrait of Piero the Unfortunate. Eldest son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, Piero di Lorenzo de’ Medicisucceeded him as ruler of Florence in 1492. When Piero determined in 1494 to stay neutral during French king Charles VIII’s invasion of Italy, effectively defending Naples the object of the king’s campaign, he was challenged. Suffering from an abandonment of the Florentine elite under the spell of Savonarola, Piero totally capitulated to Charles VIIi’s demands. Having succeeded in alienatating everyone in Florence, Piero fled to Venice, aided by a French diplomat, in November 1494. Attempting to make a comeback several times to Florence he was constantly rebuked, Piero drowned in the Garigliano River while attempting to flee the aftermath of the Battle of Garigliano in 1503, Public Domain.Pope Alexander VI Borgia, c.1495, attributed to Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete (c. 1450-1504), Vatican Museums. Alexander Vi was a wily politician from a prominent family who practiced nepotism and sired several children by way of his many mistresses.
Savonarola played an important role in this French infiltration in Italy — and Rome did not forget. Then, in February 1497, during Mardi Gras of that year, Savonarola, whose message was a combination of religious purist and civic republican preached his most dramatic act of cultural desecration by seeking that artworks, books, clothing items and cosmetics were thrown into a bonfire of the vanities as a sign of monied and other social decadence. The flames became his final undoing: Savonarola was excommunicated for heresy and sedition by Pope Alexander VI on May 12, 1497 after the preacher called “the contemporary Church leadership…a pockmarked whore sitting on Solomon’s throne.” The pope also threatened Florence with severe interdictions if they continued to be a sanctuary for Savonarola and his ilk. Savonarola was imprisoned on April 7, 1498 after failing a literal public trial by fire (it rained). Finally, he was dragged from his prison cell and with two other contemptible friars was condemned as a heretic and schismatic and hanged and burned at the stake on May 23, 1498, with the Vatican and the Medici observing it all from a safe distance. Yet the cult of Savonarola, his person as well as his political and religious ideas, did not go quietly up in smoke. Though seen today as a sort of vile figure, his supporters around 1500 and afterwards saw him as a martyr and encouraged his veneration as a saint to which many complied. In Florence Savonarola’s disputed legacy went on until the Medici more or less permanently re-installed themselves in 1530. Yet Protestant reformers in Germany and Switzerland were intrigued and influenced by Savonarola’s ideas and, in 1558, even Pope Paul IV, who was 22 years old when Savonarola was executed, declared him not a heretic and always in communion with the Catholic Church. Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595), a Florentine established in Rome, and regularly characterized as a most relatable prelate of and for the masses, also defended Savonarola’s memory.
Francesco Rosselli (1445-1513), The Execution of Savonarola and Two Companions at Piazza della Signoria, 16th century, oil on canvas, Galeria CorsiniBernard Berenson as a young man, Berenson described Michelangelo as “the pupil of nobody, the heir of everybody, who felt profoundly and powerfully what to his precursors had been vague instinct, who saw and expressed the meaning of it all.” quoted in Berenson p. 72. Public Domain. “Donatello – David – Florença” by original file by Patrick A. Rodgers is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0. Verrocchio, Equestrian Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni, 1480s, Venice. Bartolomeo Colleoni (1400-1475) was an Italian condottiero, who became captain-general of the Republic of Venice. Colleoni gained a reputation as the foremost tactician and disciplinarian of the 15th century. “Bartolomeo Colleoni by Andrea del Verrocchio” by Didier Descouens is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.Antonio del Pollaiuolo, Nude Dancers, 1470s, Fresco Arcetri, Villa La Gallina. A fresco frieze of dancing nude figures, in a villa near Florence, shows the artist’s same interest in extreme body poses. Public Domain.
Meanwhile, in Rome, Michelangelo sculpted his first major marble works. The first, Bacchus, was commissioned by Cardinal Raffaele Riario (1461-1521) in partnership with Jacopo Galli, a Roman collector, that was displayed in Galli’s garden until it was sold in 1572 to the Medici and is today in the Bargello. The second is the sublime Pietà (St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City) that was commissioned by a French cardinal in Rome and placed in the Santa Maria della Febbre. Vasari described the Pietà as “a revelation of all the potentialities and force of the art of sculpture.” Though the Pietà made Michelangelo famous in Rome, he returned to Florence following its installation to work on the David, a commission made by the Florentine republic after the expulsion of the Medici.
Michelangelo, Bacchus, marble. 1497, Bargello, Florence.Michelangelo, Pietà, marble, 1498-1499, St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. A 24-year-old Michelangelo was all the rage in Rome as an artist in the late 1490’s and wrote his name promonently across the sash of the Blessed Mother. The artist did this after it was completed and heard a group admiring the artwork and attributing it to a different artist. Michelangelo was having none of it and one night whet into the chapel and chiseled his name for none to miss seeing. “Pieta (Michelangelo)” by elixirk is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence, Italy, May 1983. Author’s collection.
Michelangelo’s David, created in c. 1501-1504, has been in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873, The biblical figure of David came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the 1494 constitution of the Republic of Florence, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the political aspirations of the Medici family.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
SOURCES:
Bernard Berenson, The Italian Painters of the Renaissance, Phaidon, New York, 1959.
Ornella Casazza, Masaccio and the Brancacci Chapel, Scala, 1990.
Enzo Carli, translated by Susan Bellamy, Giotto and His Contemporaries, Crown Publishers, 1958.
Andreas Quermann, Ghirlandaio, Könemann, 1998.
A Dictionary of Art and Artists, Peter and Linda Murray, Penguin Books; Revised,1998.
Giorgio Vasari, trans. George Bull, Lives of the Artists, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965.
FEATURE Image: Raphael, Portraits of Agnolo Doni and Maddalena Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Raphael, Self-portrait at 23 years old, 1504–1506. Tempera on panel, 47.5 cm × 33 cm (18.7 in × 13 in), Palazzo Pitti, Florence, Italy.
INTRODUCTION.
Born in Urbino in 1483, an environment rich in the arts and humanist learning, Raphael had a remarkable capacity for personal growth and branded new incarnations of his artistic style regularly. He moved to Florence toward the end of 1504. Giorgio Vasari in his chapter on Raphael describes an episode where the artist of Urbino, already in his thirties with a reputation as a master, went back to study the nude (male) form with Michelangelo as his guide. Vasari’s admiration in telling this story goes beyond Raphael’s humility in assuming the role of student again (he studied constantly anyway) but that his learning always improved his artistic output. In the study of nudes, however, artistic growth came perhaps not as the artist expected or intended. Whether Raphael entered the workshop of Perugino at that time or, as seems more likely, many years later when he was already an acknowledged artist, he quickly mastered Perugino’s delicate, ornamental style, with its open landscapes and gentle figures. It was said that contemporaries had trouble distinguishing Perugino’s work from Raphael’s, but Raphael’s compositions were more sophisticated even when he was a young artist. While Raphael mastered Michelangelo’s (and Leonardo’s) art forms convincingly, he also realized he was no match for the creator of the Sistine Chapel and other chiseled works insofar as the nude male forms.1 Yet Raphael consolidated his strengths by testing his limits. A major strength, Vasari believed, was Raphael’s ability to draw and compose a wide range of subjects, such as landscape, architecture, draperies, and the human figure. Up to that time that had been what the artist was doing and would now unflinchingly continue to do on a grander scale, for example, in the Stanzae. In 1508 the pope called Raphael to Rome. Influenced by the idealized, classical art of the city’s ancient past, Raphael’s work took on a new grandeur. He also responded to the more energetic and physical style of Michelangelo, whose works he had already begun to study in Florence. Vasari believed Raphael had the gift to congeal the “poetic moment” by depicting in his painting the most significant gesture and force of action. With the possible exception of Leonardo, he is probably the unparalleled master of excellent design.2 The precocious Raphael Sanzio also benefited from early opportunities given to him by his father to cultivate his talent. The artist’s own determination to succeed in his métier paid off when he was summoned to work at the Vatican by the Pope in 1509, arguably the greatest art patron in an age of art patrons. 3 The early sixteenth century was an age where patrons were as luminous as their artists and the coming together of Raphael and Julius II, and later Leo X, made for a celebrity team. While Vasari meticulously tells the reader of the artist’s “judicious” character – and that Raphael was extremely “amatory” and implying it aided in his death – the chronicler describes, often from memory, his preferences in Raphael’s art work. His collective response, for example, to all four frescos in the Camera d’Eliodoro is that he is most impressed by Raphael’s interesting decorative details, beautiful movements and gestures, the sheer number of figures portrayed, and his ability to express complex ideas and stories on a two-dimensional surface.4 With Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and Michelangelo (1475-1564) Raphael is one of the great masters of the High Renaissance. Raphael and his large team of assistants left behind a large body of influential work, especially in the Vatican where the artist spent the last 12 years of his life, although Raphael died at 37 years old. For most of the history of Western art, the easy grace and harmonious balance of Raphael’s style has represented an ideal of perfection. His work became widely influential through the dissemination of prints. Raphael was also the city’s leading portraitist, creating penetrating psychological images that engaged viewer and sitter with a new intensity.
ARTWORKS.
Raphael, S. Niccolo Da Tolentino Altarpiece, 1501, oil on panel, 44 x45 ¼ in., Capodimonte Museum, Naples, Italy.
The Baronci Altarpiece is Raphael’s first recorded commission. It was made for the patron’s chapel in the church of Sant’Agostino in Città di Castello, a commune between Arezzo and Urbino, north of Perugia. In 1789 the artwork was badly damaged in an earthquake and surviving fragments were acquired by the Vatican until they mysteriously dispersed in the mid-19th century and found their way into different collections. Raphael’s commission of 1501 was to paint a large altarpiece dedicated to the Augustinian saint Nicholas of Tolentino (c. 1246– September 10, 1305). Nicholas was canonized by Augustinian Pope Eugene IV in 1446. While today’s saints require 1-2 miracles, St. Nicolas Tolentino was credited at his canonization with 300 miracles – including 3 resurrections. (see – Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Michael Lapidge. Chicago: Fitzroy, Dearborn, 2000).
Raphael, angel, fragment Baronci altarpiece. Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo, Brescia. Raphael, The Crucifixion, 1502-03, oil on polar, 283.3 × 167.3 cm, National Gallery, London.
The painting was done in 1503 for Domenico Gavari for his S. Domenico chapel in Città di Castello. Angels are poised on toes on a cloud as their cups catch Christ’s dripping blood. Mary Magdelene and St. Jerome (holding a rock) are on their knees while the Virgin Mary and St. John stand. The sun and moon in the sky was characteristic of Crucifixion paintings in Umbria (p. 13, Jones & Penny). It was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1924. Gavari was a close friend of Andrea Baronci, for whom Raphael painted the Saint Nicholas of Tolentino Altarpiece for the church of S. Agostino, also in Città di Castello. Saint Jerome, of course, was not present at the Crucifixion but is included in this scene because the chapel was dedicated to him. The overall design is based on several versions of the crucified Christ in a landscape painted by Perugino in the late 1480s and 1490s, and is especially similar to his altarpiece of the Crucifixion for the convent of S. Francesco al Monte in Perugia, commissioned in 1502 and completed 1506. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-the-mond-crucifixion – retrieved September 5, 2024.
Raphael, Coronation of the Virgin (Oddi Altarpiece), 1503-1504, Oil on canvas, 8’9” x 5’4”, Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome.Raphael, Coronation of the Virgin (Oddi Altarpiece), 1503-1504, Oil on canvas, 8’9” x 5’4”, Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL.
Raphael painted altarpieces for the Augustinians and Dominicans and the Oddi altarpiece (above) was done for the Franciscans. It was commissioned by the Oddi family chapel in S. Francesco al Prato. The Oddi were in exile from Perugia since 1495 because of battles between families and returned in 1503. The altarpiece was part of honoring their family members. The painting is divided into an upper part depicting the coronation of the Virgin and, in the lower part, the Apostles at the time of the Assumption. In the center, the apostle Thomas holds the Virgin’s girdle that the Virgin lowered to him as a token of these supernatural events. This display of theology was precious to the Franciscans at the time who were promoting the Virgin Mary. They were likely very involved in directing the artist in its composition. (Roger & Jones, pp. 15-16).
Raphael, Spozalizio (The Engagement of the Virgin Mary), 1504, oil on panel, 67 x 46 ½” Brera Gallery, Milan.
The painting’s composition reflects the influence of Perugino, specifically the fresco done by him in the Sistine Chapel in 1484. In terms of its architectural setting, Raphael was influenced by Piero della Francesca (c.1416-1492) and Bramante (1444-1514). The painting’s architectural structure shares centrality in the painting with the foreground figures done in a perspectival arrangement. Within the figures are members of the party positioned in depth. Joseph places a ring on Mary’s finger whose positioning bisects the artwork. A tawny gold tone pervades the painting. It was commissioned by the Alberini family for a chapel in S. Francesco of the Friars Minor at Città di Castello in Perugia. (Brera Milan, p 34)
Raphael, The Madonna and Child Enthroned with Five Saints (Colonna Altarpiece), c. 1504-1505, oil on panel, 68 x 68” The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City.
Raphael painted this altarpiece for the Franciscan convent of Sant’Antonio in Perugia. It hung in a part of the church reserved for the nuns. The pair of voluminous saints straddling each side of the throne reflect the progressive style of Leonardo da Vinci and Fra Bartolomeo (1472-1517) that Raphael was studying in Florence. The lunette above the main panel depicts God the Father holding a globe and raising his right hand in blessing situated between two angels and two seraphim. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/437372 – retrieved September 5, 2024.
Raphael, The Small Cowper Madonna, c. 1505 59.5 x 44 cm (23 7/16 x 17 5/16 in.), National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.
The Cowper Madonna includes an agreeable background landscape. In a vertical painting, a haloed woman and nude child sit before an expansive grass field extending behind them to a group of trees and buildings on a hill in the distance among hazy blue hills beneath a blue sky.https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.1196.html – retrieved September 8, 2024.
Raphael, Saint Michael and The Dragon, c. 1505, oil on panel, 12 ¼” x 10 ¼” The Louvre Paris https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010060773 – retrieved September 4, 2024Raphael, Saint Michael and The Dragon, c. 1505, oil on panel, 12 1/4 x 10 ¼” The Louvre, Paris https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010060772 – retrieved September 4, 2024.Raphael, Saint George and the Dragon, c. 1506, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
These early works by the artist depict the popular subjects of St. Michael the Archangel vanquishing Satan and Saint George slaying the Dragon, each showing the martial subject of good combatting evil. These were early private commissions for the court of Urbino. Saint George was a Christian Roman soldier who, pious legend informs, subdued a dragon and, with the daughter of a pagan king, brought it to the city, where St. George killed it with his sword. These heroic actions witnessed by the king and his subjects led to their conversion to Christianity. The historic figure of Saint George was martyred around the year 290. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.28.html – retrieved September 4, 2024.
Raphael, The Three Graces, 1505-1506, oil on panel, 6 ¾ x 6 ¾” Condé Museum, Chantilly.
The panel was recorded in the Borghese collection in 1650. It accompanied the Dream of Scipio, an oil on panel, today in the National Gallery of London. The figures were derived from ancient classical sculpture and depict, likely, Chastity, Beauty and Love. Chastity’s lower torso is veiled and an arm covers her breasts from view. Amor’s breasts, by contrast, are revealed. Chastity also wears no adornment as do Beauty and Amor. While the figures are modeled similarly, the space between them is disparate and Beauty blocks Chastity’s leg. (Jones & Penny, p. 8; Beck, pp. 62-63).
Raphael, Portrait of Agnolo Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.Raphael, Portrait of Maddalena Doni, c. 1506, oil on panel, 24 ¾ x 17 ¾” Pitti Gallery, Florence.
Agnolo Doni is the only Florentine portrait in these first years mentioned by Vasari though paired with its companion portrait of Maddalena Doni. Doni was an art collector who married the daughter of Giovanni Strozzi in 1503. Agnolo was 10 years older than his wife who was in her teens. The portraits are painted on identically sized panel and are intended to hang next to one another. Raphael took great care in depicting the corporeal reality of his subjects, particularly appreciated in their faces and hands (though Agnolo Doni’s portrait is more detailed than his wife’s.) In both Doni portraits the sitters show-off their jewelry – such as rings and, in Maddalena’s portrait, a large pearl hanging around her neck. (Roger & Penny, p. 29-30)
Raphael, The Madonna of the Granduca, c. 1506, Oil on panel, 33 x 21 1/2 “ Pitti gallery, Florence.Raphael, Lady with a Unicorn, 1506, oil on panel, 65 cm × 51 cm (26 in × 20 in), Galleria Borghese, Rome, Italy.
The work was of uncertain attribution until recent times. In the 1760 inventory of the Gallery, the subject of the painting was identified as Saint Catherine of Alexandria and attributed to Perugino. A restoration of the painting in 1934 revealed a unicorn, the medieval symbol for chastity, and led to the pianting’s attribution to Raphael. In 1959 an x-ray revealed a small dog under the unicorn which symbolized conjugal fidelity.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Woman_with_Unicorn – retrieved September 7, 2024.
Raphael, The Holy Family With Saints Elizabeth and John (The Canigiani Holy Family), c. 1506-07, oil on panel, 51 ½ x 42 1/8” Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
Visible on the hem of the Madonna’s scarf is inscribed, “Rapahel Urbanas.” The fresco and easel painter was active mainly in Umbria, in Florence after 1504, and in Rome in 1509 until his death. It was painted for Domenico Canigiani where Vasari saw it later. It entered the Medici collection and when a Medici daughter married an Elector Palatine it accompanied her over the Alps to Germany. (Pinakothek Munich Great Museums of the World, Roberto Salvini, et. al., Newsweek NY 1969 pp. 126).
Raphael, Madonna del Cardellino, 1506-07, oil on panel, 42 1/8 x 30 ¼” Uffizi Gallery Florence.
The three figures are closely integrated as well as displaying a greater sense of volume. The painting is dated 1507, again on the hem of the Virgin’s garment. In the painting St. John the Baptist presents a goldfinch (cardellino) to the Christ child – a symbol of the Passion. (Roger & Penny, p. 33)
The Deposition, 1507, oil on panel, 72 ½ x 69 ¼” Borghese Gallery, Rome.The Deposition, 1507, oil on panel, 72 ½ x 69 ¼” Borghese Gallery, Rome. DETAIL.
Upon seeing Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari and Michelangelo’s Battle of Cascia in Florence Raphael’s style applied its innovative principles immediately changing the trajectory of his artwork up to that point. Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were in a pitched artistic battle for the future of modern art in the first decade of the 16th century in central Italy. Their artwork was for a fabled competition to decorate the Great Council Hall in Florence. Raphael studied closely these complex drawings of heroic violence. Though Raphael was familiar with violent combat in Perugia and elsewhere, it was its containment in these artworks in Florence that such dynamic convolutions appeared as in his own work such as The Deposition though he may have had in mind also Perugino’s work in 1495 of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ. In the finished painting the action takes place from right to left – a group of women attending to a swooning Virgin to the Magdalene grasping Christ’s hand to look into his face. (Roger & Penny, pp. 37-44).
Raphael, La Belle Jardinière, 1507-08, oil on panel, 48 x 31 ½” The Louvre, Paris.
In this painting John the Baptist kneels before the Christ child. The painting has an arched top. It was Leonardo da Vinci who formulated the pyramidal structure for the Holy Family and half-length portrait and it seems Raphael looked to explore his idea for his narrative of the Virgin Mary with cousins Jesus Christ and John the Baptist. (Roger & Penny, p. 33)
Raphael, The Madonna of the Baldacchino, 1508, oil on canvas, 9’ x7’4” Pitti Gallery Florence.
The painting was started by Raphael and finished after his death (Roger & Penny, p. 44). It was Raphael’s first major commission in Florence for the Dei family chapel in the Santo Spirito basilica (1487) and remained unfinished when the 25-year-old artist was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II, nicknamed the Fearsome, who reigned on Peter’s chair from 1503 to 1513. Pope Julius, born Giuliano della Rovere in 1443, took his name specifically from Julius Caesar (d. 44 BCE). In 1508, this “Battle Pope” as he was also known, commissioned the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. Raphael’s enthroned Madonna and Child is with, from left, Sts. Peter, Bernard of Clairvaux, James the Greater and St. Augustine of Hippo. The group is joined by two putti at the foot of the throne’s high pedestal steps. It is a large format painting whose size was increased when it was restored and “completed” at the end of the 17th century to meet the tastes of a Medici prince. Raphael is cited for being an imitator more than originator and this is exampled in the Christ Child playing with his toes whose pudgy type derives from the workshop of Florentine sculptor Luca Della Robbia (c. 1400-1482). The painting can be read right to left as St. Augustine, looking at the viewer, gestures, with St. James gazing in a similar direction, towards the throne and its occupants and then crosses to St. Bernard whose backward glance ends in conversation with St. Peter holding a book and large key. Once in Rome, Raphael continued these simple straight forward readings of his artworks’ often complex network of figures beginning in his famous frescoes in the Stanza della Segnatura (1508-1511) yet by then with greater refinement and heroism. In 1799 The Madonna of the Baldacchino was confiscated by French forces and taken to Paris only to be returned to Florence in 1813. (Beck, pp. 78-79).
Raphael, St. Catherine of Alexandria, oil on panel, c. 1507, 71 x 56 cm, National Gallery of Art, London.
Raphael’s saint, a 4TH century mystic and martyr, is not an object for devotion but dramatizes an example of devotion. The turned figure derives from Leonardo da Vinci and expresses an emotional animation that is one of the strongest depictions in Raphael’s oeuvre. (Roger & Penny, p. 44). The portrait is joined to a landscape as the saint leans on a spiked wheel which is her symbol as it was the manner of her death. Raphael looks to capture the mystical or visionary aspect of the saint as she places her hand over her heart and gazes upwards to a golden break in the sky. The figure is very dynamic moving beyond Perugino’s influence of angelic air and distant landscapes and towards Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci whose monumentality and detailed arrangements Raphael studied in Florence. It is unknown who commissioned the artwork and for exactly what purpose it served. https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/raphael-saint-catherine-of-alexandria – retrieved September 6, 2024.
Raphael, The Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, 1508, oil on panel, 80.7 x 57.5 cm (31 3/4 x 22 5/8 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.27.html – retrieved September 8, 2024.Raphael, c. 1509, fresco, 47 ½ x 41 ½” Ceiling, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.Raphael, The Fall, c. 1509, fresco, 47 ½ x 41 ½” Ceiling, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.DETAIL.
At the time of the papal commission Raphael had little experience painting large frescos but would revolutionize the tradition. The basic scheme of the decoration presents four tondi of abstract ideas of Theology, Poetry, Philosophy and Law. The Fall – or Adam and Eve on the Brink of Disobedience along with the Judgment of Solomon on the ceiling relates to themes of Theology and Law as the ceiling’s admixture of pagan scenes including Urania and Apollo and Marsyas relate to Poetry and Philosophy. (Roger & Penny – pp 50-52).
Raphael, The Disputation over the Sacrament (Disputa), 1509-10, fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.Raphael, The Disputation over the Sacrament (Disputa), 1509-10, fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL.
Raphael’s artwork has the effect of cinema in presenting nearly life-sized figures in space that, hoisted onto the wall like a massive theatre screen, fills the room’s field of vision. Further, as a modern-day film dispels incredulity to its medium and any message it conveys, absorbing the viewer, Raphael’s fresco makes intensely real the Catholic faith. Angels in the vault accompany God the Father as a white-robed God the Son sits enthroned before a golden disc displaying his sacrificial wounds of the Cross. On each side sit the Virgin Mary and St. John the Baptist while on the raised tier sits figures from the Bible. The Holy Spirit descends in the form of a dove on the monstrance holding the Eucharist. Many preparatory drawings survive for this fresco. (Roger & Penny, pp.57-58)
Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510-11, Fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510-11, Fresco, 25’3” at base, Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL.
Raphael creatively adapted figures or figural groupings from one fresco to another. Raphael also utilized Michaelangelo’s newly publicly accessible Sistine Chapel ceiling’s prophets and sibyls. Beyond Michaelangelo, Raphael was interested in foreshortening and also arranging numerous figures in a mathmatically constructed perspectival space. Compared to the architecture in his Spozalizio from 1504, Raphael’s architecture in The School of Athens is more massive and yet whose angular lines are softened by curvacious colossal statues in niches. One statue is Minerva above Jurisprudence while Apollo is on the left (and closest to the Parnassus fresco). The central figures below the arches, open sky behind them, are Plato with his Timaeus and Aristotle with his Ethics. Other recognizable figures include Socrates to the left of Plato and Pythagoras to the right of the door. Euclid bends down to use one of his compasses surrounded by students and disciples. (Roger & Penny p 74-78).
Raphael, Parnassus, c. 1511, fresco, 22’1 ½” at base. Stanza della Segnatura, Vatican, Rome.
Raphael painted a poet’s paradise where Apollo has the central place. The window which interupts the base of the artwork looked out onto a hill in Rome called Mons Vaticanus that was known since classical times as sacred to Apollo. This fact with the fresco’s other siting challenges (window glare) Raphael was well aware of. Apollo plays the fiddle surrounded by poets and gorgeous muses with a background of laurel trees. Mortals are below on either side of the window. (Roger & Penny, pp. 68-69)
Raphael was working on the frescos in the Vatican Palace when he painted this oil on panel portrait of a “Young Cardinal.” The sitter is not known though it likely is Cardinal Francesco Alidosi (1455-1511). Cdl. Alidosi was an influential diplomat and military leader and a favorite of Julius II (1503-1513). The sitter’s expression and pose of a resting arm on the edge of the painting’s base and the slight turn of the body seems to owe much to Leonardo da Vinci. The body is monumental compared to a placid and yet almost inscrutable slightly smaller head whose depiction, while directly observed, is somewhat idealized. When Della Rovere was elected as Pope Julius II in 1503, Alidosi became his secretary and primary collaborator. He was appointed papal chamberlain and then treasurer. Though labeled “unholy” by Venetian cardinal Pietro Bembo (1470-1547), Cld. Alidosi helped guide the vocation of Bl. Elena Duglioli dall’ Olio (1472-1520), an Italian aristocrat, who wanted to be a Poor Clare nun but was forced to marry by her family and for whose endowed chapel in Bologna Raphael painted an altar-piece. In 1504 Alidosi became a bishop whose sees ranged up and down all Italy – of Mileto in 1504 and of Pavia in 1505. He occupied the seat of Pavia until he was murdered in broad daylight in 1511. There were accusations traded back and forth that Cdl. Alidosi was a traitor in a time when the French occupied parts of Italy among its warring Italian families and an independently powerful pope who acted to protect his favorite as long as possible. About Alidosi, one historian noted, ”A favorite has no friends” and there were many unconcerned witnesses to the brutal crime whose attack included blows that split open his head. (Beck, pp. 92-93; Herbert M. Vaughan, B.A., The Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII), Methuen & Co., London, 1910, p. 64-65; “Alidosi, Francesco, detto il Cardinal di Pavia”. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 2 (in Italian). Treccani. 1960.)
Raphael, The Alba Madonna, c. 1511, oil on canvas (transferred from panel), diameter 37 ¼” National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Raphael’s major commissions for papal and aristocratic patrons did not interrupt his sustained engagement with the Madonna theme, a subject he had refined since his years in Umbria and Florence. The Alba Madonna exemplifies this continuity. The Virgin is presented as a Virgin of Humility, seated directly on the ground, her pose reinforcing the theological emphasis on Christ’s lowly Incarnation. She wears a rose‑pink gown beneath a topaz‑blue mantle, her hair drawn back from her face, and one finger marking a page in the book resting on her lap.
The Virgin occupies the dominant share of the tondo’s surface, receiving the young John the Baptist as he approaches with flowers gathered in the fold of his garment — a visual shorthand for his role as the forerunner who prepares and presents Christ to the world. All three figures direct their attention toward the small cross held by the Christ Child, a sign of his identity as the Lamb of God and of the sacrificial destiny that defines his mission.
Raphael integrates figure and format with characteristic finesse: the Madonna’s rounded features and gently curving posture echo the circular panel on which the scene is painted. The background opens onto an expansive plain leading to a turquoise body of water, with distant mountains rendered in deeper blue beneath a luminous sky, establishing a serene atmospheric recession typical of Raphael’s mature style. (Roger & Penny, p. 88.) https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.26.html – retrieved September 4, 2024.
Raphael, Galatea, c. 1512, fresco, 9’8 1/8” x 7’4”, Villa farnesina, Rome.
Raphael took a poem by Florentine poet Poliziano (1454-1494) for inspiration for this fresco. The poet gives a detailed description of the Palace of Venus. Galatea is described as riding on the sea in a chariot pulled by a pair of dolphins whose reins she holds. Around her is her entourage playing amorously in the sea. In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1464) were exhumed from Florence’s Church of San Marco to determine the causes of their deaths. Forensic tests showed that both men of letters likely were poisoned but how and by whom are only speculation. (see – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6920443.stm – retrieved September 7, 2024). (Roger & Penny, p. 93).
Raphael, The Expulsion of Heliodoris From the Temple, 1512-13, Fresco, 24’7” at base. Stanza D’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
The Stanza D’Eliodoro served as a Vatican audience chamber for the Pope. Each fresco depicts a story of divine intervention and the Pope felt impelled to record them like a civic authority would record an important battle scene in the town hall. The Pope had control over the message and even had himself inserted into these works and one of the best portraits of the pope by Raphael.5 Vasari believed that in the Expulsion of Heliodorus the message was clear: it was the Pope chasing avarice out of the church. Still others, more realistic perhaps, believed the theme to be the defense of the Church’s right to worldly possessions.6While Julius II kept the treasury full and spent lavishly on public works, he also formally condemned his predecessor’s self-enrichment as well as the Church practice of buying and selling its offices. Others impute Pope Julius II making a parallel between Heliodorus’ expulsion and the Pope’s battle to expel rebellious cardinals who supported the French king against Rome.7 The first fresco painted in the Stanza D’Eliodoro and the one the room is named for is also, in my opinion, the finest: The Expulsion of Heliodorus. Heinrich Wölfflin in his book Classic Art provides the most satisfying brief account of this fresco, although there are other observers who offer insight and detail. The painting is based on an account found in 2 Maccabees, a book that treats of the events in Jewish history from the time of the high priest Onias III and King Seleucus IV to the defeat of Nicanor’s army (around 170 B.C). The biblical account of Heliodorus’ attempt to profane the Temple is a rich one and, in terms of the painting’s iconography, can be synopsized as such:
“There was great distress throughout the city. Priests prostrated themselves in their priestly robes before the altar, and loudly begged him in heaven…to keep the deposits safe for those who had made them…(T)he changed color of the (high priest’s) face manifested the anguish of his soul. The terror and bodily trembling that had come over the man clearly showed…People rushed out…in crowds to make public supplication because the Place was in danger of being profaned…Women, girded…filled the streets…While they were imploring the almighty Lord to keep the deposits safe and secure… Heliodorus went on with his plan. But just as he was approaching the treasury with his bodyguards, the Lord of spirits… (struck). There appeared to them a richly caparisoned horse, mounted by a dreadful rider. Charging furiously the horse attacked Heliodorus with his front hoofs…Then two other young men, remarkably strong…beautiful…splendidly attired, appeared…they flogged (Heliodorus) unceasingly…Suddenly, he fell to the ground enveloped in a great darkness…The man who a moment ago had entered that treasury with a great retinue and his whole bodyguard was carried away helpless…” (2 Maccabees, Chapter 3:14-28)
Raphael followed the biblical text closely. He depicts the three major parties in the religious story: the divine rider, two youths and Heliodorus; the figure of the anguished priest; and the “girded” women. As he does in The Deliverance of Saint Peter, the Pope identifies with one of the major priestly characters in the art work if one detects, as some scholars do, the features of Julius II in the High Priest Onias III.8 The Stanza D’Eliodoro and its first fresco The Explusion of Heliodorus is a milestone for its scale, its composition, its form, its treatment of subject, its color, its narrative power, and its graceful draughtmanship.
Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
The fresco depicts a 13th century miracle connected to the Eucharist when a traveling priest, doubting the Real Presence of Jesus in the consecrated host, is given proof of its reality when the altar cloth he uses for Mass becomes stained with blood from the Host. The cloth relic was revered by Julius II and housed in Orvieto Cathedral where it is today. From its inception, the five handsome youths in the bottom right section of the fresco have been admired for their sturdy monumentality perhaps influenced by Michelangelo as well as its colors and costumes showing Venetian influence. (Beck, pp. 100-101).
Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL. Raphael, The Mass of Bolsena, c. 1512 Fresco 21’8” Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, RomeDETAIL.
Giuliano della Rovere (1443-1513) was described by Machiavelli in his works as an ideal prince. Becoming pope in 1503, he took the name Julius II in honor of Julius Caesar and was nicknamed the Warrior Pope. In 1506 Julius II organized the famous Swiss Guard for his personal protection and established the Vatican Museums. He was also the pope who instigated the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Basilica that exists today. The pope increased the power of the Papal States and, in 1508, he commissioned the Raphael Rooms and Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel. It was Julius II who also established the first bishoprics in the New World. Although the Tomb of Pope Julius II with its famous sculpture of Moses by Michelangelo is in San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome, the ensemble, extensively abbreviated than originally planned, was not finished until 1545, long after Julius II’s death in 1520. In fact, Julius II is buried in St. Peter’s Basilica.
Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter From Prison, 1512-13, Fresco, 22’8” at base. Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.
San Pietro in Vincoli in Rome (“St. Peter in Chains”) was Julius II’s titular church when he was a cardinal before becoming pope. It was also his uncle’s church before him, pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484). When pope, Julius II made pilgrimage to the church in 1512 after the French evacuated from Italy. The liberation in the title of Raphael’s concurrent fresco probably refers to that of the Papal States with St. Peter taking on the physical characteristics of Julius II. The fresco was being painted during the year when the pope was dying which took place in February 1513. Raphael’s use of light in this fresco is probably the boldest in art taking place at night in the whole of Renaissance art. (Beck, pp. 102-3).
Raphael, The Liberation of Saint Peter From Prison, 1512-13, Fresco, 22’8” at base. Stanza d’Eliodoro, Vatican, Rome.Raphael, The Sistine Madonna, 1512-13, oil on canvas, 8’8” x 6’5”Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden.
Raphael’s painting was made for the high altar of a newly rebuilt church of Pope St. Sixtus (d. 257) in Piacenza, Italy. St. Sixtus kneels on a cloud before the Virgin and Christ Child with a hand over his heart. The saint is interceding for the worshippers of Piacenza to whom he gestures outward with his other hand. Opposite is St. Barbara, patron of soldiers, with the symbol of a tower behind her. (Roger & Penny p. 128)
The painting also includes Sts. Paul, John the Evangelist, Augustine and Mary Magdalene. It was an altarpiece for a chapel in S. Giovanni in Monte in Bologna founded by Elena Duglioli dall’ Olio (1472-1520). The Italian aristocrat wanted to become a Poor Clare nun but was forced to marry by her family. She persuaded her husband, however, not to consummate the marrage attributed to her devotion to St. John (patron of virginity) and St. Cecilia and of which Raphael was commissioned to execute the altarpiece. Elena’s benefactor in this enterprise of her religious vocation was the influential Cardinal Alidosi. Raphael depicts St. Cecilia with an organetto slipping from her hands as she looks skyward to the preferred sound of heavenly music. Elena died on September 23, 1520 and her remains are incorrupt in her church of San Giovanni in Monte. In 1828 she was beatified by Pope Leo XII (1760-1829). Her feast day is September 23. (Roger & Penny, pp. 144-146).
On St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430):
The phrase “When in Rome, do as the Romans do” is credited to St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, from the 4th century. Their bishop said it to Saint Monica and her son, St. Augustine, on their visit to Rome after they discovered that Saturday was a seasonal “Ember” day of abstinence and prayer which was not the practice in Milan. Saint Ambrose’s answer was to be adaptable, thus: “When in Rome,…” After St. Augustine (354-430) and his successor Boethius (c. 470-c. 525) Europe entered the Dark Ages. There was no really important thinker until the 11th century. Even in 2025 It is said that after St. Paul, there is no greater legacy of Christian thought than that of St. Augustine of Hippo. Augustine died a new man on August 28, 430, a bishop by then himself, as he witnessed his city of Hippo succumb to hordes of invading Vandals as Rome fell. It was all over by the 7th century as the cities were a wasteland and any learning moved to monasteries. One leading aspect of learning was theology and philosophy – grappling with the problems of God’s existence and who He is in relation to man. Before Christianity, Augustine tried Manicheism that explained the world in purely rational and material terms. Finding it unsatisfactory he turned to Skepticism – an old idea in popular practice in the 21st century – which distrusted or denied objective truth for subjective conviction. Finally, Neoplatonism, which had a spiritual bent but, unlike Christianity, had no Supreme Creator and saw the material world as a block to spirituality’s end. Christianity had its philosophical problems also for Augustine and others: while creation was a matter of God’s will for his creature of actual being, where and how did God and man meet? Philosophically, this relationship of Creator and creature remained the central issue for Augustine before and after his becoming a Christian at 32 years old. His battles with the Berber schism of Donatists (who denied the objective value of the sacraments) and Pelagianism (Pelagius being an Irishman who denied original sin and man’s need for grace) led to Augustine’s Doctrine of Creation and Doctrine of Grace for which he is well-known. While fallen man is limited and cannot know God, the desire to know God is itself a sign of grace on a natural level. Augustine asserts one can know God only by faith and, though he offers no formal proof for the existence of God, Augustine reasoned that before one desires or seeks to know anything one must have some idea or believes in its existence. In his battle with Pelagius Augustine determined man needed grace from the beginning – even in the Garden of Eden before the fall. Grace is what led Adam and Eve to God. After the Fall (The LORD God then called to the man and asked him: Where are you? [Adam] answered, “I heard you in the garden; but I was afraid, because I was naked, so I hid.” Genesis 3: 9-10), grace is what heals man. Without grace man’s fallen nature cannot allow his free will to overcome his limitations. Grace is a way to freedom for man to give effect to his desires for good. From here Augustinianism moved beyond these things to self-knowledge and Universals; the Nature of God and the Trinity; Sin; and political philosophy (“City of God”), among other topics. One important characteristic of Augustine as bishop was his living a common “monastic” life with his clergy. Augustine believed strongly in the formation of religious communities for spiritual witness and support and material well-being among Christians.
Augustine was born in Algeria in North Africa. He was likely a Berber and grew up in a family where his mother, Monica, was a Christian and his father, Patricius, was a pagan. His father died in 371 after becoming a Christian and Monica did not remarry. St. Monica prayed for her pagan son to become a Christian and is the human being considered most responsible for that result. Augustine who loved the Latin-language Roman poet Virgil (he was less fond of Greek) followed a normal course of study for students at the time and was trained in rhetoric at Carthage. He lived with a woman for a time and had a son by her named Adeodatus with whom he had a lifelong fatherly relationship. Augustine in these early years was a Manichaean, a former major world religion that disappeared in Europe by the 6th century. To explain evil the Manicheans taught a dualistic cosmology where the spiritual world was good and the material world, uncreated by their concept of God, was bad. These beliefs made life in the world a prison to be escaped from by asceticism and intellectuality. It was directly contrary to Christianity which believed God, who created the material world, became flesh and blood man in Jesus Christ. The Manicheans rejected the Bible and taught that Christ could only be a spiritual being and not human. By the time Augustine traveled to Rome and then to Milan to teach rhetoric in 384, he gave up Manicheanism and entered a difficult period of searching. In Milan he met its great bishop St. Ambrose whose sermons showed him the unity of faith and reason in Christian teaching and an escape from skepticism as well as categorically rigid spiritualism and materialism. Augustine was baptized by St. Ambrose at 32 years old at the Easter Vigil, on April 24, 387 in Milan where he was joined by his son Adeodatus and his lifelong friend (and later bishop) Alypius of Thagaste who were also baptized. Though Augustine’s conversion was delayed when it occurred it was complete and complex insofar as integrating his many background experiences with Christianity. Augustine left teaching and went to Cassiciacum near Milan to become a writer. Adeodatus died prematurely in 390, and when Augustine returned to Africa, he was persuaded by Bishop Valerius of Hippo to become a priest. In 395 Augustine became auxiliary bishop to Valerius and soon succeeded him as bishop of Hippo. Augustine spent the next 35 years as a diocesan bishop and prolific and influential writer. He died in 430 in trying times: the Vandals had begun the destruction of the Roman Empire and invaded Africa in 429 including the sacking of Hippo. Taking it forward almost 1600 years, when Chicago-born Robert Prevost was elected as Pope Leo XIV in 2025, in addition to being a White Sox fan, he is an Augustinian friar, priest, bishop, and cardinal who takes inspiration from St. Augustine of Hippo, Leo XIV is the first Augustinianpope since Pope Eugene IV elected in 1431. see- https://dacb.org/stories/tunisia/adeodatus/ – retrieved August 28, 2025. The Saints: A Concise Biographical Dictionary, edited by John Coulson, Guild Press, New York, 1957. Medieval Thought, Gordon Leff, Humanities Press, Highland, New Jersey, 1958.
Santi, Raffaello, dit Raphaël Rencontre entre Léon Ier et Attila 1512/1513 LOUVRE https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020101100 – retrieved September 4, 2024.Raphael, the Fire in the Borgo, 1514-15, fresco, 22’1″ at base, Stanza dell’ Incendio, Vatican, Rome.
The name of the room comes from this fresco which Raphael began work on in the summer of 1514. It depicts a newly imagined historical event from the mid-9th century when a fire broke out in Rome. The pope (Leo IV) is seen giving a blessing from the balcony of Old St. Peter’s which, the story goes, tamped down the flames. In the meantime Raphael depicted the event’s panic and drama among its foreground figures in its throes. Once more Raphael is re-inventing his art from only a couple of years earlier. As Raphael continued the practice of borrow ing certain figures and themes from previous frescos, the overall classical style of the Segnatura and Eliodoro frescos are remarkably more spatially complex and intriguing in The Fire in the Borgo. Raphael absorbed what Rome offered – from Michelangelo’s latest art to architecture, both contemporary and ancient, in the city. The Ionic columns of Old St. Peter’s are accurately rendered as are the building fragment of Corinthian columns. (Beck, p. 110).
Raphael, the Fire in the Borgo, 1514-15, fresco, 22’1″ at base, Stanza dell’ Incendio, Vatican, Rome. DETAIL.Raphael, Madonna della Sedia (The Madonna of the Chair), 1514-15, Oil on Panel, diameter 28” Pitti Gallery, Florence.Raphael, Portrait of a Nude woman (“Fornarina”), oil on panel, c. 1518, 85 x 80cm, galleria Nazionale ( Palazzo Barberini), Rome.Raphael, The Miraculous Draught of Fishes (Luke 5: 1-11), 1514-15, Tempera on paper, 11’10” x 13’2” Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The Raphael Cartoons are designs for tapestries and were commissioned from Raphael by Pope Leo X (1513-21) shortly after his election in 1513. The tapestries were intended to hang in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, built by Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84). The decoration of the chapel under Sixtus addressed the lives of Moses and Christ. The tapestries continued this theme, illustrating scenes from the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul.
Raphael, La Donna Velata, c. 1514, oil on canvas, 33 ½ x 25 ¼” Pitti Gallery, Florence. Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, c. 1515, oil on canvas, 32 ¼” x 26” the Louvre Paris https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl010066418 – retrieved September 4, 2024.Raphael’s artwork inspired making copies by many later artists. This is “Etude d’après le portrait de Balthazar Castiglione par Raphaël” by Eugène Delacroix, c. 1818/1820 in the Louvre. https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/53355/cl020142954 – retrieved September 4, 2024.
In La Donna Velata and Portrait of Baldassare Castiglione, Raphael, the master portraitist, present near ideal depictions. Both portraits are of almost identical dimensions. The model Raphael used for La Donna Velata he used in other artworks of this period, including The Sistine Madonna. These mid 1510s’ portraits have progressively become gentler in their modeling than a tight, detailed study of corporeal features done before. Raphael begins a display of a mastery of forms and colors that had great influence on future artists such as Rubens and Rembrandt. However, Raphael’s painting does not forgo his mastery of draughtmanship exampled in the female sitter’s sleeve or the overall nobility of the male sitter. (Beck, pp. 108-09; 116-17).
Raphael. Portrait of Bindo Altoviti c. 1515:Oil on panel 59,7 x 43,8 (24 in × 17 in), National Gallery of Art of Washington, D.C. https://www.nga.gov/collection/art-object-page.12131.html – retrieved September 5, 2024.Raphael, The Way to Calvary (Lo Spasimo), 1516-17, oil on canvas, 10 ½ x 7’ 6 1/2” The Prado Madrid.
Raphael, Portrait of Leo X and Two cardinals, 1517-18, oil on panel, 60 5/8 x 46 7/8” Uffizi Gallery Florence
This was an important group portrait commission for Raphael: the current Pope Leo X Medici (1513-1521) seated by his cousins, Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici on the left and Luigi de’ Rossi on the right. Giulio de’ Medici was soon to become the future pope Clement VII (1523-1534). Though highly individualized, Raphael captures a family resemblance between these three Medici – then the most powerful family in Italy – who are all about the same age. In 1517 Cardinal Giulio was an important art patron and already commissioned Raphael to do The Transfiguration, his last painting. Raphael demonstrates a wide range of artistic experience and skills so that he pulls from his tool-box whatever is required for a successful outcome of any commission. In Urbino Raphael had been exposed to Flemish art and deploys its detailed technique in the bell and manuscript which 42-year-old Leo X uses a magnifier to see. The setting of the monumental portrait, in a room in the Vatican, is subtly captured by way of Flemish art ingenuity. The doorknob in front of newly-made cardinal Luigi de’ Rossi shows the reflection of an open window while the cape and biretta of the pope are highly detailed by the artist in its natural light. The Portrait of Leo X and Two Cardinals is considered the greatest group portrait of the 16th century. (Beck, pp. 120-121)
This painting was commissioned by Giovanni Branconio, the Apostolic Protonotary, at the behest of his father, Marino Branconio, for the family chapel at the church of San Silvestre de Aquila. Marino´s choice of subject matter was undoubtedly guided by the fact that his wife was named Elizabeth and his son, John. In 1655, this work was acquired by Felipe IV (1605-1665), who deposited it at El Escorial. It entered the Prado Museum in 1837.
Raphael, The Holy Family of Francis I. 1518 Oil on canvas 81 ½ x 55 1/8” The Louvre Paris.Raphael, The Transfiguration, 1518-20, oil on panel, 13’3 ¾ x 9’1 ½” Pinacoteca, Vatican, Rome.
Raphael died in April 1520 while working on The Transfiguration. Although most of the painting was already complete, his sudden passing marked the abrupt end of a brilliant but short career—Raphael was only 37 years old. Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, had commissioned the work for the Cathedral of Narbonne in France, but following the artist’s untimely death, it was instead displayed at his funeral in the Pantheon.
During its creation, the project was fueled by intense artistic rivalry. Sebastiano del Piombo, who was mentored by Michelangelo in Florence, was simultaneously producing The Raising of Lazarus for the exact same cathedral, creating a direct competition for Raphael’s work. Today, Sebastiano’s anxious letters to Michelangelo serve as our primary historical record for the progress and development of Raphael’s painting.
Initially, Raphael planned to depict only the mountaintop Transfiguration. This episode is detailed in the Synoptic Gospels but completely omitted from the Gospel of John. This omission is particularly notable because Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record that John was personally present for the magnificent event, alongside Peter and James the Greater. Ultimately, John’s omission makes thematic sense: while the Synoptic writers use the Transfiguration as a dramatic, mid-narrative revelation of Jesus’s heavenly nature, John’s entire Gospel establishes that exact divine premise right from its opening verses.
Raphael’s depiction ultimately became the definitive template for how the event on Mount Tabor has been popularly imagined ever since. He captured Christ rising majestically into the air, His face and clothes turned a dazzling white, elevated above Moses and Elijah, whom the Gospels describe Jesus as being in conversation with. Below them, the three chosen Apostles careen in various prostrations of overwhelming wonderment, shielding themselves from the brilliant light.
Raphael famously expanded the traditional scene to include the scriptural episode that immediately follows: the story of a demoniac boy whom the remaining Apostles fail to heal. In the biblical account, Christ descends the mountain after His transfiguration and cures the child, who appears here frantically gesturing in the lower right corner. In the composition, the divine peace of the Transfiguration sits elevated and farther back from this earthly, chaotic turmoil below. On the left side of the canvas, two figures—identified as the patron saints of Narbonne—can be seen making their way up the mountain to pay homage.
This inclusion was a nod to the patrons, if not a guarantee of Raphael’s full fee. As the Renaissance biographer Giorgio Vasari famously noted, Raphael lived more like a prince than a painter. His lifestyle was expensive, and Giulio Romano, one of Raphael’s chief artistic and financial heirs, eventually had to sue the benefactors in 1522 to secure the final payment for the masterpiece.
Debate continues among art historians over exactly how much of Raphael’s studio executed the final canvas, particularly in the wake of his sudden death. Even so, it is clear the workshop assisted extensively during Raphael’s lifetime, as his highly productive working method required. Nevertheless, the core invention, the preparatory drawings, and the vast majority of the brushwork were distinctly Raphael’s own. Art historians Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny note that for this final painting, Raphael looked back to the very beginning of his career, modeling many of the expressive heads in The Transfiguration after Leonardo da Vinci’s unfinished 1481 masterpiece, The Adoration of the Magi.
Just as in the Gospel narrative, light drives the artistic coloration, invention, and emotion of the painting. A blinding, heavenly radiance engulfs Peter, James, and John at the top, while a second, much sharper earthly light isolates the expressive faces, hands, and frantic gestures from deep shadows below. This complex illumination and intense contrast became an essential touchstone for later, highly influential Baroque painters, most notably Caravaggio. Vasari remarkably notes that when Raphael passed away, the loss plunged the entire papal court into deep, unmitigated grief, so much so that the Pope quite openly and bitterly wept at the tragic passing of this noble craftsman.
FOOTNOTES:
1. Giorgio Vasari, Lives of the Artists, translated by George Bull (Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965) pages 316-18.
2. Ibid., page 318 and Edizioni Musei Vaticani, Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican, (Tipografia Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1995) page 169.
3. Vasari, Lives, pages 285 and 291.
4. Ibid., pages 299-302.
5. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983, page 113 and 17. Carlo Ludivico, Vatican Museums Rome, page 119
6. Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Raphael, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983, page 117 and Vasari, Lives, page 301.
7. Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, Third Edition, 1987, page 513.
8. New American Bible, (Catholic Book Publishing Company, New York) page 546 and 550; Beck, Raphael, page 98.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Brera Milan Great Museums of the World, Carlo Ludovico Ragghianti, Newsweek NY 1970 pp. 34
Pinakothek Munich Great Museums of the World, Roberto Salvini, et. al., Newsweek NY 1969 pp. 126
Lives of the Artists, Giorgio Vasari, translated by George Bull, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1965, pages 316-18
Michelangelo and Raphael in the Vatican, Edizioni Musei Vaticani, Tipografia Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, 1995 p. 169
Raffaello. Franzese, Paolo (2008). Milano: Mondadori Arte.
Raphael, James H. Beck, harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York, 1994.
Raphael, Roger Jones and Nicholas Penny, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1983.
Encyclopedia of the Middle Ages, Volume 2, André Vauchez, Richard Barrie Dobson, Michael Lapidge, Chicago: Fitzroy, Dearborn, 2000.
History of Italian Renaissance Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture, Frederick Hartt, Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, Third Edition, 1987.
Raphael, Beck, James H., Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York, 1994.
The Medici Popes (Leo X and Clement VII), Herbert M. Vaughan, B.A., Methuen & Co., London, 1908.
“Alidosi, Francesco, detto il Cardinal di Pavia”. Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani – Volume 2. Treccani. 1960.
This explanatory article may be periodically updated.
FEATURE image: Peter Paul Rubens, Copy of Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard (from the Battle of Anghiari), 1603, Louvre.
Profile Portrait of Leonardo da Vinci, attributed to Francesco Melzi, circa 1515–1517, Royal Trust Collection.
On May 2, 2019,
the world remembered the day 500 years ago when Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519),
Italian Renaissance artist and polymath, died. The 67-year-old applied the
spheres of the human brain to its many branches of knowledge and voraciously
fused his interests and studies into one lifetime that inspired universal
learning in Europe.
Leonardo da Vinci made original contributions as an inventor, draftsman, painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, musician, mathematician, engineer, writer, anatomist, geologist, astronomer, botanist, paleontologist and cartographer.1Leonardo was involved in military science, hydraulics, aerodynamics, and optics. Used by princes and admired by kings, charming and handsome Leonardo da Vinci could show in his notebooks that he was often misanthropic.2 A significant part of his important visionary achievements is that Leonardo da Vinci painted two of the most reproduced artistic masterpieces of all time: the Mona Lisa (1503, Louvre, Paris) and The Last Supper (1490s, Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan). Leonardo, after a lifetime of adventure, curiosity, and solid achievement died in Amboise, France, following a short illness.
Italy, c. 1500.
In 1516 Leonardo left Italy for the first time to live in France under the protection of its most cultured young French king, François I (1494-1547). As a dedicated artist, Leonardo experienced a lifetime of disappointment from most of his would-be patrons starting with his father through to Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Magnificent (1449-1492), hapless Milanese duke Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), Milanese governor Charles II d’Amboise (1473-1511), and Lorenzo’s son and a papal brother, Giuliano di Lorenzo de’ Medici (1479-1516), among others. As Leonardo was ahead of his times it can be said that only at the end of the artist’s life—in 1516, under the wing of François I—that the bulk of his times, that is, the temporarily powerful men in them, had failed him and mankind’s enduring greatness. François I was Leonardo’s first unconditional patron3—while the rest, relatively speaking, are history’s minor players.
François I, Jean Clouet, c. 1530. Louvre, Paris. Lorenzo the Magnificent, Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572), Uffizi, Florence, Italy. Ludovico Sforza (detail), Master of the Pala Sforzesca, c.1495, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy. Charles II d’Amboise, Andrea Solario, 1507. Giuliano de’ Medici, Raphael.
At Leonardo’s
death his reputation as an artist and man rested, as Giorgio Vasari (1511-1574)
relates, on his physical strength, generosity, and artistic innovations which
brought art and society out of its reliance on the past and its well-intentioned
model books into a future of science and art which characterized the best of
the Renaissance period. Because of Leonardo’s lifetime of study and work, mostly
in isolation from a majority of his fellow artists’ and other practitioners’
careers, he bore the fruit of innovation, including new and creative forms and
motifs for art. These emanated out of the imagination of the individual artist who
closely observed the workings of nature. Leonardo’s artistic innovations
included the subtle skill of sfumato
(shadowing) and, as a draughtsman, progressive chalk and cross-hatching
techniques. These inspired other great artists, like Michelangelo Buonarroti
(1475-1564), and only begins to account for the knowledge Leonardo gained from
the physical sciences, particularly anatomy.
Leonardo spent his final three years in Italy in the Vatican (1513-1516), effectively a refuge from petty Italian tyrants. He departed for France in 1516 under the protection of its warrior and cultured 21-year-old new king, François I, whom 64-year-old Leonardo first met in late 15154. Like his cousin and father-in-law predecessor King Louis XII of France (1462-1515) and his cultured mother Louise de Savoie (1476-1531), François I worked hard to recruit the Italian High Renaissance’s most inventive artist for the Gallic Kingdom. When Leonardo finally crossed the Alps he carried with him his recent paintings of the Mona Lisa, Saint John the Baptist, and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne—all works in the Louvre in Paris today.5 In the second edition of Vasari’s Lives of the Artists6 he described Leonardo in his last months of life in France. In 1519, after a happy period in France at the Château de Cloux, Leonardo was a sick and bedridden man. At the very end, Vasari writes, Leonardo “could not stand [and had to be] supported by his friends and servants.”7. The King paid Leonardo “affectionate visits” in these last days. Vasari intimates that the dying artist consciously felt himself honored to be ministered to by François I Vasari and that Leonardo realized the distinct privilege to “[breathe] his last in [the king’s] arms.”8 This death bed scene, particularly Vasari’s tender detail, has been subsequently imagined in the artwork of artists, including Ingres’ famous painting dated 1818 in the collection of the Petit Palais in Paris.
Louis XII of France, Workshop of Jean Perréal, c. 1514. Cousin and father-in-law of François I Louis admired and collected Leonardo and passed down this admiration to France. Bemberg fondation Toulouse – Portrait de Louise de Savoie, mère de François Ier – École De Jean Clouet (1475;1485-1540) 22×17 Inv.1013
The mother of François I, Louise de Savoie (above), worked hard to convince Leonardo to leave Italy for France.
Leonardo carried with him over the Alps to France three of his recent paintings (above) – Mona Lisa (1503), Saint John the Baptist (1513), and the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (1503). All are in the Louvre today.
Châteaux de Cloux (Clos Lucé), Amboise, France.Leonardo’s room, Châteaux de Cloux.Death of Leonardo, Cesare Mussini (1804-1888).Death of Leonardo, pencil, 11 x 8½ in. (28 x 21.8 cm.), Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).Death Of Leonardo da Vinci, 1818, oil on canvas, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Petit Palais, Paris.
Ink consecrated to the artistry of Leonardo da Vinci is vast. The Bible-like exhibition catalog for Leonardo da Vinci, Master Draftsman from the 2003 show at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is a 786-page testament. That tome presents and discusses about 100 drawings by the master. This article focuses on one image – Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari, particularly its central section called the Battle of The Standard.
In October 1503 Leonardo’s commission by the Florentine Republic was to commemorate the military victory of the Florentines over the Milanese in 1440. It would be one of the major artworks in the newly-built Sala de Gran Consiglio (Grand Council Hall) by IL Cronaca (“The Chronicler”) to the rear of the Palazzo della Signoria, also known as the Palazzo Vecchio.9 The commission was given to Leonardo by Republican standard-bearer Piero Soderini (1450-1522) with one of Leonardo’s contracts signed by Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)—and so entered into the annals of what became a fabled art competition (“concorrenza”).
Ink consecrated to Leonardo da Vinci’s art is vast.
View of Florence (detail, Arno River, Palazzo Vecchio, Duomo), c. 1561, Giorgio Vasari.Piero Soderini (1450-1522) by Ridolfo del Ghirlandaio.
Statesman Piero Soderini of the Florentine Republic awarded Leonardo the mural commission for the Battle of Anghiari in October 1503.
Today’s Salone dei Cinquecento by Giorgio Vasari, 1563-1572.
In the process of re-decorating this room with its coffered ceiling and walls with paintings of battle scenes dedicated to the exaltation of Cosimo I de’ Medici, Leonardo da Vinci’s innovative fresco of the Battle of Anghiari was lost or destroyed.
Battle of Marciano by Giorgio Vasari, 1571, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, Italy.Peter Paul Rubens’ copy of 1603 of the lost Battle for the Standard.
Peter Paul Rubens’ copy of 1603 of the lost Battle for the Standard, the central section of the Battle of Anghiari fresco by Leonardo, 1503-06, in Palazzo della Signoria (also, Palazzo Vecchio) in Florence. While Rubens’ copy is the best known, there are copies of Leonardo’s work by other 16th century artists.
After Leonardo Da Vinci, Fight For the Standard (from the Battle of Anghiari), oil on canvas, 28.625 x 33.125 in. (72.8 x 84 cm).After Leonardo Da Vinci, Fight For the Standard (from the Battle of Anghiari) oil on canvas, 16th century, Museo Horne, Florence.
In 1503 Leonardo da Vinci was at the height of his artistic powers. The
Battle
of Anghiari was a commission for a large scale, complex and dramatic fresco mural
on one wall of the Sala de Gran Consiglio in Florence during
the short-lived restored Republic (c.1492-1512). Leonardo looked to paint the fresco
in dazzling oils and glazes but his complicated experimental techniques to
adhere the pigment to the wall largely failed.10 With the fresco’s ultimate destruction in the early 1560’s
under Vasari who redecorated the Great Council Hall with six of his own massive
battle scenes, he and his Medici rulers were faced with another of Leonardo’s
deteriorating frescos similar to the disastrous flaking of The Last Supper in Milan. The Battle of
Anghiari was not in an obscure
monastery refectory but the central hall of changing political power in
Florence.11
Leonardo’s Last Supper, Santa Maria delle Grazie, Milan.
Leonardo’s Last Supper fresco in Milan started flaking almost as soon as it was painted in the 1490’s. Leonardo’s experimental painting techniques for that project had largely failed.
Fragmentary remains by Leonardo of his Florentine project are his preparatory
drawings whose subjects include horses, riders, and combatants on the
battlefield in various stages of creative development. Some of these drawings
were made by Leonardo immediately upon receiving his commission in late 1503.12
Several copies and copies of copies made by other artists also survive. While
the preparatory drawings do not complete the full composition— though
contemporary written sources lend credence to books of sketches that are lost13—Leonardo
possibly did not even complete a cartoon before he started painting on the
wall.14 While copies by others
intrigue, they are problematic to envision Leonardo’s final fresco of the Battle
of Anghiari—yet each of these sources provide insights.
The Battle of Anghiari is arguably Leonardo’s most important
public commission.15 It manifested itself in the context of
impactful local history, civic pride, city government, and the artist’s own
vision and skills in its employ. Florence was Leonardo’s native city and he
wanted to make a strong impression. Sixty years after Leonardo left his
brilliant fresco on the west wall.16 Vasari,
whose redecoration of the Palazzo Vecchio included a fresco cycle of his own almost
certainly covered over all or part of Leonardo’s unfinished fresco. A desire
for new artwork to showcase the Medici restoration under Cosimo I de’ Medici
(1519-1574) naturally extended to the Grand Council Hall. The late-fifteenth-century
Republic had commissioned Leonard’s battle fresco—and that form of government
had ended in Florence in 1512.
Portrait of Cosimo I de’ Medici, 1535, Alessandro Allori (1536-1607), oil on poplar, 86 x 65 cm (34 x 25 5/8 in.), Florence.
Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519 -1574) ruled Florence from 1537 until his death.
Cosimo I de’ Medici (detail), c. 1564, by Giorgio Vasari, Palazzo Vecchio, Florence.
As Vasari
relates in his Lives of the Artists, Leonardo depicted a scene from the
life of Niccolò Piccinino (1386-1444), an Italian mercenary officer or “condottiere”
in the service of the politically brilliant and physically repulsive duke of
Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti (1392-1447). Fighting for Milan, Piccinino—aided
by two score of cavalry squadron, many foot soldiers17and
treacherous Florentine exiles—was defeated by a force led by the Republic of
Florence under Francesco I Sforza
(1401-1466). The victory at the Battle of Anghiari on June 29, 1440 handed the
Florentines domination of central Italy. At the turn of the sixteenth century
the new republic of Florence continued to face warring tyrants as neighbors
including Cesare Borgia (1475-1507). At the start of a new century and Republic
the timing was ripe to depict in its government hall valorous Florentine
warriors defeating political enemies. In 1503, Florentine officials gave
Leonardo an in-depth orientation of the 1440 battle using historical texts but
the artist brushed these aside as he conceived the scene to be depicted, a
virtually cinematic induction of the battle’s climax —the mortal contest by the
Florentines to capture the standard from the Milanese. Leonardo’s first sketches
for it are of a condensed melée full of the swirling movement and
stirring sensations of battle.18 The actual standards taken during
the battle had been kept in the Grand Council Hall as a trophy.19
Niccolò Piccinino. Defeated at the Battle of Anghiari, the Italian mercenary becomes the central protagonist of Leonardo’s fresco.
Front (Recto) of a medal of Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti, by Pisanello (1395-1455).
Local battles such as the Battle of Anghiari were usually
part of larger campaigns— in this instance, The Lombardy Wars of 1423-1454— and
fought by hired warriors. Mercenaries usually provided terms to competing foes
that protected the mercenary’s best interest. Following the Battle of Anghiari,
Piccinino, who had been captured, was soon after released. In the next battle
at Martinengo, he defeated and captured Sforza. Because of these endless war
games, Niccolò Machiavelli (1469-1527)
advised in The Prince that
a ruler should not be tempted to use these swords for hire – and cited Francesco
Sforza by example.20
Mercenary Francesco Sforza, Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan.Niccolò Machiavelli by Santi di Tito (1536-1603).
Machiavelli, author of The Prince, signed an order to commission Leonardo to create the fresco commemorating the Battle of Anghiari for Florence’s newly-built Sala de Gran Consiglio (Grand Council Hall).
Leonardo’s sketches of probably Cesare Borgia.
Cosimo I de’ Medici who ruled Florence starting in 1547 was interested in that which supports power— including art. Vasari’s new paintings of Cosimo I de’ Medici’s wartime exploits was partly a political act. By ridding the hall of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari — a Republican military victory from long ago — Vasari worked his political masters’ desires. The ultimate reasons and fate of Leonardo’s artwork is not known but if Vasari destroyed the mural he would not be the first Italian artist to destroy a competitor’s artwork as shall be seen.
In late 1503 Leonardo, installed in a temporary workshop at Santa Maria Novella, about a fifteen-minute walk to the Palazzo, was given a deadline for the mural’s completion of February 1505. Like the fabled competition between Leonardo and Michelangelo that was intentionally arranged by Florence’s political operatives, the deadline for completion was also a demand for Leonardo’s art outside the artist’s concerns. The first late winter deadline passed as did those in spring and summer. Setbacks included Leonardo’s meticulously slow work, other projects he took up that kept him away from the fresco, and even bad weather.21
Santa Maria Novella, Florence.
Leonardo’s designated workshop for the mural commission was the Dominican church built in 1420, Santa Maria Novella.
In early 1504
the wall painting of the Battle of Anghiari and its 51-year-old artist
was joined by Michelangelo Buonarroti who would paint his Battle of Cascina
in the same room and possibly on the same wall. Michelangelo, recently turned
28 years old, would depict the Florentine military victory over Pisa in 1364.
Neither this imposed rivalry or proximity encouraged their friendship.22
Michelangelo was intense, pious, and unwashed contrasting to Leonardo’s genial,
independent, and stylish manner.23 However, their professional
relationship temporarily influenced each other’s artmaking.
Michelangelo, Self-Portrait.Leonardo da Vinci, (Lucan) Self-Portrait.
In 1504 and
1505, Michelangelo learned to use Leonardo’s innovative stylus cross-hatching
technique along with the chalk technique that Leonardo was continuing to exploit
in the Battle of Anghiari. Inspired by Michelangelo, Leonardo did
masterful drawings of nude figures though he did not use them. In
Michelangelo’s preparatory drawings for the Battle of Cascina—that and
copies by others are what survive of the project– the younger artist used
Leonardo’s cross hatching technique for the pull of the skin. He experimented
with Leonardo’s chalk technique to display types and degrees of muscular
tension on figures.24 Yet, according
to Vasari, the two clashed at almost every turn. Michelangelo’s use of
Leonardo’s advanced techniques was restricted to the short period of their
common commission and Leonardo openly disparaged Michelangelo’s cartoon of male
nude bathers as coldly analytical.25
Two Michelangelo chalk studies. ABOVE: Male Nude Seen From the Back With a Flag Staff, c. 1504, The Albertina Museum, Vienna. BELOW: Life Study for a bathing soldier in the lost cartoon for theBattle of Cascina, black chalk, 404 x 258 cm, Teylers Museum, Haarlem, The Netherlands.
Leonardo da Vinci, Anatomical Studies of the Nude, connected with the Battle of Anghiari, c. 1504, Royal Library, Windsor. Though influenced by Michelangelo’s nude drawings in this time, Leonardo’s design and imagery for his battle scene looked to invention and unexpected drama rather than the nude.
In spring 1505
Michelangelo’s cartoon was finished but his painting barely started—and the
younger artist left Florence for Rome. Michelangelo accepted the commission to
build the tomb of Pope Julius II (1443-1513) although it would not be completed
until 1545 and on a much-reduced scale. He returned to Florence the following
spring but was soon back in Rome to paint, between 1508 and 1512, the Sistine
Chapel ceiling. In 1506 Leonardo’s gradual departure for Milan, complete by
1508, began. Leonardo stayed in Milan until 1513 when he was invited by the
pope to the Vatican. Leonardo and Michelangelo had in Florence shared a common
commission from the Republic. Their two battle scenes presented, each in their
own way, a tangle of intertwined figures. Otherwise, each artist created compositions of varying subject matter and
style which proved seminal for art-making schools of the future. Leonardo’s
swirling horsemen in the Battle of
Anghiari inspired the Baroque
style and Michelangelo’s bathers in the Battle of Cascina
displayed a perfect template for Classicism. These two great artists also
shared, despite their age difference or varying temperaments, the fact that
neither of them completed their commissioned work.
Michelangelo, The Tomb of Pope Julius II, completed 1545, San Pietro in Vincoli, Rome.Michelangelo, Sistine Chapel ceiling, 1508-1512, Rome (The Vatican).Michelangelo, David, 1501-1504, Galleria dell’ Accademia, Florence, Italy.
Michelangelo’s David had just been placed Florence’s central square when the painting competition (“concorrenza“) between himself and Leonardo da Vinci began. Leonardo had served on his native city’s committee which decided where to place Michelangelo’s 17-foot tall marble sculpture. Today a copy stands outside the Palazzo Vecchio.
At the time of the public commission in Florence, Leonardo had just finished his Mona Lisa (1503, Louvre, Paris) and Michelangelo had just installed, in the city square, his David (1501-1504, Accademia Gallery Museum, Florence). Leonardo had been part of the city committee to recommend where Michelangelo’s David should be placed.26 Over the next decade, until 1512, Leonardo’s and Michelangelo’s unfinished wall paintings—that they both had abandoned (a worthy reason for a later Medici to paint it over)—adorned the same room possibly side by side. Michelangelo’s work was mutilated first with the fall of the Republic. Young artists had flocked to study and copy these unfinished artworks, including a young Raphael.27 In 1512 one of these artists, a 24-year-old named Bartolommeo Bandinelli (1488-1560)—he had been obsessive in studying Michelangelo’s cartoon to the point of sneaking in to the Council Hall at night—in one moment grabbed the cartoon and cut it into pieces. The motivation for Bandinelli’s destruction is unclear. The center section of Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari – namely, Battle of the Standard– remained intact on the wall and for decades saw copies and written descriptions made of it. After 1508, neither Michelangelo nor Leonardo were anywhere near Florence as both moved on to larger opportunities.28
Michelangelo, Battle of Cascina, 1504-6, destroyed copy by Aristotile da Sangallo, grisaille on panel, 30 x 52 in. The Courtauld Institute of Art, London.
Leonardo openly disparaged Michelangelo’s cartoon of male nude bathers as coldly analytical. Younger artists preferred the noble and expressive form of Michelangelo’s nudes to Leonardo’s messier constructions.
Focusing on
Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari, and, particularly, the Battle of the
Standard, its central panel, one is impressed by Leonardo’s revolutionary
approach to drawing. Leonardo shattered
tradition, specifically in drawing. First, Leonardo was not tidy in his
drawing. Medieval tradition was fundamentally concerned with conserving the
controlled line. A draftsman’s artistic ability was judged by patrons and cultural
tastemakers by the accurate lines he created directly out of an existing
model-book. Leonardo’s early silverpoint
drawing of a Bust of a Warrior in the
British Museum demonstrates his ability to masterfully fulfill this Renaissance
expectation.29 As Leonardo the artist developed, by the end of the
fifteenth century he was attacking this long-held linear tradition in his
notebooks as a failed technique.30 The fiery scribbling of
Leonardo’s drawing style expresses his process of creative exploration but
equally his rebellion towards the old technique. In its place, Leonardo shows
himself in his drawings to be actively pushing outside the linear restraint of quattrocento drawing and formulating a
new artistic standard derived from orientation to the model. As an avant-garde
artist in this mode Leonardo practiced it alone for 25 years.31 The
profligacy of his drawings – often multiple images on the same page of paper
expressing his changing primo pensiero
(“first thoughts”) – indicates the brilliancy of Leonardo’s creativity. His
drawing technique points to the artist seeking to free the immaginativa to emphasize dramatic invention that included
individual details (such as heads) and unto an entire scene. Leonardo’s artistic practice worked to
overturn, or revolutionize, the tradition-bound formulas imposed on art. He replaced
it with a new and radical conception of nature ever-changing as the drawing
framework.
Leonardo da Vinci, Bust of a Warrior in profile, 28.7 x 21.1 cm, silverpoint, c.1478, The British Museum.Model-book page, 1390’s, pen and ink with wash and watercolors on parchment, workshop of Giovannino de’ Grassi (1350-1398).Giorgio Vasari, Self-portrait, 1560’s.
Vasari goes into admirable detail on Leonardo’s Battle of Anghiari in his Lives of the Artists in editions of 1550 and 1568. That Vasari destroyed or painted over this same work by Leonardo around the same time during a re-decoration of Florence’s Grand Council Hall is difficult to reconcile with his writings.
Invested
Quattrocento cultural taste-makers and practitioners found danger in
Leonardo’s new artistic direction. Art producers and patrons could not
understand why a single artist for his own personal exploration would forsake
generations of practiced skill and systematics. The challenge for Leonardo after
he discarded the model-book was difficult and clear– to invent figures and
forms to replace it. This monumental task helps explain some of the artist’s
motivation for working in many areas such as anatomy, mechanics, botany, and
geophysics. Wide study was certainly owing to Leonardo’s “unquenchable curiosity”32
but its practical application worked to fulfill his ambition to locate source
material to replace the model-book’s groupings, movements, and forms that he
had audaciously sacked. The culmination of his approach is manifest in the Battle of Anghiari. To discover some of Leonardo’s unfolding
revolutionary creative process makes this artwork exciting to consider as Vasari
describes it in detail in his Lives:
“The great achievements of this inspired artist so increased his prestige that everyone who loved art, or rather every single person in Florence, was anxious for him to leave the city some memorial; and it was being proposed everywhere that Leonardo should be commissioned to do some great and notable work which would enable the state to be honored and adorned by his discerning talent, grace, and judgement. As it happened the great hall of the council was being constructed under the architectural direction of Giuliano Sangallo, Simone Pollaiuolo (known as Cronaca), Michelangelo Buonarroti and Baccio d’ Agnolo, as I shall relate at greater length in the right place. It was finished in a hurry, after the head of the government and the chief citizens had conferred together, it was publicly announced that a splendid painting would be commissioned from Leonardo. And then he was asked by Piero Soderini, the Gonfalonier of Justice, to do a decorative painting for the council hall. As a start, therefore, Leonardo began work in the Hall of the Pope, in Santa Maria Novella, on a cartoon illustrating an incident in the life of Niccolò Piccinino, a commander of Duke Filippo of Milan. He showed a group of horsemen fighting for a standard, in a drawing which was regarded as very fine and successful because of the wonderful ideas he expressed in his interpretation of the battle. In the drawing, rage, fury, and vindictiveness are displayed both by the men and by the horses, two of which with their forelegs interlocked are battling with their teeth no less fiercely than their riders are struggling for the standard, the staff of which has been grasped by a soldier who, as he turns and spurs his horse to flight, is trying by the strength of his shoulders to wrest it by force from the hands of four others. Two of them are struggling for it with one hand and attempting with the other to cut the staff with their raised swords; and an old soldier in a red cap roars out as he grips the staff with one hand and with the other raises a scimitar and aims a furious blow to cut off both the hands of those who are gnashing their teeth and ferociously defending their standard. Besides this, on the ground between the legs of the horses there are two figures, foreshortened, shown fighting together; the one on the ground has over him a soldier who has raised his arm as high as possible to plunge his dagger with greater force into the throat of his enemy, who struggles frantically with his arms and legs to escape death.
It is impossible to convey the fine draughtsmanship with which Leonardo depicted the soldiers’ costumes, with their distinctive variations, or the helmet-crests and the other ornaments, not to speak of the incredible mastery that he displayed in the forms and lineaments of the horses which with their bold spirit and muscles and shapely beauty, Leonardo portrayed better than any other artist. It is said that to draw the cartoon Leonardo constructed an ingenious scaffolding that he could raise or lower by drawing it together or extending it. He also conceived the wish to paint the picture in oils, but to do this he mixed such a thick composition for laying on the wall that, as he continued his painting in the hall, it started to run and spoil what had been done, So shortly afterwards he abandoned the work.”33
It seems nearly
inconceivable that Vasari could write so appreciably of Leonardo’s fresco and
then destroy it. Yet its removal, whether wholly destroyed, or lost by being
painted over or misplaced, is a fact. Leonardo who no longer relied on the
model-book as his authority the artist answered with his own creative immaginativa and all of the facets of nature.
In this revolutionary creative process, Leonardo further anticipated the modern
era’s introduction of the psychological component into a drawing. The
psychological element that Leonardo introduced extended to the figures Leonardo
depicted in drawings but it benefited the individual artist’s ability to think
and dream creatively. To this end Leonardo consciously devised mental exercises
to produce psychological effects in himself.34
Leonardo da Vinci, Head of a Warrior in Profile, black chalk, 220 x 116 mm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
Leonardo anticipated the modern era’s introduction of the psychological component into a drawing.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of a Warrior’s Head for the Battle of Anghiari (Recto), Red chalk on prepared paper, 22.6 × 18.6 cm. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
It is half life size from a live model. Over the years some scholars have doubted its authenticity as a Leonardo drawing.
Verso of Study of a Warrior’s Head for the Battle of Anghiari (above drawing).
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Two Warriors’ Heads for Battle of Anghiari (c. 1504–5). Black chalk or charcoal, traces of red chalk on paper, Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.
This is one of the most famous drawing studies by Leonardo da Vinci for the Battle of Anghiari fresco mural project.
Within wide
study in the physical sciences, Leonardo attempted everything̱– and did not
always finish. It was the immensity of his study and his loathing of the
finished quality of the model-book that allowed Leonardo to abandon projects and
pick up new and creative directions and methods. Leonardo’s world view as an
artist for his art was universal—indeed, he personified the popular definition
of “Renaissance Man.” In his artistic boldness and innovation, Leonardo’s
methods and objectives found him its sole practitioner for years—even decades.
Yet Leonardo was a man of his times. The era of the mid-to-late fifteenth
century was one of social awakening to the globe and its conquest by nations
and kingdoms. The historical period saw great changes in cultural perceptions
based on European cities achieving charters of economic and political freedom as
well as new scientific and other discoveries. These included the heliocentric
model of the solar system by astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus
(1473-1543) and the international voyages of discovery by Christopher Columbus
(1451-1506). It was an age of revolutionary ideas and technology and Leonardo
da Vinci had no doubt it included art.
In Leonardo’s drawings there is the
untidy immaginativa quality in its hasty,
scribbled animations. Studies for the Battle
of Anghiari present a cacophony of images—drapery studies; grotesque heads;
armory; horses. For each area, Leonardo’s drawing between 1503 and 1506 had
reached mature stylistic development.35 Not since Leonardo’s The Adoration of the Magi in 1482 had he
created a composition achieving the cohesion of gestures and
inter-relationships among figures.
Nikolaus Copernicus (The Torun portrait), Anonymous, c. 1580.Leonardo da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, 1482, oil on wood, 246 cm × 243 cm (97 in. × 96 in.), Uffizi, Florence.
There are
speculatively three panels or sections completed for the Battle of Anghiari. The
most recognizable is the large central panel or section known as the Battle for the Standard. It is known by its copies by other
artists. Leonardo’s central panel depicts four men, one partially hidden,
riding war horses. They are engaged in the heat of combat, frozen in a frame of
animated movement, for the capture of a standard during the battle. Other
sections of the Battle of Anghiari—derived
from Leonardo’s small preparatory sketches—depict a wild, galloping horse and a
pair of belligerents on horseback. These are briefly discussed below. The most
well-known copy of the central section of Leonardo’s fresco (the only section
he apparently painted) is by the great artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640). In
the collection of the Louvre, Rubens’ copy dates from 1603 and is, in fact, a copy
of a copy. Rubens copies Lorenzo Zacchia’s (1524-c.1587) copy dating from 1553
which he possibly took directly from the fresco or a lost cartoon. There are
three extant copies by other artists of Ruben’s copy of a copy of the possibly
original artwork.36 These copies at various removes provide insight
into the impact for art through the centuries. The rest of Leonardo’s composition
is conjectured based on drawings.37 The left panel or section Leonardo
could have intended to be horsemen charging into battle while the right panel
or section could be the taking of the bridge over the Tiber on horseback which
was a key action for victory. The preparatory drawing sheets have images on top
and below and may be related as part of a narrative sequence that Leonardo
worked to clarify and simplify as a design until he started painting the
composition.38 Throughout the project
Leonardo had detail and atmospherics in mind though in its piece meal condition
today, a full aspect of his creative process is irretrievably lost.39
Peter Paul Rubens, Copy of Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard (from the Battle of Anghiari), 1603, Louvre.
Horses are one
of Leonardo’s favorite subjects. The Battle for the Standard portrays three
soldiers on three horses with swords brandished in the smoke and flame of
hand-to-hand combat. A fourth soldier on horseback is partially hidden. Two more
soldiers have fallen beneath the hooves of their reeling horses and attempt to
cover themselves with their shields. The weight of the horses is depicted in
their meaty haunches. The horses’ heads are ancient and noble. They crush,
bite, and plow into the heat of battle. The screaming head of Niccolò Piccinino
–the protagonist of the Battle for the Standard — and from whose hands
the standard is wrested away by Florentine soldiers (the profile on his
immediate right) wore a large red cap as described by Vasari.40
The overall
configuration of the scene is Leonardo’s Renaissance construction of the type
of dense figures discovered on ancient Greek and Roman sarcophagi. The
stylistic effect of Rubens’ copy of Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard
is, by virtue of its similarity, carried forward into the seventeenth century
as witnessed by Rubens’ The Hippopotamus Hunt (1616) and The Lion Hunt (1621) both in the Alte
Pinakoteck in Munich. The question can be posed: to what degree is Rubens’
stylistic effect, by virtue of his 1603 copy of a 1553 copy of Leonardo’s 1503
image, inferred into Leonardo’s Battle of the Standard? Yet Leonardo’s
battle, seen by thousands over decades before its demise, can be said to have
directly influenced battle scene depictions whose style continued into the
Romantic Period in mid19th century France.41
Fall of Phaeton, Greek marble Roman sarcophagus, 62 x 220 cm, c. 150 AD, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.Peter Paul Rubens, The Hippopotamus Hunt, 1616, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.Peter Paul Rubens, The Lion Hunt, 1621, Alte Pinakothek, Munich.Tintoretto, Saint George and the Dragon, oil on canvas, 157.5 x 110.3 cm, The National Gallery, London.Eugène Delacroix, The Combat of the Giaour and Hassan, 1826, The Art Institute of Chicago.Bronzino, Allegory of Venus and Cupid, c. 1560, The National Gallery, London.
The screaming head in the background on the left side of the painting is speculatively based on the head of Leonardo’s protagonist in the Battle of the Standard.
Along with
these artistic innovations and achievements by Leonardo in a long, lonely
process of exploration the hallmark achievement of the Battle of Anghiari
is its reckless artistic inspiration.
While historical construction of Leonardo’s drawing method requires speculation,
existing studies for the work, including those specific to the Battle of
Anghiari, provide insights. For instance, Leonardo deployed the pen as well
as chalk in preparatory drawings for the Battle of Anghiari. This
practice continued the spontaneous and dynamic plasticity of his drawing
technique from the 1490s42 and
contained psychophysical and temporal effects.43 Up to Leonardo, the
general practice for using a pen or stylus was by way of short parallel lines.
In the Battle of Anghiari Leonardo is the first Italian artist to
systematically use curvilinear hatching.44 A complementary contrast
to Leonardo’s inventiveness is that he valued and paid attention to his work
experiences. After the early 1480s he retained his sense of form and design and
continued to work through particular problems that interested him within a
general trend of development.45
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of Rearing Horse, light fine red chalk and hatching with traces pen and brown ink, 153 x 142 mm, Royal Library, Windsor.
The horse drawn from life shows a tense rider pivoting.
Leonardo’s
drawings, including his preparatory studies, convey a sensational appearance of
continuous movement. Formed into a triangle the figures of combatants in the
central section of the Battle of Anghiari and elsewhere move in a
swirling motion similar to the apocalyptic liquid cascades Leonardo would later
draw. Facial expressions, gnarled and strained on both man and beast, add their
distinctive vitality to the animated whole. The Battle of the Standard
works similarly to Leonardo’s mechanical drawings in their careful
construction. The “machine” operates as an expression of the physicality and
emotional and psychological intensity of men fighting to the death. Leonardo,
as discussed, based this key scene for the city-state commission on an episode
described in historical written texts.46
Leonardo in his
first draft of a drawing worked to establish this general sense of movement. In
first drafts he attempts the pictorial pitch that he will develop. In the
second stage (“per ripruova”) Leonardo begins to create major motifs.47
The two most important primi pensieri for the Battle of Anghiari
are pen and ink drawings from the Gallerie dell’ Accademia in Venice, Italy.
Scholarship’s quest to reconstruct Leonardo’s creation of the Battle of
Anghiari has been identified as “quixotic,”48 yet these drawings while no larger than the size of a
clenched fist give out significant clues.
Leonardo da Vinci, Battle Study, two skirmishes between horsemen and foot soldiers, c.1503, pen and brown ink, brush and brown wash, 147 x 154 mm (6 x 6 in.) Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice, Italy.Leonardo da Vinci, Battle Study, Skirmish between Horsemen, Foot soldiers and Foot soldiers Wielding Long Weapons, pen and brown ink over black chalk and stylus, c.1503, 147 x 154 mm (6 x 6 in.), Gallerie dell’ Accademia, Venice, Italy.
In one of the
preparatory drawings the horseman on the left is looking back over the horse’s
haunches, a dramatic image among the handful of fighters in close combat that
Leonardo will condense into a dominant motif in the Battle of the Standard.
The artist’s steady progression belies his reputation as a slow worker though
this inventive stage of drawing appealed to him most. For each stage,
Leonardo’s drawing is a fully animated artistic expression of his subject
matter. While the creative process of Leonardo’s drawing brings the image, as
Heinrich Wöfflin observed, to the “verge of the unclear,”49 it also
begins to reveal some of the inner workings of Leonardo’s brilliance. In exchange
for the free and kinetic character of drawing studies taken to the brink, the
later and final work becomes increasingly plastic and compact.50
Leonardo da Vinci, Fight for the Standard at the Bridge and Two Foot Soldiers, pen and brown ink, 99 x 141 mm, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.
It is speculated that this preparatory drawing was for the right panel (or section) of the fresco. It depicted the taking of the bridge over the Tiber River that was a key historical action to military victory for the Florentines over the Milanese at the Battle of Anghiari on June 29, 1440.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of charging horses and Soldiers, red chalk on paper, 167 x 240 mm, Royal Library, Windsor.
Anticipating Degas’s racehorses 350 years in the future, this drawing of horsemen charging to battle may represent the left panel (or section) of the Battle of Anghiari that Leonardo envisioned as a three-part narrative sequence.
Copy of a horseman from the Battle of Anghiari, pen and brown ink, brush and gray wash, white gouache on paper, 267 x 237 mm, The British Museum.
In the drawings
for the Battle of Anghiari he communicates in lively action and
engrossing drama the close physical contact of the horses and their riders
encircling and falling upon one another in the passion and violence of war.51
The fresco in the Florentine council chambers would remind leaders of war’s
brutality and, though a glorification of civic heroism and pride, the
wall-sized image served to show the fury of slaughter that military battles
cost. The Battle of the Standard was an image that conveyed the phrase
that typified the meaning of war for Leonardo: pazzia bestialissima (“beastly
madness.”)52Recalling
Bertoldo’s battle scene that originally decorated the Florentine palazzo of
Lorenzo de’ Medici (“the Magnificent’) and based on an ancient Roman
sarcophagus, proffered to the viewer no identifiable sides. War is not a
glorious narrative, but combatants falling into one another. In addition to its
classical and Renaissance allusions, its plastic form appealed to Leonardo’s
beliefs and attitudes about the intrinsic nature of combat that he then looked
to dramatize in the Battle of Anghiari.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of horses for the Battle of Anghiari. Leonardo depicts horses displaying emotion.
Leonardo da Vinci, Study of group of riders in the Battle of Anghiari, c. 1503, charcoal and black chalk reworked with brush and brown wash, Royal Library, Windsor.
The left-handed hatching is for a drawing taken from a clay or wax model.
Bertoldo di Giovanni (ca. 1440–1491), Battle, c. 1480–85, Bronze, 17 3/4 × 39 1/8 in. (45 × 99.5 cm), Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence.
The artistic drawings that survive which reveal Leonardo’s artistic process are an invaluable piece of a final enterprise that ultimately failed to materialize on several levels despite Leonardo believing the high-level commission was vital to his reputation as an artist.53 In the end, Leonardo was viewed by the oligarchs as not only procrastinating but having not fulfilled his contract and they sued Leonardo for breach. Yet more enduring than a legal concern was the art project involving Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo Buonarroti. The work accomplished by these two giants of art reverberates through the centuries to today. Theirs is a legacy of the individual artist still being sought out—though by chairmen and presidents rather than popes and princes. A legacy that says artists are no longer craftsmen or tradesmen but artistic personalities in their own right with a unique and appealing style who are thus engaged for their singular brilliance.54 In the face of what was an incomplete, sometimes failed, and ultimately abandoned project—its competitive nature notwithstanding—all the variations of Leonardo’s creative activity funnels into a tremendous example for the mission of the artist –that is, to serve first neither patron nor purse nor artistic reputation —but the glory of making one’s art.
Leonardo, Self-Portrait, c. 1512, Royal Library of Turin, Italy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Acidini Luchinat, Christina, Butters, Suzanne B., Chiarini,
Marco, Cox-Rearick, Janet, Darr, Alan P., Feinberg, Larry J., Giusti,
Annamaria, Goldthwaite, Richard A. , Meoni, Lucia, Piacenti, Kirsten
Aschengreen, Pizzorusso, Claudio, Testaverde, Anna Maria, The Medici,
Michelangelo, And The Art of Late Renaissance Florence, Yale University
Press in association with The Detroit Institute of Arts, New Haven and London,
2002.
Ames-Lewis, Francis, Drawing in Early Renaissance Italy,
Revised Edition, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, Second Edition,
2000 (originally published 1981).
Ames-Lewis, Francis, The Intellectual Life of the Early Renaissance
Artist, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 2000.
Bambach, Carmen C., editor, Leonardo da Vinci, Master
Draftsman, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and Yale University
Press, New Haven and London, 2003.
Berenson, Bernard, The Italian Painters of the
Renaissance, Phaidon Press, London, 1959.
Braham, Allan, Italian Paintings of the Sixteenth Century,
The National Gallery, London in association with William Collins Sons & Co.
Ltd, London, 1985.
Braudel, Fernand, Out of Italy: 1450-1650, trans. Siân
Reynolds, Flammarion, Paris, 1991.
Clark, Kenneth, Selected Drawings from Windsor
Castle: Leonardo da Vinci, Phaidon
Press, London, 1954.
Durant, Will, The Renaissance: A History of Civilization
in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D., Simon and Schuster, New York, 1953.
Gombrich, E. H., Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the
Renaissance, Phaidon Press, London, 1966.
Hartt, Frederick, History of Italian Renaissance
Art: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture,
Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, Third Edition, 1987.
Hohenstaat, Peter, Leonardo da Vinci, Könemann,
Köln,
1998.
Isaacson, Walter, Leonardo da Vinci, Simon &
Schuster, New York, 2017.
Machiavelli, Niccolò, trans. William J. Connell, The Prince,
Bedford/St. Martin’s, Boston and New York, Second Edition, 2016 (originally
published 2005).
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and Survivals, George Braziller, Inc. in association with The Metropolitan
Museum of Art, New York, 1970.
Popham, A.E., The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci,
Jonathon Cape, London, 1977 (first published 1946
Saviotti, Franco, Florence, Edizione – SAFRA,
Firenze, 1981.
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& Mannerist Art, Volume 1 and II, Grove Dictionaries, Inc., New
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FEATURE image: July 1984. Marienplatz, Munich, Germany. 7.91mb 91%
Photographs and text by John P. Walsh.
Paris and London; Canterbury— (December 1976-January 1977):
Paris 1976. Senior class trip. I’m in the second row third from the right. Photographer unknown. Fair use.
Choosing Paris and London
Each year the senior class at Benet Academy spent Christmas break in London. In September 1976, the travel agent—“The World Is Your Schoolhouse,” as I recall—offered an alternative: replace some of the week in London with two nights in Paris. The group voted, and Paris won.
First Encounter with Gothic Architecture
In Paris, our first stop from Orly was Notre‑Dame Cathedral. Walking inside my first Gothic interior, my jaw simply dropped. That moment set the tone for what it meant to me to travel in Europe.
Chaperones and Ground Rules
We were chaperoned by two English teachers and their wives. The rule was simple: you could stay up all night if you wished, but you had to be at breakfast the next morning for that day’s touring.
Touring Paris
We visited the Louvre, Jeu de Paume, Eiffel Tower, the exterior of the soon‑to‑open Pompidou Center, the Arc de Triomphe, Sacré‑Cœur, and wandered the oldest streets of the Latin Quarter in search of its street life, medieval architecture, and student canteens. It whetted my appetite for future European travel.
Crossing to England
In the morning we took a charter bus to Calais, ferried across the English Channel to Dover, and stopped in Canterbury, arriving late afternoon on December 28—the eve of St. Thomas Becket’s feast day, marking his martyrdom in Canterbury Cathedral in 1170, a major pilgrimage center since the 12th century. By nightfall we reached London.
Paris in 1976 Archive Footage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QASTAUjaUOw– retrieved November 6, 2024 London, South Bank, December 1976. I’m in there somewhere walking briskly. Photographer unknown. Fair use. December 1976. Houses of Parliament, London.
London’s Theatrical Immersion
What struck me most in London was the sheer amount of theatre we chose to see: A Chorus Line, Equus, Jesus Christ Superstar, and Tom Stoppard’s new production of Jumpers. It was an unexpected cultural overload, and a defining part of the trip for me.
Food and Local Experiences
A group of us tried a medieval feast in a London hotel and later an East End Indian restaurant, widening our sense of the city’s food culture. Some of us even made speeches at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park.
Historic Sites and City Landmarks
We visited Windsor Castle, Hampton Court, Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower of London, watched the changing of the Horse Guard at Buckingham Palace, and shopped at Harrods and Selfridge’s on Oxford Street.
Lessons in Travel
From this trip I learned several principles for fitting international travel into a busy life:
Keep it short.
Go off‑season when possible.
Be well prepared, and return to the same destination if it rewards repetition — as Samuel Johnson put it, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.”
August 1978. Knappogue Castle, County Clare, Ireland. The castle tower was built in 1467. Author with Irish singer. 1.05mb
Three Weeks Across England, Wales, and Ireland (1978)
In 1978, I spent three weeks in England, Wales, and Ireland with my family on an American Express tour. London offered more theatre—Paul Scofield, Robert Morley—along with the British Museum, Westminster Abbey, Hampton Court, the Tube, and other staples of the city.
England and Wales: Castles, Cathedrals, and Cities
We visited Warwick Castle, Bath, Oxford, Bristol, Coventry, Stratford‑upon‑Avon, Salisbury, Chester, Liverpool, Llanfairpwllgwyngyll (the longest place name in Wales), and Holyhead, among many others.
Crossing to Ireland
We crossed the Irish Sea by ferry to Dún Laoghaire and continued to Jurys Hotel in Ballsbridge, where we stayed several days.
Touring Ireland
Our route took us south to Glendalough, New Ross (the Kennedy family homestead), Wexford, Waterford, Cork, the Blarney Stone, Killarney, the Ring of Kerry, and the Dingle Peninsula—including beach locations used in Ryan’s Daughter. We continued to the Cliffs of Moher, Cong and its surroundings (The Quiet Man locations), Limerick, and more.
Ireland—Dublin (Summer 1979):
Trinity College (1592)
June 1979. I was studying medieval Irish history at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland.
A Modernist Landmark at Trinity College
Opened in 1967, the Berkeley Library stands at Trinity College, Ireland’s oldest university, founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I. Located in the heart of Dublin, the building is a clear example of Brutalist architecture—exposed concrete, a monochrome palette, steel, timber, and glass—reflecting a mid‑20th‑century move away from nostalgic styles in the United Kingdom.
Naming and Intellectual Legacy
The library was named for George Berkeley (1685–1753), the 18th‑century philosopher whose ideas on perception and reality anticipate aspects of Albert Einstein’s work. Berkeley had been a Trinity fellow and, fittingly, a former librarian of the college. He is also the namesake of the University of California, Berkeley and Berkeley College at Yale University.
Renaming in 2023
In 2023, Trinity’s governing board removed Berkeley’s name from the library after acknowledging his role as a slave owner and defender of slavery. The decision marked a significant reassessment of institutional commemoration.
June 1979. O’Donoghue’s, Dublin.June 1979. O’Donoghue’s, 15 Merrion Row, Dublin, Ireland. June 1979. at O’Donoghue’s. 35%.A popular pub since the 1930s closely associated with Irish traditional music. It is where the Irish folk group, The Dubliners, got their start in the 1960s.
Jury’s Hotel (1963)
July 1979 — The original Jury’s Hotel (later the Ballsbridge Hotel) on Pembroke Road in Ballsbridge, Dublin, built in 1963 as a joint venture with Aer Lingus to serve as the city’s premier modern Intercontinental‑class hotel. Rebranded as Jury’s in the early 1970s, the property became a landmark of Dublin’s first wave of post‑war functionalist modernism—its tall, modular, concrete‑gridded guestroom wing rising on the left. The b lining the parking dividers evoke the unmistakable aesthetic of John Hinde‑era postcards, while the dense lineup of 1970s European family cars—saloon cruisers and a bright yellow hatchback centered in the frame—anchors the scene firmly in the mid‑to‑late decade.
The hotel closed permanently in 2019 and was purchased by the U.S. Department of State. The entire 4.2‑acre brutalist complex was subsequently demolished, and the U.S. government is now investing to construct a new, highly secure embassy compound on the site. The palm trees, the concrete modernist façade, and the mid‑century hospitality landscape captured in this photograph are gone—replaced by a fortified American diplomatic zone.
July 1979 — Signage on the foot path commute from Sandymount to Trinity College.
St. Stephen’s Green (1163; 1880)
June 1979. Lunchtime concert in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin.
Restricted Access in the Early 19th Century
In the early nineteenth century, St. Stephen’s Green was reserved exclusively for the gentry. An iron gate installed in 1815 was kept locked, with keys issued only to local residents. Working‑class Dubliners and the poor were barred entirely.
Opening the Green to the Public
Access remained restricted until 1877, when Lord Ardilaun (Arthur Guinness, 1840–1915) secured legislation in Parliament to open the Green to the public. He also funded the redesign and layout of the park in 1880, giving it the form recognizable today.
A Cross‑Section of Dublin Life
Nearly a century later, in 1979, the Green drew a broad cross‑section of Dubliners—university students, professionals, tradesmen, families, and visitors—a democratic contrast to its earlier exclusivity.
What is filmed on July 3, 1975 was very much like what was happening in the same place in 1979. The area surrounding the bandstand proved particularly popular with the park goers. Sunny St Stephen’s Green, Ireland 1975. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bbFU6ogKdB8 – retrieved November 7, 2024.
U.S. Embassy (1964)
June 1979. U.S. Embassy, Dublin.
A Modernist Landmark in Ballsbridge
Known officially as the Chancery Building at 42 Elgin Road, the U.S. Embassy occupies one of Dublin’s most prestigious addresses and stands as one of the city’s signature modernist structures. It opened in May 1964 on a triangular plot between Elgin and Pembroke Roads in Ballsbridge. I walked past it daily in the summer of 1979 on my way from Sandymount to Trinity College and the National Library.
Design and Symbolism
Designed by John M. Johansen (1916–2012), a Harvard professor, and Irish architect Michael Scott (1905–1989), the embassy’s circular form was conceived as an homage to ancient Celtic monuments—especially Newgrange—as well as round stone forts and Martello towers. Its geometry also referenced the original Stars and Stripes, with 13 stars symbolizing the original states.
Security and Expansion
By 2024, the embassy had erected tall perimeter gates and purchased the former Jurys Hotel site to begin constructing a new, larger embassy, marking a significant expansion after sixty years at the Elgin Road location.
Historic Postal Strike Parade, O’Connell Street (1979)
June 1979. Postal strike parade, Dublin, Ireland.
Start of the 1979 Strike
The strike by the Irish Post Office Workers Union began on February 19, 1979 and lasted 18 weeks. The 1979 Irish postal strike was the longest in the country’s history and the first major national postal dispute since the 1922 Postal Strike. Mail delivery stopped entirely, so during that early summer I could neither send nor receive correspondence normally to and from the U.S. Slowly we found ways around the stoppage: handing correspondence to American contacts returning stateside who could post them there— effective for outbound mail, but useless for anything coming the other way.
End of the 1979 Strike
When the strike ended in late June, postal workers received an average raise of £10. Although deliveries resumed on June 18, the system remained backlogged for months.
Delayed Acceptance of Mail
First‑class mail was not accepted again until July 9, and packages not until July 18. For all practical purposes, the service stayed functionally disabled throughout the entire sojourn.
In summer 1979, we went frequently to E. Borza Fish and Chips in Sandymount, across from Sandymount Green. The busy Borza family shop at 5 Sandymount Green, run for many years by Bruno and Angela Borza, served generations of locals for more than fifty years before closing permanently in early 2019. The takeaway began frying fresh fish and hand‑cut Maris Piper potatoes at this location in 1965. An archival television segment filmed in 1979 showed the Borzas buying fresh whiting at the morning Dublin fish market to supply their popular trade.
Glendalough, 6th century
June 1979. The round tower at Glendalough in Wicklow County is a monastic settlement founded in the 6th century by St. Kevin (C. 498-618). June 1979. At our arrival, we hiked the hills above the monastic settlement of Glendalough.June 1979. St. Kevin’s Church, Glendalough.
Functions and Structure of the Tower
The tower served multiple purposes: bell tower, lookout (two of its four compass‑point windows mark this), marker for visitors, storehouse, and refuge during attack. Rising nearly 100 feet, it has an entrance set about five feet above ground level. Built of mica‑slate and granite, it once contained six timber floors, with its four stories connected by a network of ladders and windows. The conical rooftop, rebuilt in 1876, used the original stones.
Two Visits, Two Experiences
In 1978, I visited the monastic settlement in relative ease and comfort with my family. The following year was entirely different. My roommate and I hitchhiked from Sandymount in Dublin to Enniskerry, slept outdoors near Powerscourt, and then walked much of the way into the wilderness of Sugar Loaf Mountain along the Old Military Road, built by the British during Wolfe Tone’s 1798 rebellion. Alone among sheep and peat bogs—the Liffey’s source lies here—we finally caught a ride to Laragh, stopped at Patsy’s for tea and scones, and continued to the hostel at the monastic site. After a beautiful first day, rain arrived that evening and stayed. We took the bus back to Dublin, showered, changed at the chalets, and later walked with two friends to Sandymount House on a busy Sunday night, settling in for talk and a couple of unforgettable Guinness pours.
St. Kevin of Glendalough
St. Kevin—my younger brother’s namesake—lived in the 6th century and is often compared to St. Francis of Assisi. Like Francis, Kevin wore rough clothing, slept on stones, ate sparingly, went barefoot, and devoted himself to prayer. He shared an extraordinary closeness to nature; animals and birds were his regular companions. St. Kevin of Glendalough was canonized in 1903 by Pope Pius X.
Galway City
July 1979. Galway City. On the Salmon Weir Bridge over the River Corrib.
Galway City to the Aran Islands
July 1979. Dancing and music as passengers traveled on the Galway Bay ferry to the Aran Islands. July 1979. Ferry from Galway to the Aran Islands.July 1979. Outbound Galway Bay.
Inishmore (Aran Islands)
July 1979. Inishmore.
Dun Aengus (1100 B.C.), Inishmore
July 1979. Dun Aengus.The vertical drop from this edge straight down to the Atlantic and the craggy rocks below is 330 feet.
Inis Mór: The Largest Aran Island
Inis Mór, the largest of the three Aran Islands in Galway Bay, covers 12 square miles and has a population of under 1,000. It is part of the official Gaeltacht, where Irish remains the predominant language of the home.
Landscape and Local Life
The photograph shows the island’s typical rocky terrain, a defining feature of the Aran landscape. Late in a long day of touring, I stopped into a busy pub filled with locals for a Guinness. I was eventually after unsuccessfully catching the bartender’s eye for a while—an unhurried rhythm befitting the island.
Dún Aengus
The prehistoric hill fort of Dún Aengus, perched on the cliffs of Inis Mór, is one of Ireland’s most dramatic archaeological sites. Roughly half of the circular fort has fallen into the Atlantic Ocean 330 feet below. Excavations show that the fort dates back to at least 1100 B.C., anchoring the island’s human history deep in the prehistoric era.
Italy – May 1983:
Florence
May 1983. Florence, Italy.
Michelangelo’s David in Florence
Michelangelo’s David, carved c. 1501–1504, has stood in the Galleria dell’Accademia since 1873.
Symbol of Florentine Liberty
The biblical David became a civic emblem for Florence, representing the defense of civil liberties embedded in the 1494 republican constitution — an independent city‑state resisting pressure from larger regional powers and the ambitions of the Medici family.
Rome
May 1983. Colosseum, Rome.May 1983. Trevi Fountain, Rome.
La Dolce Vita, 1960
Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) features an ensemble cast led by Marcello Mastroianni and Anita Ekberg. According to Ekberg, the famous Trevi Fountain scene was filmed in late January. Mastroianni’s character, Marcello Rubini, is a tabloid journalist drifting through Rome in a fruitless search for its “sweet life.” The news photographer Paparazzo (played by Walter Santesso) gave rise to the modern term paparazzi for intrusive celebrity photographers.
Three Coins Tradition
“The tradition is that you throw one coin if you want to return to Italy, two coins for romance, or three coins if you want to get married.”
Three Coins in the Fountain, 1954
Filmed in De Luxe color and Cinemascope, Sol Siegel’s Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) follows three American women finding romance in Rome. Shot on location, it won Academy Awards for Best Cinematography (Milton Krasner) and Best Song (Jule Styne and Sammy Cahn). Though narratively thin, it was a major box‑office success. Nominated for Best Picture, the film starred Dorothy McGuire, Maggie McNamara, Jean Peters, Rossano Brazzi, Louis Jourdan, and Clifton Webb. Variety praised it for “warmth, humor, a rich dose of romance and almost incredible pictorial appeal.”
Europe— Summer 1984:
France.
Eiffel Tower (1889)
June 1984. Eiffel Tower, Paris, 7th arr., France. 15%
Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais (1900)
June 1984. “Tresors de l’ancien Nigéria,” Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, May 16 – July 23, 1984. Paris. 15%
Fontaine des Mers (1840)
June 1984. Fontaine des Mers, Place de la Concorde, Paris. Two monumental fountains in this largest square in Paris were designed by Jacques Ignace Hittorff (1792-1867) and completed in 1840.
July 1984. Dachau Concentration Camp, Upper Bavaria. The original iron gate.
The Camp’s Iconic Gate
Dachau’s entrance bore the iron slogan “Arbeit Macht Frei,” a phrase used across several Nazi camps. The gate became one of the site’s most recognizable symbols of coercion and deception. In 2014, the original gate was stolen, later recovered, and replaced with a replica to preserve the memorial landscape.
Memorial to the Prisoners of Dachau
The sculpture below by Yugoslav artist Nandor Glid (1924–1997) honors the prisoners held at Dachau from 1933 to 1945. A Holocaust survivor himself, Glid had been a forced laborer; his father and most of his family were murdered at Auschwitz.
July 1984. me at Dachau Concentration Camp.
Neuschwanstein Castle, 1869-1886
July 1984. Neuschwanstein Castle, Hohenschwangau, Germany. 62% 7.85 mb
Royal Project in the Alps
Neuschwanstein Castle was built from 1869 to 1886 for King Ludwig II as a personal retreat shaped by his fascination with medieval legend and Wagnerian opera.
A Fairy‑Tale Silhouette
Its white limestone façades, tall towers, and cliff‑edge perch above Hohenschwangau create the theatrical, storybook profile that later inspired countless romantic castle designs, including Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle, completed in 1955.
Interiors of Myth and Pageantry
Inside, the rooms follow the same staged aesthetic, with murals drawn from Germanic myth and elaborate neo‑Romanesque and neo‑Gothic detailing.
Switzerland.
Lucerne.
June 1984. Lucerne, Switzerland. 6.12mb 99%
Austria.
Vienna
June 1984. Hotel Ambassador, Kärntner Straße 22, Neuer Markt 5, Wien (Vienna). June 1984. Vienna, Austria. 15%
Salzburg.
July 1984. Pitter Keller, Salzburg, Austria. July 1984. Steps directly above the “Sound of Music” steps in the Mirabell Palace Gardens. Salzburg, Austria. 3.12mb
Schloss Hellbrunn (1613-1619)
July 1984. Part of the waterpark at Schloss Hellbrunn near Morzg south of Salzburg, Austria.
At the Trick Fountain
I stand at left with Dr. Len Biallas seated beside me and his wife Martha nearby.
A Prince‑Archbishop’s Villa
Built between 1613–19 as the Prince‑Archbishop of Salzburg’s daytime retreat, the palace sits ten minutes by car—or under an hour on foot—from the city center.
Jeux d’Eau
The schloss is famed for its watergames, including this dining tableau where jets hidden in the stone seats spray unsuspecting guests.
Mythological Program
Greek and Roman themes shape the fountains throughout the grounds, a vivid expression of the Mannerist imagination.
Halstaat
July 1984. Halstaat, Austria.
The Hallstätter See and steep slopes of the Dachstein massif. The town lies on the national road linking Salzburg and Graz in the Salzkammergut region.
Belgium.
Brussels
June 1984. Grand’ Place, Brussels, Belgium.1.03mb
Guild Houses on the Grand’ Place
The buildings in the photograph — Le Roy d’Espagne, La Brouette, Le Sac, La Louve, Le Cornet, and Le Renard — are among the historic guild houses that define the square’s architectural ensemble.
Six Centuries of Construction
The Grand’ Place evolved over roughly 600 years, from the 1000s to the 1600s, creating the dense mix of medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque façades seen today.
Destruction and Rebuilding After 1695
During the Nine Years’ War, French bombardment in 1695 destroyed most of the square. The guild houses were rebuilt in the 17th and 18th centuries, giving the Grand’ Place its present appearance.
A UNESCO World Heritage Site
Designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1998, the Grand’ Place is widely regarded as one of the most beautiful urban squares in the world.
Italy.
Rome
July 1984. St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City, Rome, Italy. July 1984. Trying on eyewear at a sidewalk vendor, Rome, Italy.
Forum
July 1984. Colosseum from Via Sacra with columns and wall of the Temple of Venus and Roma.
Temple of Hadrian
The Temple of Hadrian was begun in 121 under Emperor Hadrian (76–138) and inaugurated by him in 135. Construction was completed in 141 by Emperor Antoninus Pius (86–161).
The Colosseum
The Colosseum held between 50,000 and 85,000 spectators. Its construction began in 72 under Emperor Vespasian (9–79) and was finished in 80 A.D. under Emperor Titus (39–81).
July 1984. The Forum, Rome.
Temple of the Dioscuri
It was a very hot day. The three distant columns are the remains of the Temple of the Dioscuri, dedicated to the mythological twins — the Gemini, sons of Jupiter (Zeus) and Leda. Their cult reached Rome from Greece by way of Sicily, where Greek culture has deep roots.
House of the Vestals
Statues from the House of the Vestals stand in the foreground.
Venice
July 1984. Piazzetta San Marco, Venice, Italy.
Piazzetta San Marco and Its Columns
Between the Palazzo Ducale and the Biblioteca Marciana, the Piazzetta San Marco links St. Mark’s Square to the lagoon. The original pair of granite columns, erected in 1268 (these are modern copies), carry St. Theodore on one and the winged lion of St. Mark on the other.
View Toward San Giorgio Maggiore
Across the lagoon stands San Giorgio Maggiore, designed by Andrea Palladio (1508–1580) and built between 1566 and 1610.
Vantage Point
The photograph was taken from the upper story of St. Mark’s Basilica.
Rialto Bridge, July 1984
Newlyweds on the Rialto Bridge in Venice, Italy. I was photographing from the city’s oldest bridge — built 1588–1591 — when, by sheer chance, I recognized a fellow Loyola Academy teacher standing there. PhilS. was with his wife, celebrating their honeymoon.
July 1984. Grand Canal from Rialto Bridge, Venice, Italy.
Florence
July 1984. Pazzi Chapel, Florence, Italy.
My Visit
This was one of the first places I tried to see upon arriving in Florence, but it was closed for repairs — and this vantage point was as close as I could get.
Pazzi Chapel, Early Renaissance Florence
In 1429, Andrea Pazzi—whose wealth rivaled the Medici—assembled the funds to build this chapel. Its geometrical design is attributed to Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1446), with construction beginning in 1442 and finishing in 1478.
Setting and Significance
The Pazzi Chapel, set in the cloister on the south side of the Franciscan Basilica di Santa Croce (consecrated 1443), is regarded as an early Renaissance masterpiece.
July 1984. Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy,
The one bridge to have been spared destruction in World War II. A bridge has crossed the Arno at this point since Ancient Roman times. 43%
Assisi
July 1984. In Assisi, Italy, traveling with my Canadian friends.
Europe— Summer 1985:
France.
Beaune
June 1985. Beaune, France. The man in the middle told me he had been a French soldier in combat in World War I (1914-1918).
Italy.
Sicily
July 1985. The bridge above Nicosia, Sicily was built by Arabs 1000 years ago during the Emirate of Sicily, an Islamic Kingdom, that ruled on the island of Sicily between 831 and 1091. I am with my cousin Filippo. I traced my genealogy on my mother’s mother’s side going back in Italy in a direct unbroken line into the 16th century.
Torino
July 1985. Torino, Italy, visiting with family. My cousin Filippo in the middle was an engineer who was acting president of the Politecnico di Torino at that time. July 1985. Torino (Turin), Italy.
Spain.
Madrid
June 1985. Tapas. Madrid, Spain.
Iceland.
Gullfoss
August 1985. Gullfoss waterfall, Iceland. It is in the canyon of the Hvítá river in southwest Iceland.
Europe— France, Belgium, Netherlands (December 1989):
Belgium.
Brugges
December 1989. Brugges, Belgium.
Belfort of Bruges
The 272‑foot‑tall Belfort, dating to the 13th century, is one of Europe’s earliest surviving works of medieval urban public architecture.
Later Additions
Its tallest octagonal upper stage was added in the 1480s, and in the 16th century the tower received its carillon, completing the profile that dominates Bruges today.
Netherlands.
Haarlem
December 1989. Haarlem, Netherlands. Smedestraat. In the background is the Grote Kerk or St.-Bavokerk. 2.01mb Scan_20250110 (4)
France.
Beaune
December 1989. A lunch to remember on a rainy afternoon in Beaune, France. 25%. Today it is Domaine des Vins.
Strasbourg
December 1989. Musée de l’Œuvre-Notre-Dame, Strasbourg, France.December 1989. Barrage Vauban (1690) on River Ill, Petite France, Strasbourg, France. 1.86mbDecember 1989. Barrage Vauban (1690) on River Ill, Petite France, Strasbourg, France. 1.96 mb.
Construction and Materials (1686–1690)
The barrage, built of pink Vosges sandstone, stretches 390 feet and rests on 13 arches. It was constructed between 1686 and 1690 by French engineer Jacques de Tirade (1646–1720), following plans drawn by his colleague, the military engineer Vauban (1633–1707).
Military Purpose
The structure’s primary function was defensive. In wartime, it acted as a lock, raising the river’s water level so that land outside Strasbourg would flood, rendering approaches to the city impassable to enemy forces.
Use in the Franco‑Prussian War
This tactic was employed again during the Franco‑Prussian War in 1870, demonstrating the barrage’s continued strategic value long after its 17th‑century construction.
Europe— France, Low Countries, Germany(February-March 1992):
Germany.
Aachen.
March 1992. Katschhof, Aachen, Germany 7.77mb 74%
Market Day Before Lent
A fruit and vegetable market on Aachen’s Katschhof square in March 1992 took place on the eve of Ash Wednesday.
Carolingian Axis of Power
The Katschhof sits between Aachen Cathedral and the town hall and becomes a public stage for festivals, markets, and civic events.
In Charlemagne’s era, the square formed the link between his palace hall and St. Mary’s Church, the site that contains his throne and his tomb.
Bones of a Tall, Thin Emperor
Prüm
February 1992. Prüm, Westeifel in western Germany.
Prüm and Its Monastic Origins
This was the site of Prüm Abbey, a Benedictine foundation established in the 8th century. Behind me stands the Sankt‑Salvator‑Basilika, completed in 1721. The surviving monastery buildings beside it now serve as a high school.
Relics and Early Power
Mentioned by Pepin (714–768) in a 762 deed, the church preserves the relic of the sandals of Jesus Christ, a gift Pepin received from the pope. Over the following centuries, the monastery grew wealthy, though not without reversals. Its abbot held the rank of prince of the Holy Roman Empire, ruling dozens of towns, villages, and hamlets — a status that drew increasing attention from secular powers eager to control it.
Strife, Resistance, and Decline
Despite internal disputes and external pressure — even from the pope — Prüm’s more than 50 abbots refused to submit to outside authority until the late 16th century. Afterward, the abbey came under the archbishops‑electors of Trier, entering another period of prosperity that lasted until the French Revolution.
Revolution, Dissolution, and Modern Era
In 1794, French troops occupied Prüm and annexed it to France. Soon after, Napoleon Bonaparte dissolved the monastery and sold its assets. During the 19th century, Prüm became part of modern Germany within Rhineland‑Palatinate. In World War II, most of the town was destroyed by bombing and ground combat.
February 1992. Wijde Heisteeg & Singel, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. 22%
Belgium.
Tournai
February 1992. Tournai, Belgium.7.94mb87%
Romanesque Row on Rue Barre‑Saint‑Brice
These late‑12th‑century houses (c. 1175–1200) in Tournai are among the oldest surviving private Romanesque burgess dwellings in Western Europe, built entirely of thick local blue limestone.
Hallmarks of Romanesque Civil Architecture
Their round‑arched windows, divided by slender stone colonnettes, and their heavy masonry walls make them rare, intact examples of Romanesque domestic construction rather than ecclesiastical work.
Survival Through Wartime Bombing
Despite severe bombing of Tournai by German forces in 1940 and Allied forces in 1944, this row endured largely because, in addition to pure luck, its massive stone construction resisted destruction far better than the timber‑framed buildings around it.
Chapel of the Ladrerie du Val d’Orcq (1153)
February 1992. The 12th century chapel of the Ladrerie du Val d’Orcq in Tournai, Belgium,
Romanesque Origins on the Road to Lille
Situated along the old road to Lille, the church’s Romanesque chevet was built in 1153. The structure was enlarged in the 1690s, but its medieval profile remains intact.
Rubble‑Stone Construction
Built of rubble stone and roofed with tiles set on stone corbels, the chapel has retained its original appearance and continues to serve as an active parish.
Legacy of the Bonne Maison du Val
The building stands as the last witness to the large medieval Bonne Maison du Val leper colony, once dependent on the Tournai magistrate and cathedral chapter, and destroyed under Louis XIV.
West Portal and Bell Tower
The small west‑front portal, with its harped jambs and basket‑handle arch, is topped by a niche of matching form. The nave roof is crowned by a square bell tower with a pyramidal cap.
Historic Monument Status
The sanctuary was officially classified as a historic monument in 1936, securing its preservation.
Ghent
March 1992. Ash Wednesday. Sint-Baafs Kathedraal, Ghent.
Antwerp
February 1992. Rubens House, 1610. Antwerp, Belgium 7.39mb 99%
Rubens’s Transformation of a Flemish House
A short walk from Antwerp’s center, the Rubens House began as an older Flemish residence that Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) purchased in 1610 and reshaped into an Italianate palazzo. Its plan combined the family home, the artist’s studio, a monumental portico, and the interior courtyard on today’s Wapper street.
Courtyard and Baroque Garden
The courtyard, pictured above, opens into the Baroque garden designed by Rubens himself, completing the palazzo’s blend of Flemish domestic architecture and Italian Renaissance influence.
Family Life and Loss
Rubens married Isabella Brandt (1591–1626) in 1610, and the couple had three children before Isabella died of plague at age 34.
From Private Residence to Public Museum
Centuries later, Antwerp acquired the house in 1937 and opened it to the public in 1946, preserving Rubens’s home and studio as a civic museum.
France.
Auchonvillers: Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial
February 1992. World War I trenches at Beaumont-Hamel Newfoundland Memorial.
Preserved World War I Trenches
The grass‑covered depressions are actual preserved World War I trenches, left untouched since the end of the war. They still mark the front lines as they were on July 1, 1916, when there was fierce fighting during the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
At this sector, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment was nearly destroyed in the opening morning of the July 1 assault. That day remains the bloodiest in the history of the British Army, with 57,470 casualties — including 19,240 dead — recorded. The regiment’s near‑total loss stands as the battle’s worst single‑unit catastrophes and among the highest proportional casualty rates suffered by any individual unit in the entire war.
Scottish Units from Beaumont
From nearby Beaumont, Scottish battalions joined the attack; by nightfall, roughly 90% of these men were dead, a measure of the battle’s ferocity.
February 1992. Beaumont-Hamel. These are reconstructed trenches.
Russia & Finland — January 1993:
Moscow
January 1993. Red Square, Moscow, Russia. January 1993. View of upper hall of Belorusskaya (Belarus) Metro Station (Koltsevaya Line) (Moscow, Russia).
Memorial to Belarusian Partisans, 1941–1944
Below the ceiling molding in the passageway stands a statue depicting Belarusian partisans who resisted Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1944, carrying out military and political operations under direction from Moscow. January 1993 — 35%
January 1993. Lenin’s Tomb, Moscow, Russia.
Lenin’s Mausoleum, Moscow
The structure is the mausoleum of Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924), whose preserved body has been on public display since shortly after his death in January 1924. Within days, Soviet architect Alexey Shchusev (1873–1949) was tasked with creating a building suitable for public viewing.
The 1930 Constructivist Design
In 1930, Shchusev completed the mausoleum seen today, built of marble, porphyry, granite, and labradorite. From 1953 to 1961, the embalmed body of Joseph Stalin (1878–1953) was placed beside Lenin, then removed by Nikita Khrushchev (1894–1971) and reburied in the nearby Kremlin Wall cemetery.
Architectural Character
While drawing on forms from ancient mausoleums, the tomb’s design is an experiment in early Constructivism, expressing Soviet modernism through strict geometry and monumental massing. 35%
January 1993. GUM department store, Moscow, Russia.
GUM on Red Square
GUM is the principal department store in cities of the former Soviet Union and, during the Soviet era, operated as the State Department Store with a single vendor — the State.
Origins and Construction, 1890–93
The best‑known GUM is the Red Square complex, built from 1890 to 1893 by architect Alexander Pomerantsev (1849–1918) and engineer Vladimir Shukhov (1853–1939) as the Upper Trading Rows. By 1917, the building held roughly 1,200 stores.
Architecture and Influence
The trapezoid‑shaped structure, with its steel framework and glass roof, is Moscow’s answer to London’s Crystal Palace (1851) and later influenced elements of La Samaritaine in Paris (1907).
Earlier Trading History
The site has been a planned commercial zone since the reign of Catherine II (1729–1796). Its earlier buildings, designed by Giacomo Quarenghi (1744–1817), were destroyed in the 1812 Fire of Moscow during Napoleon’s invasion.
Soviet Period and Reopening
After 1917, GUM was nationalized, then closed in 1928 and converted into office space under Stalin. It did not reopen as a consumer goods store until after 1953. 50%
January 1993. Novoslobodskaya station (Ring Line), Moscow, Russia.
Novoslobodskaya Station, 1952
The station, known for its 32 stained‑glass panels, opened on January 30, 1952 on the Koltsevaya Line, between Belorusskaya and Prospekt Mira. Though the man at center is an American tourist, the surrounding men on the platform are Russian.
Post‑Soviet Aftermath
After the fall of the Soviet Union, a broad sell‑off followed — uniforms, insignia, and other state effects were dispersed into private hands. 55%
January 1993. Red Square, Moscow, Russia. Left to right: State Historical Museum. GUM store. 50%January 1993. Saint Basil’s Cathedral (1555-1561), Red Square, Moscow, Russia. The Orthodox church was constructed by order of Ivan the Terrible (1530-1584). January 1993. Detsky Mir, Lubyanka Square, Moscow, Russia.
Detsky Mir on Lubyanka Square
On Lubyanka Square in central Moscow stands Detsky Mir (“Children’s World”), Russia’s largest toy and children’s goods store.
Construction and Opening, 1957
Architect Alexey Nikolayevich Dushkin (1904–1977) — known for his Moscow Metro and railway designs — spent three years building Detsky Mir in an eclectic blend of post‑Stalin Soviet architectural styles. The children’s emporium opened on June 6, 1957.
A Curious Neighbor: The KGB
Across the square stood the massive KGB headquarters, fronted by a 15‑ton monument to its Bolshevik founder Felix Dzerzhinsky (1877–1926). Sculpted in 1958 by Yevgeny Vuchetich (1908–1974), the statue was torn down on August 22, 1991, leaving an empty pedestal — now gone as well.
January 1993. Bolshoi Theatre (1825), Moscow, Russia.
Opening and Design, 1825
The Bolshoi (“Big”) Theatre opened on January 18, 1825. Its main building — rebuilt and renovated many times — is one of Moscow’s defining landmarks. Architect Joseph Bové (1784–1834) designed the original structure while overseeing Moscow’s reconstruction after the Fire of 1812 during the Napoleonic Wars.
Imperial Aesthetic Rules
During a visit to the city, Czar Alexander I (1777–1825) ordered that Moscow’s rebuilt architecture use only pale, limited colors, a decree reflected in the Bolshoi’s exterior.
Sculptural Program
The quadriga — a chariot drawn by four horses atop the portico — was sculpted by Peter Clodt von Jürgensburg (1805–1867), adding a signature neoclassical element to the façade.
Stage History
The Bolshoi premiered Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake in March 1877, anchoring its reputation as a major center of Russian ballet and opera.
Institutional Legacy
The Bolshoi Ballet and Bolshoi Opera remain among the world’s oldest and most renowned performing companies. 50%
January 1993, Assumption Cathedral, Moscow, Russia.
Cathedrals Square
Just east of the Great Kremlin Palace lies Cathedrals Square.
Assumption Cathedral
Facing the river, the cathedral served as the coronation church of the czars and the burial place of the patriarchs.
Napoleon’s Occupation
In 1812, Napoleon’s forces used the church as stables, burned icons for firewood, and stole more than 1,000 pounds of gold and silver.
Fioravanti’s Design
Built 1475–79 by Ridolfo “Aristotele” Fioravanti of Bologna, the five‑dome, six‑column structure is the Kremlin’s largest church.
Vladimir–Suzdal Style
Its curved zakomara gables and mid‑wall column belt reflect traditional Russian forms from the Vladimir–Suzdal princedom.
Later Frescos
The interior frescos date from 1500 and 1642.
January 1993. Moscow, Russia. Assumption Cathedral. Northern portal.
Late‑Imperial Restorations
The cathedral underwent major restoration campaigns in the 1890s and 1910s.
Bolshevik Closure
After the 1917 Revolution, the new government closed all Kremlin churches and converted the cathedral into a museum.
Final Easter Service
Lenin permitted one last Easter service in 1918 before full secularization.
Return to the Church
In 1991, the cathedral was restored to the Russian Orthodox Church.
January 1993. Moscow, Russia. Eleven-domed Church of the Nativity,the oldest church inside the Kremlin (1394), and the Church of the Deposition of the Robe (Timia Esthita) of the Holy Virgin (1486).
Kremlin Museums
Both the church and Cathedrals Square now form part of the Kremlin Museums. Once eleven churches stood within the Kremlin; today six remain.
The Robe of the Theotokos
The relic, first recorded in 473 A.D., was believed to protect Constantinople in the 9th century and Moscow in the 15th; it is preserved today in Zugdidi, Western Georgia.
Patriarch’s Chapel
The Church of the Deposition of the Robe originally served as the private chapel of the Patriarch of Moscow and all Rus’.
Royal Possession
In the mid‑17th century, the Russian royal family assumed control of the church.
January 1993. Moscow, Russia. The Archangel Cathedral
Archangel Dedication
Named for St. Michael the Archangel, the cathedral was built 1505–09 by Alevisio Novi of Milan, invited to Moscow by Ivan III.
Burial Cathedral
It served as the burial place of Muscovite rulers from Ivan Kalita (died 1341) to Aleksey Mikhailovich (died 1676).
Italian Renaissance Detail
Its Northern Italian decorative program was widely copied across 16th‑century Russia.
Rublev Attribution
Inside, the icon of the Archangel Michael is attributed to Andrei Rublev.
January 1993. Me at the door of the Archangel Cathedral, Kremlin, Moscow, Russia. January 1993. Moskovskaya Ploshchad (Moscow Square).
Moskovskaya Square is A major square in St. Petersburg, formerly Leningrad.
House of Soviets
Built 1936–41, the building was described by Stephen Sennott as “the purest form of totalitarian monumentality.”
Trotsky’s Architecture
Architect Noy Trotsky adapted his constructivist background to Stalin’s preferred neoclassicism.
Unrealized Plans
A Palace of Youth, a Palace of the Red Army and Navy, and triumphal arches were planned but halted by World War II.
Lenin Monument
A Lenin statue on a granite pedestal was installed in front of the House of Soviets in 1970.
Seat of City Governance
The building housed the Soviet of People’s Deputies, then the city’s main legislative body; it remains St. Petersburg’s largest office building and one the largest in Russia..
Monumental Scale
The main facade is 721.78 feet long and 164.04 feet high, while the RSFSR emblem on the roof stands 36.09 feet tall.
Siege of Leningrad
The House of Soviets stood on the front line when Nazi forces invaded and besieged the city in 1941.
St Petersburg.
January 1993. Palace Square, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Rastrelli’s Imperial Winter Residence (1754–1762)
The Winter Palace, built between 1754 and 1762, served as the winter residence of the Russian czars until the early 20th century. It was designed by Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli (1700–1771), an Italian architect born in Paris who moved to St. Petersburg in 1716. Rastrelli also designed the Smolny Convent (1748–1764). The palace’s interior has been repeatedly redesigned by various architects over the centuries.
The Alexander Column (1830–1834)
At the center of Palace Square rises the Alexander Column, designed by Auguste de Montferrand (1786–1858) and constructed between 1830 and 1834, during the same period he was building St. Isaac’s Cathedral (1816–1858). The column, made of red Finnish granite, stands 154 feet high and weighs roughly 700 tons. It commemorates Russia’s victory over Napoleon in the War of 1812. The angel at the top bears the face of Czar Alexander I (1777–1825) and symbolizes peace in Europe after Napoleon’s defeat.
Symbol of Imperial Power
To ordinary Russians, the Winter Palace long represented the visible power of the empire. It became the stage for several watershed events in modern Russian history:
Bloody Sunday in 1905,
the opening of the first State Duma in 1906,
and the capture of the palace by revolutionaries in 1917, after which it became part of the public Hermitage Museum.
January 1993. Church on the Spilled Blood (1883-1907), Saint Petersburg, Russia.
Site and Purpose
The Church of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ in Saint Petersburg stands on the spot where Czar Alexander II (1818–1881) was assassinated in March 1881. Built between 1883 and 1907 in the Russian Revival style, it was commissioned by the Romanov family as a memorial to the slain ruler.
Alexander II and the Political Climate
Alexander II freed the serfs in 1861 and abolished capital punishment, yet his government remained autocratic, resisting liberal reforms. Beginning in 1879, he became the target of repeated assassination attempts, culminating in the fatal attack of March 1881.
The Assassination, March 1881
While riding near the Griboyedov Canal, a bomb was thrown beneath the czar’s carriage, killing a Cossack guard and injuring others. Alexander II survived the blast, but a second attacker — Ignatiy Grinevitsky — detonated a bomb at close range. Mortally wounded, the czar was taken to the Winter Palace (today’s Hermitage), where he died.
The People’s Will and Aftermath
The radical group The People’s Will (Narodnaya Volya) claimed responsibility. They sought political liberty and land reform from the autocratic regime. Although Alexander II had signed an order establishing a Duma, his successor Alexander III (1845–1894) rescinded it and renewed repression through the Okhrana, the Imperial secret police.
January 1993. Street scene, St. Petersburg, Russia.
Tram and Manufacturer
The tram numbered 8148 is an articulated LVS‑86 (ЛВС‑86) unit, built in 1991 by the Petersburg Tram Mechanical Plant (PTMZ) and assigned to Tram Depot No. 8.
Street Architecture
On the right side of the street stands a neoclassical building marked by grand columns and arched windows—features typical of the imperial architectural vocabulary found throughout central Saint Petersburg.
Pushkin
january 1993. Russia right after the fall of the USSR (1917-1992). January 1993. Catherine Palace.
Origins Under Catherine I (1718)
The palace at Tsarskoe Selo (“Tsar’s Village”)—today Pushkin, fifteen miles south of St. Petersburg—was begun in 1718 by Johann Friedrich Braunstein for Catherine I Alekseevna Mikhailova (1684–1727), the second wife and consort of Peter the Great. Catherine I succeeded him as Empress of Russia from 1725 to 1727, establishing the site as an imperial residence.
Expansion Under Empress Elizabeth (1740s–1750s)
During the reign of Peter the Great’s daughter, Empress Elizabeth (1709–1762), the palace was dramatically enlarged. Imperial architect Mikhail Zemtsov (1688–1743) designed a new structure beginning in 1744. In 1745, his pupil Andrey Vasilievich Kvasov (c.1720–c.1770), working with Savva Ivanovich Chevakinsky (1709–c.1774), expanded the building further.
Rastrelli’s Baroque Masterpiece
The palace reached its full expression under Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, who completed it in a full‑blown Baroque style. The exterior stretched 326 yards, articulated with double columns and abundant statuary—an unmistakable statement of imperial grandeur.
Catherine the Great’s Summer Residence
Catherine the Great (1729–1796) used the palace every summer. She commissioned architect Charles Cameron (1745–1812) to remodel several rooms in the neoclassical style, creating the refined interiors associated with her reign.
Destruction and Restoration
Much of the palace and its contents were lost during World War II, with restoration proceeding slowly in the decades that followed. Today’s Catherine Palace is the result of extensive postwar reconstruction layered atop its 18th‑century foundations.
January 1993. Catherine Palace, Pushkin, Russia. 50%.
France — Burgundy (September 1993):
September 1993. Bourgogne.
Cluny
September 1993. German tourists in Cluny.
Founding and Early Influence
Founded in 910, Cluny Abbey grew into one of Europe’s most powerful Benedictine centers, influencing not only monastic but general church life through its strict liturgical discipline and far‑reaching network of dependent houses.
Construction of Cluny III
The abbey’s third and final church, Cluny III, was begun in 1088 under Abbot Hugh of Semur (1024–1109). Designed by Hézelon de Liège, it expanded Cluny’s architectural ambition into a monumental basilica of unprecedented scale.
Architectural Dominance
For centuries, Cluny III stood as the largest church in Europe, a physical expression of monastic authority and centralized organization. Its dominance lasted until the 16th century, when the new St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome surpassed it.
When Cluny III Was Destroyed
Cluny III — the vast Romanesque church begun in 1088 — survived until 1790, when the French Revolution targeted monastic institutions as symbols of aristocratic and ecclesiastical power. Revolutionary authorities sacked the abbey, seized its property, and sold much of the structure as building stone.
What Happened to the Building
After 1790, the abbey church was systematically demolished. Only fragments of Cluny III survive today — a small portion of the transept, some monastic buildings, and archaeological remains.
Cluny Abbey
Historic Cluny Abbey stands in the town of Cluny in Saône‑et‑Loire, Burgundy.
Eau Bénite Tower and Clock Tower (both c. 1095)
The octagonal Eau Bénite Tower—capping the south transept—is one of the few surviving original elements of Cluny III.
Beneath the tower’s right side sits the smaller, rounded medieval Clock Tower.
Scale of Cluny III
At its destruction during the French Revolution, Cluny III was the second‑largest church in Christendom after St. Peter’s in Rome.
18th‑Century Abbey Buildings
The multi‑winged complex with red‑tiled roofs in the foreground represents the 18th‑century classical abbey buildings and monastic palace.
Tour des Fromages (11th century) Viewpoint
The photo was taken from the top platform of the 11th‑century Tour des Fromages, a former watchtower offering a panoramic view over the abbey roofs toward the Burgundy hills.
Château de Bussy-Rabutin
September 1993. Château de Bussy-Rabutin is in the commune of Bussy-le-Grand, in the Côte-d’Or department, Bourgogne, about 37 miles (one hour by car) northwest of Dijon.
Medieval Foundations and Early Rebuilding
The castle was founded in the 12th century by Renaudin de Bussy and rebuilt in the 14th century, establishing the core medieval structure that still anchors the site.
Renaissance Additions
In the 1520s, Renaissance galleries were added, giving the château its first major stylistic expansion. Further alterations followed during the reigns of Henri II (1547–1559) and Louis XIII (1610–1643), layering new architectural ambitions onto the older estate.
Bussy‑Rabutin’s Exile
Roger de Rabutin, Comte de Bussy (1618–1693), fell into disgrace at court and was ordered by Louis XIV to withdraw to his estate. During this enforced exile, he wrote his Histoire amoureuse des Gaules, a chronicle of courtly love affairs that generated even more scandal. The book earned him a stay in the Bastille, after which he was released on the condition that he return to silence and self‑exile at the château—where he lived for the next 17 years.
A Life and Legacy at the Château
Bussy‑Rabutin died at the château in 1693. Along with the setting, his remarkable collection of portraits—depicting historical and contemporary French figures—was a highlight of our visit, each image serving as a visual prompt for the stories he told and the world he inhabited.
Restoration and State Ownership
The château was restored in the 19th century and acquired by the French state in 1929, securing its preservation and opening its layered history to modern visitors.
Pontigny, 12th century
September 1993. Abbey of Pontigny, France, 12th century, south view.September 1993. Abbey of Pontigny, France, 12th century, le chevet (apse).It is the largest intact Cistercian church in the world.September 1993. Abbey of Pontigny, France, 12th century, north aisle.
Bourges
September 1993. Palais Jacques Coeur (completed 1453), Bourges, France.
Nevers
September 1993. Nevers, France, at the Loire River next to its 12th century ramparts.
Paray-le-Monial
September 1993—Chapel of the Apparitions, Paray-le-Monial, France.
Setting and Monastic Background
Located in southern Burgundy’s Charolais‑Brionnais region, Paray‑le‑Monial reflects more than a thousand years of monastic influence. A Benedictine abbey was founded here in 973, and the Cluniac monks served as lords of the town until the 1789 Revolution, leaving the region dense with Romanesque churches and monastic architecture.
The Pilgrimage Center
Visitors often gravitate to the 12th‑century Basilica and the 16th‑century Tour Saint‑Nicolas, but the spiritual core for pilgrims is the Chapel of the Apparitions at the Convent of the Visitation Sainte‑Marie. Here, Margaret Mary Alacoque received four major visions of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, establishing the chapel as an international pilgrimage site.
Pilgrimage Experience
During our two‑day stay, we lodged with pilgrims from several countries. Meals were taken in common, conversations moved across languages, and reflections were shared within a living devotional tradition that has persisted for centuries.
The Visitation Community
The Visitation nuns of 17th‑century Paray‑le‑Monial—many from aristocratic families—belonged to an order founded by Jeanne de Chantal (1571–1641), emphasizing gentleness, interior devotion, and service to the sick and poor. Margaret Mary, of humble origins from nearby Verosvres, entered the convent on May 25, 1671, and professed final vows on November 6, 1672. Among the roughly forty nuns, some had little interest in mystical experiences, and few welcomed visionaries.
The Visions (1673–1676)
Between 1673 and 1676, Christ appeared to Margaret Mary in this chapel, presenting His heart and requesting a feast in its honor on the Friday after Corpus Christi. Each vision carried a distinct message. In late 1674, Christ promised her an understanding spiritual director. In 1675, the convent received Père Claude de la Colombière (1641–1682), a young Jesuit from Paris—shrewd, brilliant, and decisive. He confirmed her path and maintained contact with La Mère de Saumaise, the prudent convent superior who ordered Margaret Mary to record her experiences in letters that survive today.
In one letter, Margaret Mary recounts Christ’s assurance of a faithful guardian angel placed at her side: “Ma fille, ne t’afflige pas, car je te veux donner un gardien fidèle qui t’accompagnera partout et t’assistera dans toutes tes nécessités intérieures…”
Formation of the Devotion
By 1686, as novice mistress, Margaret Mary instructed her novices to place images of the Sacred Heart on the altar. The practice spread through the community, giving visual form to a devotion that would eventually become global.
Later Recognition
Margaret Mary died in 1690 at age 43. She was beatified in 1864 by Pius IX and canonized in 1920 by Benedict XV. Claude de la Colombière was beatified in 1929 by Pius XI and canonized in 1992 by John Paul II.
Auxerre
September 1993. Auxerre clock and belfry (15th century), Auxerre, France.
Gallo‑Roman Origins
Auxerre began as the flourishing Gallo‑Roman center Autissiodorum. The Via Agrippa, a major first‑century road, ran directly through the settlement and crossed the Yonne, anchoring the town in the imperial transportation network.
Rise of a Christian Center
Auxerre became a bishop’s seat in the 200s and later a provincial capital of the Roman Empire. By the 400s, it had developed into a cathedral town, marking its transition from Roman administrative hub to Christian stronghold.
Medieval Expansion
A “modern” Auxerre emerged in the 11th–12th centuries, defined and protected by a state‑of‑the‑art fortified wall. This medieval enclosure shaped the town’s footprint and still influences its street plan.
The Clock Tower
In the Old Town, the Clock Tower has been marking time since the 15th century. It began life as a prison before becoming a clock and belfry. A chamber attached to the tower houses the mechanism installed in 1483, crafted by a clockmaker known only as Jean.
September 1993. Capitals, Gislebertus (active 1120-1135), Autun, France.1.44mb
Autun Cathedral Sculpture
The artist executed the decoration of Autun Cathedral, including these capitals. Here, Deb views three kings sleep beneath their counterpane, roused by an angel’s single touch.
Romanesque to Gothic Transition
When the cathedral’s sculptural program was completed around 1135, church architecture was beginning its shift toward the Gothic, the style that would define medieval French building for the next 250 years — including Notre‑Dame de Paris in 1163.
September 1993. Autun, France.
Autun Below
The city spreading out below the towers is Autun, looking northwest toward the Arroux River valley and the distant hills.
Cathedral Facade Towers
The stone towers at the right edge of the frame belong to the facade of Autun Cathedral (Cathédrale Saint‑Lazare d’Autun).
Romanesque Style
These twin towers are Romanesque, marked by rounded arches, heavy masonry, and the sturdy forms typical of medieval Burgundy.
12th‑Century Construction
Ground broke around 1120, and the core building campaign concluded around 1146.
September 1993. Inside Cathédrale Saint-Lazare d’Autun (1120-1146). Statue St. Bernadette Soubirous (1844-1879). Autun, France. The statue depicts her later in life wearing the traditional dark habit and white wimple of her religious order. She is shown in a posture of deep, serene prayer, holding a rosary between her clasped hands—a direct nod to how she always prayed the rosary with the Virgin Mary during the apparitions in the grotto.1.15 mb
Vézelay
September 1993. Vézelay, France.
Vézelay and the Long Road to Sainte‑Marie‑Madeleine
It took 24 years for me to reach this Burgundian hilltown. I first learned of its Romanesque Basilica of Sainte‑Marie‑Madeleine, built in 1120, from Kenneth Clark’s Civilisation book and television series in 1969. I tried to visit in 1985 as a day trip from Dijon, but the route wasn’t direct.
Arrival at Last, 1993
In 1993, we rented a car and finally made the drive, staying at this relais just below the hill. The basilica — long imagined — was now just up the road.
One afternoon we had an extraordinary meal at L’Espérance, in the Vézelay countryside. Within its easy formal atmosphere, its graceful and exacting service, and its supra‑creative courses, I learned what it means to dine in a three‑star Michelin restaurant: to order, receive, and appreciate a culinary work of art.
Marc Meneau (1943–2020) oversaw everything — the kitchen, the room, the rhythm — and afterward received our thanks with quiet generosity. It was clear why he was counted among the great chefs of the world.
September 1993. Vézelay, France.
Because Vézelay Abbey holds some of the most celebrated Romanesque sculpture in Europe—especially its vast 12th‑century narthex tympanum of the Mission of the Apostles—we spent significant time in the basilica. Vézelay is a cradle of medieval faith and a historic launching point for the Second Crusade as well as the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage.
September 1993. Vézelay Abbey church, Vézelay, France.
On March 31, 1146, Saint Bernard delivered his fiercest sermon outside the gates of Vézelay Abbey, calling Europe to the Second Crusade. Standing on a hillside beside King Louis VII and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine, he drove thousands of knights to enlist. The crowd’s fervor ran so high that they ran out of cloth for crusader crosses, and Bernard tore strips from his own monastic robes to supply more.
Quarré-les-Tombes
September 1993. Quarré‑les‑Tombes.
St. George’s Church
The Church of St. George stands at the center of historic Quarré‑les‑Tombes in Burgundy, on a sanctuary site dating to the 7th or 8th century.
18th‑Century Reconstruction
In the 18th century, Curé Blaise Bégon led a major renovation that enlarged the nave and transept and completely rebuilt the bell tower.
19th‑Century Facade
Further work under Curé Henry in the 19th century gave the church its final neo‑Romanesque facade.
Merovingian Sarcophagi
Seen over the low wall are ancient Merovingian limestone sarcophagi surrounding base of the church—over 112 coffins dating from the 8th to 10th centuries.
Empty Burials
Historically, as many as 2,000 sarcophagi crowded the churchyard; when excavated, all were found completely empty.
Reims
September 1993. Palais du Tau, Reims: la Salle du Goliath.
Archbishop’s Palace Beside the Coronation Cathedral
The Palais du Tau served as the residence of the Archbishop of Reims, standing directly beside Notre‑Dame de Reims, the cathedral where the kings of France were crowned. Its history is inseparable from the monarchy: French kings stayed here the night before their coronation and returned afterward for the ceremonial banquet.
A Millennium of Coronation Banquets
The first recorded coronation banquet at the palace took place in 990, and the last in 1825, marking nearly nine centuries of royal ritual anchored to this building.
Medieval Chapel and Gothic Reconstruction
The palace chapel, dating from 1207, is the principal medieval survivor. The rest of the palace was rebuilt in Gothic style between 1498 and 1509, reshaping the structure to match the cathedral’s architectural language.
Baroque Transformation
Between 1671 and 1710, Jules Hardouin‑Mansart (1646–1708) and Robert de Cotte (1656–1735) transformed the palace into its present Baroque form, giving the Palais du Tau the monumental appearance seen today.
France—Paris (December 1996):
France—Paris & Versailles (March 2002):
Versailles.
March 2002. Château de Versailles, Versailles, France. 140kb 65%
Paris.
Louvre Museum (1793)
March 2002. The Louvre (Statue of Winged Victory, c. 200 BCE), Paris. France.
Pont Marie (1635)
March 2002. Pont Marie (1635), Paris, France.
View Toward the Right Bank
Looking from the Île Saint‑Louis toward the Right Bank, one sees one of Paris’s oldest surviving stone bridges. It was the first bridge built after early‑17th‑century aristocrats pushed for development of the island to extend their neighborhood across the Seine.
Pont Marie: Early 17th‑Century Construction
The Pont Marie, begun in 1614 and opened in stages through the 1630s, is among the oldest bridges in Paris. In its early decades, houses stood directly on the bridge, a common practice before modern traffic and safety concerns made such construction impractical.
Connection to the Left Bank
The Pont‑de‑la‑Tournelle, which continued the line of the Pont Marie, was completed in 1654, linking the Île Saint‑Louis to the Left Bank and completing the island’s integration into the city’s circulation.
Enduring Structure
The bridge’s structure has remained substantially unchanged since the 18th century. Each pedimented arch is distinct, and the niches in the abutments—designed to hold statuary—have always remained empty, giving the Pont Marie its slightly austere, unfinished character.
Opéra
March 2002. Paris Square d’Estienne d’Orves. (9th arr.) 404 kb 65%
France—Paris & Versailles (October 2002):
Paris.
Le Marais
October 2002. Anne Fontaine, Paris (3rd arr.). 204 kb 65%
Palais-Bourbon
October 2002. Au Petit Tonneau, 20, rue Surcouf, Paris (7th arr.). 65%October 2002. Kitchen, Au Petit Tonneau, 20, rue Surcouf, Paris. October 2002. Rue Surcouf, Paris. 400kb 75%. A wonderful, fleeting moment of classic Parisian daily life right before a major wave of modernization hit the block.
La Pagode (1895)
October 2002. La Pagode, 57 bis rue de Babylone and rue Monsieur, Paris, 7th arr., France. 65%
A Parisian Pagoda Born of Japonisme
In 1895, M. Morin, an executive at Le Bon Marché, sought a distinctive gift for his wife. By then, japonisme—the influence of Japanese art and aesthetics on French fine and popular arts—had been flourishing since the 1860s and was at its height in the 1890s. Building a real pagoda beside their Paris home became a fashionable and logical expression of that cultural moment.
Design, Construction, and Setting
Materials were shipped from Asia and reassembled in Paris under the direction of architect Alexandre Marcel (1860–1928). The pagoda rose at 57 bis, rue de Babylone, on the corner with rue Monsieur in the 7th arrondissement, an unexpected sight in the middle of a residential neighborhood. It featured an array of Japanese elements—stone figures of dragons, lions, buddhas, and birds, along with distinctive Asian‑style rooflines.
Cinema and Later History
In 1930, the pagoda was converted into a 400‑seat cinema, later becoming an art‑house theatre in the 1970s. After 85 years of operation, it closed in 2015, ending one of Paris’s most unusual architectural afterlives.
Sources: 1000 Buildings of Paris, Kathy Borrus (2003), p. 275; cinematreasures.org (retrieved January 4, 2023).
France—Paris, Versailles, Île-de-France, Centre-Val de Loire (May 2005):
Versailles.
May 2005. Debbie at Château de Versailles. Courtyard. 65%May 2005. Château de Versailles. Parterre du Midi.
Paris.
Musée d’Orsay (1900; 1986)
May 2005. Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
Going in to see Le néo-impressionnisme, de Seurat à Paul Klee, from March 15 to July 10, 2005. The large show made clear to me that there may be many disciples – here, painters of trendy 1890’s Pointillism – but few masters. 65%
Medici Fountain (1630)
May 2005. Medici Fountain (1630), Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, France. 2.49mb
Medici’s Palace and Early Construction (1623–1630)
Alongside the Left Bank palace built for Marie de’ Medici (1575–1642) by architect Salomon de Brosse (1571–1626) between 1623 and 1630, a fountain and grotto were created as part of the same program. The work was likely executed by Tommaso Francini (1571–1651), an Italian water‑works engineer invited to France in 1598 by Henry IV, who married Marie in 1600.
Decline Through the 18th and Early 19th Centuries
By the 19th century, after passing through several owners, the fountain had fallen into disrepair—its neglect accelerated by the court’s relocation to Versailles, shifting tastes, and the upheavals of the French Revolution.
Napoleonic Restoration
Under Napoleon I (1769–1826), attention returned to the site. The grotto was restored, marking the first significant intervention after decades of decline.
Mid‑19th‑Century Changes
By the 1850s, the old orangerie behind the fountain was demolished, along with its adjoining arcades. Urban planning soon reshaped the area further: in 1864, Baron Haussmann (1809–1891) pushed Rue de Médicis through the neighborhood, requiring the fountain to be moved roughly 90 feet deeper into the park.
Transformation of the Basin and New Sculpture (1866)
The original simple basin and water spout were replaced with an elongated basin. In 1866, a dramatic sculptural group—Polyphemus surprising Acis and Galatea, by Auguste Ottin (1811–1890)—was added, giving the fountain its present theatrical centerpiece.
Addition of the Fontaine de Léda
A second fountain, the Fontaine de Léda, built in 1806 under Napoleon and relocated from another neighborhood, was installed directly behind the Medici Fountain. The two structures now form mutually supporting stone walls, creating the layered architectural effect seen today.
Maintenon.
Château de Maintenon
May 2005. The Château de Maintenon in France.
Medieval Core and Later Additions
The château developed between the 13th and 18th centuries, beginning with its square keep in the 1200s and later augmented by round towers as the complex expanded over subsequent centuries.
Royal Purchases and Rebuilding
In the early 16th century, the estate was purchased by Jean Cottereau, treasurer to Louis XII (1462–1515). It was later acquired in 1674 by Madame de Maintenon (1635–1719)—first the king’s mistress, then his secret second wife—who rebuilt and reshaped the property. Louis XIV once remarked, “Madame de Maintenon knows how to love. There would be great pleasure in being loved by her.” Historians accept that their secret marriage occurred sometime between October 1683 and January 1684.
Cour d’Honneur, Moat, and Gardens
The château’s wings frame a formal cour d’honneur, beyond which lies a moat fed by the Eure. Past the moat stretch the parterre and park, culminating in an aqueduct designed by Vauban that crosses the Canal de l’Eure and transports water to the fountains at the Palace of Versailles.
A Literary Retreat
In later centuries, the château became a favored retreat of François‑René de Chateaubriand (1768–1848), who admired its distinctive atmosphere.
Chenonceaux.
Château de Chenonceau
May 2005. Château de Chenonceau (16th century), France.
Renaissance Construction Over the Cher
Built between 1514 and 1522 on the foundations of an old mill, the château was later extended across the river Cher in two major phases: the bridge (1556–1559) designed by Philibert de l’Orme, and the gallery (1570–1576) designed by Jean Bullant.
Diane de Poitiers and the Gardens
Diane de Poitiers (1500–1566), mistress of Henry II, occupied Chenonceau after the king gifted it to her. She commissioned the bridge and laid out the château’s formal gardens, shaping much of its early Renaissance character.
May 2005. Deb and me at Château de Chenonceau in France. Diane de Poitiers at 25 years old by Jean Clouet (1480-1541).
Catherine de’ Medici’s Takeover
After Henry II’s unexpected sudden death in a ceremonial joust, Catherine de’ Medici (1519–1589)—his queen and mother of three future kings—swiftly seized Chenonceau and expelled Diane, making the château her own political and architectural stage.
May 2005. Château de Chenonceau (16th century), France.
Châteaudun.
Château de Châteaudun (c. 1170)
May 2005. Château de Châteaudun.
First Castle of the Loire
The Château de Châteaudun is often called the “first castle of the Loire Valley” for travelers arriving from Paris.
12th‑Century Keep
Perched 60 meters above the Loir River, the circular tower—built c.1170–1180 for Thibaut V of Blois—is the oldest and most intact part of the fortress.
Fortress Engineering
The keep’s thick limestone walls contain two ring corridors lined with arrow loops; it originally had no ground‑floor entrance, accessible only by a removable ladder to a doorway 10 meters above the ground.
Jean de Dunois
In 1439, Charles of Orléans granted the county to his half‑brother Jean de Dunois, famed companion of Joan of Arc during the lifting of the Siege of Orléans.
Flamboyant Gothic Wing
After the wars, Dunois transformed the fortress into a princely residence, adding a Flamboyant Gothic wing in the 1450s–1460s.
Sainte‑Chapelle and Keep Apartments
Between 1451 and 1454, Dunois built a private Gothic chapel—one of only seven surviving Sainte‑Chapelles in France—housing surviving twelve life‑size 15th‑century painted statues. He also converted the top floor of the 12th‑century keep into his private library and residential apartments.
Longueville Wing
His descendants, the Dukes of Longueville, expanded the complex in the 16th century, adding large windows and decorative open‑loggia staircases, overlooking a courtyard.
Later Turmoil and Modern Restoration
The castle served as refuge after the 1723 town fire, was ransacked during the Revolution, used as barracks, and damaged by Prussian troops in 1870. The French State acquired the property in 1938 and launched a major restoration, preserving this castle between medieval defense and Renaissance luxury.
Pontlevoy.
May 2005.
Pontlevoy Abbey
Historic Pontlevoy Abbey stands in the commune of Pontlevoy in Loir‑et‑Cher, Centre‑Val de Loire.
Saint‑Pierre Steeple
The prominent stone steeple on the left belongs to Église Saint‑Pierre; its masonry dates to the 11th–12th centuries, with the upper bell tower partly rebuilt in the 15th century.
19th‑Century Spire
The tall stone spire crowning the tower was added in the 19th century.
Monastic Complex
The larger buildings with grand mansard and slate roofs form the historic Benedictine monastery and college grounds.
May 2005. Pontlevoy Abbey.
11th‑Century Foundation
A Benedictine abbey was founded here in the 11th century by a local knight, along with its early Gothic church.
Richelieu’s Abbacy
In the early 17th century, Cardinal Richelieu—no mere honorary abbot—ordered repairs, updates, and a reinforcement of the monastic community.
Royal Military Academy
By the 1770s, the small monastery school was elevated by Louis XVI into one of France’s royal military academies, operating until the Revolution.
Cedar of 1776
The great cedar was planted in 1776 in honor of the new king, Louis XVI. 65%
Post‑Revolution College
In 1792, the revolutionary government abolished the military academy, and the complex became a private secular college rather than a stone quarry. Throughout the 1800s, Pontlevoy operated as a competitive, conservative boarding school for the wealthy, producing provincial officials, scholars, priests, and soldiers.
Village Expansion
Its popularity led affluent families to build the large slate‑roofed houses that still frame the village streets.
1944 Fire Damage
As German forces retreated in 1944, they set fire to the site; the blaze caused heavy damage, though the main chapel and major 18th‑century wings survived. After the war, the Marquis de Vibraye family sold the property to private investors involved in international education.
Study Abroad Campus
Today, the 18th‑century complex serves as an international study‑abroad hub, hosting European and American university students for language, history, and cultural programs.
May 2005. Interior, St. Pierre Gothic Church, Pontlevoy, France. The church is over 1000 years old. 65%
1034 Vow and Foundation
The Church of St. Peter stands within the Pontlevoy Abbey complex. The site’s spiritual origin dates to 1034, when Gelduin of Chaumont vowed to build a monastery after surviving a shipwreck.
Romanesque Core
Heavy rounded arches and robust stone columns in the lower nave preserve the early Romanesque structure.
14th‑Century Damage
English forces damaged the Romanesque church in the mid‑14th century, prompting major reconstruction.
In the late 18th century, the nave wall was dismantled, leaving the choir and transept as the parish church.
Revolution, 1944 Survival, Monument Historique
The monks were expelled during the Revolution; in 1944, retreating German troops set fire to the abbey, though the church’s core survived, preserving its historic interior columns, old wooden gallery balcony, and 12th-century chapel architecture. Today, the church is a classified French Monument Historique.
Pointoise.
May 2005. Western façade of Pontoise Cathédrale Saint-Maclou from Rue de la Coutellerie.1.33mb
Romanesque Foundations (Early 12th Century)
The apse, built in the early 12th century, is fully Romanesque in massing and profile. By the mid‑to‑late 12th century, the vault of the ambulatory and the transept windows introduced the first Gothic elements, marking the church’s gradual architectural transition.
Gothic Development (15th Century)
The flamboyant Gothic façade, added in the 15th century, reshaped the western front with its characteristic tracery and vertical emphasis.
Expansion of the North Aisle (1525)
In 1525, the north aisle was replaced by a double aisle bordered by chapels, and a new portal was opened onto the Place du Grand‑Martroy, extending the church’s urban presence.
Lemercier and the Western Tower (1552)
In 1552, Pierre Lemercier—first in a distinguished line of Pontoise architects—undertook the completion of the western façade tower by constructing its dome, establishing the silhouette recognizable today.
South Aisle and Structural Reinforcement (16th Century)
Throughout the 16th century, the south aisle was bordered by a belt of chapels. Large columns replaced the thinner medieval supports, and the upper windows were rebuilt, strengthening the structure while updating its lighting scheme.
Chancel Reconstruction (1585)
In 1585, the pillars of the chancel were rebuilt, completing a century of structural and stylistic modernization.
Elevation to Cathedral Status (1966)
By the time Saint‑Maclou became a cathedral in 1966, when Pontoise was elevated to diocesan status, the church had already accumulated seven centuries of architectural evolution. see – https://ville-pontoise.fr/la-cathedrale-saint-maclou– retrieved March 5, 2025.
Houdon.
May 2005. Houdan, France.
Origins of the Houdan Chicken
The Houdan chicken, an old French breed, rose to prominence when its breeders became the royal suppliers to the French kings at Versailles, beginning under Louis XIII (1601–1643). Its reputation for quality made it a staple of courtly cuisine.
Peak Production in the 19th Century
With the arrival of the railroads, demand surged. Records from 1872–1873 note more than 600,000 Houdan chickens sold—an industrial‑scale success for a bird that had once been a regional specialty.
Decline and Revival
World War I nearly erased the breed; large breeders vanished, and the Houdan chicken almost disappeared entirely. It was reintroduced in 1927, restoring a small but enduring lineage.
A Gastronomic Stop: La Poularde
We ate a memorable déjeuner at La Poularde, a gastronomique destination that still serves the historic French repast built around this storied bird—proof that culinary heritage sometimes survives more wars than the chickens themselves. see – see – https://www.fondazioneslowfood.com/en/ark-of-taste-slow-food/houdan-chicken/ – retrieved March 5, 2025.
Bièvres.
May 2005. Bièvres, France.
A Visit to Bièvres
We visited Bièvres, about eight miles southwest of Paris, because of its association with the Symbolist artist Odilon Redon (1840–1916). The village rises gently from a crossroads, and locals still recall Redon’s summer stays there after 1909—proof that even Symbolists leave footprints.
Lunch at the Tabac de Mairie
Before exploring, we had a leisurely déjeuner at Tabac de Mairie, the sidewalk café at 2 Rue Léon Mignotte, just off to the left of the photograph. The meal was excellent, the service brisk, and the atmosphere very much “small French town that knows exactly who it is.”
Redon and Camille in Bièvres
Redon and his wife Camille Falte (1860–1925) are interred together in the village cemetery. When Redon’s natal home of Peyrelebade was sold in 1897, the couple adopted Villa Juliette in Bièvres—acquired from Camille’s half‑sister—as their retreat from Paris. It became their refuge, their summer base, and occasionally their escape hatch from the Paris art world.
Retreats and Return
During World War I, Redon withdrew for long stretches to his native Southwest France. But in the end, he returned to Bièvres—at least in the way artists often do: by being brought back after death. Camille lived nine years longer than Redon, outlasting him before joining him there in the cemetery of the village they had made their second home.
