Florence, Tuscany, Umbria

  • Food and art in Florence

    Food and art in Florence

    The art of the Renaissance or the art of food? Do we go to Florence for the food or for the art? Has gastronomy replaced Giotto on the Florence bucket list? how it began โ€˜Yes,โ€™ said Lucy. โ€˜They are lovely. Do you know which is the tombstone that is praised…

  • Venice attempts to stem the tide

    Venice attempts to stem the tide

    (and some news from Rome and Florence) by Alta Macadam The long-discussed entrance restrictions to Venice are finally to become operational on 25th April. The system is designed to limit the numbers of day-trippers, who come to the city for just a few hours (often as part of a tour…

  • Eleanor of Toledo, Duchess of Florence

    Eleanor of Toledo, Duchess of Florence

    The colour always favoured by Eleanor was red, and the entrance to this exhibition devoted to her life and patronage, which has just closed at Palazzo Pitti, was hung with a sumptuous crimson curtain. Beyond it, the visitor was at once confronted by what at first glance seemed to be…

  • Perugino: Italyโ€™s best maestro

    Perugino: Italyโ€™s best maestro

    Pietro Vannucci, the artist always known as Perugino, after Perugia, the chief city of his native Umbria, was born c. 1450. A superb new exhibition, which celebrates the 500th anniversary of his death in 1523, is currently on show at the Galleria Nazionale dellโ€™Umbria. It was probably in Umbria that…

  • Donatello. The Renaissance

    Donatello. The Renaissance

    The simplicity of the title of this marvellous exhibition (open until 31 July at Palazzo Strozzi and the Bargello in Florence) prepares us for the presence of a series of masterpieces by the greatest Western sculptor of all time. On show in two Florence venues, there are loans from all…

  • Book Review: The Bookseller of Florence

    Book Review: The Bookseller of Florence

    Four hundred and eighty pages might seem a lot to fill, when one has chosen as oneโ€™s subject a man about whom next to nothing is known. But Ross King, in this ambitious book published last year, has managed to fill them nonetheless, and the result is eminently readable.  Vespasiano…

  • News from Florence: The Uffizi

    News from Florence: The Uffizi

    At the time of writing this article, Italy was experiencing its second wave of Covid-19 and we were all being invited to stay at home as much as possible to avoid another lockdown. Museums and galleries were still open, even though theatres and concert halls were closed. Since then, however,…

  • An update on Dante

    An update on Dante

    Work is underway to plan next yearโ€™s celebrations for the seven-hundredth anniversary of the death of Dante Alighieri (see previous article posted here on 22 March this year โ€œDante Dayโ€). In fact Sergio Mattarella, the Italian President, went to Ravenna on 6th September to open the events (albeit behind a…

  • Artemisia Gentileschi

    Artemisia Gentileschi

    This month, a new exhibition devoted to the art of the 17th-century painter Artemisia Gentileschi was to have opened at the National Gallery in London. Blue Guides was to have visited the exhibition and posted a review of it. That will now have to wait. Artemisia Gentileschi features in many…

  • Letter from Italy

    Virtual museum tours: some of the best For professional guides in Italy this is, of course, a period in which they suddenly find themselves without work. However many museums, while closed to the public, have made it possible not only to consult their catalogues or browse the collections online but…

  • Florence: Forged in Fire

    There are just a few days left to catch this exhibition in Palazzo Pitti (Forged in Fire. Bronze sculpture in Florence under the last Medici; on until 12th January 2020), which illustrates the bronze sculpture made for the Medici court in the 17th and 18th centuries, some of the most…

  • News from Florence

    News from Florence

    For anyone taking advantage of the relevant calm in Florence this month (when the queue outside the Accademia, the cityโ€™s most famous gallery, is usually minimalโ€”though it is still always worth booking your visit online) there is a fascinating little exhibition now running (until 5 May).. What brings these eight…

  • Leonardo’s Leicester Codex

    Leonardo’s Leicester Codex

    The celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of the death of Leonardo da Vinci (1452โ€“1519) have already begun, with the Uffiziโ€™s exhibition of the Leicester Codex. Purchased in 1717 by Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, the Codex was preserved in the UK by the family until it was sold to…

  • Islamic Art in Florence

    Islamic Art in Florence

    The world of Islamic art has been explored in Florence this summer in a major exhibition (Islamic Art and Florence from the Medici to the 20th century, open until 23rd September), divided between the Uffizi Gallery (the Aula Magliabecchiana exhibition space on the ground floor, so accessible directly from the…

  • The Wonders of Pontormo

    The Wonders of Pontormo

    A tiny exhibition in Florence this summer, which is a joy to visit (Incontri miracolosi. Pontormo dal disegno alla pittura), is running at Palazzo Pitti. In just one room and with only ten works on show, it is curated by Bruce Edelstein (and is on view until 29th July). Here…

  • Good news from Florence

    Good news from Florence

    It is well known that the famous Medici and Lorraine collections are housed in various museums in Florence, not just in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries (recently re-united under one director). The scientific collections are in the Museo Galileo, the musical instruments in the Galleria dellโ€™Accademia, the Renaissance sculpture in…

  • Fleming and Honour Remembered

    Fleming and Honour Remembered

    Susanna Johnston, John Fleming and Hugh Honour Remembered. Gibson Square, London, 2017. John Fleming and Hugh Honourโ€™s A World History of Art (1982 and later editions, the 7th as recently as 2009) was one of those books one had to have on oneโ€™s shelves. My copy, now 30 years old,…

  • Whatโ€™s on in Florence

    Whatโ€™s on in Florence

    Florence, in these weeks before the arrival of the Easter crowds, is cold but relatively empty and there are two exhibitions well worth seeing: 14th-century fabrics in the Galleria dellโ€™Accademia, and 18th century paintings in Palazzo Pitti. The first exhibition (Tessuto e ricchezza a Firenze nel trecento. Lana, seta, pittura;…

  • Diana Athill, ‘A Florence Diary’

    Diana Athill, ‘A Florence Diary’

    Diana Athill, A Florence Diary. Granta, 2016.Reviewed by Charles Freeman This is an amuse-bouche of a book, just 40 pages from a notebook recording the authorโ€™s visit to Florence in the late summer of 1947. By sheer coincidence I found myself reading it on Diana Athillโ€™s hundredth birthday, December 21st,…

  • Seasonโ€™s Greetings

    Seasonโ€™s Greetings

    This Advent weโ€™ve chosen twelve different depictions of the Nativity, which we have discovered in the course of Blue Guides research trips around Italyโ€”plus one final one from our latest title in preparation. 1. The ox and the ass and the baby in the manger from an early Christian sarcophagus…

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