Sandro Botticelli, whose original name was Alessandro di Mariano Filipepi, was one of the greatest painters of the the Early Renaissance. Botticelli was the Florentine who created some of the most famous works of art in the world.
He was born in 1445 in Florence in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella near the Arno river, on Via Nuova (now Via del Porcellana, near Piazza Ognissanti).
DetailsThe Pitti Palace (Italian: Palazzo Pitti) is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence. It is situated on the south side of the Arno River, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio.
Wanted by Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker, to challenge the hated Medici family, Palazzo Pitti was, at the time of construction around 1440, the largest and most impressive private residence in the city of Florence.
Ponte Vecchio (Old Bridge) connects the city centre to the district of Oltrarno on the south bank of the river Arno. It is the first bridge ever built in Florence, surely one of the great icons of the city and one of the most famous bridges in the world.
It is best known today for the wooden-shuttered goldsmiths’ shops that line both sides of it, and for the Vasari Corridor that runs over it.
Historical sources indicate that Ponte Vecchio has been in place since at least the twelfth century, and we know that for a long time the Arno River was crossable only at this point.
The old bridge crosses the river at its narrowest point within the city, and a series of bridges—of which this the fifth version—have stood on or around this spot since the days of the ancient Romans.
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The Medici Chapels consist of two structures that form part of the monumental complex of San Lorenzo, in Florence, and they house monuments that belonged to members of the Medici family.
The Church of San Lorenzo was the official church of the Medici when they lived as private residents in their palace in via Larga (now via Cavour), and later became their mausoleum until the extinction of their line.
For several generations, the Medici family, of which author Dan Brown mentions in his book Inferno, had an outstanding reputation for promoting the arts, culture, spiritual ideas, as well as the scientific advancements of their time in the city of Florence and throughout Tuscany.
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In the Prologue of Inferno Dan Brown writes:
DetailsI pass behind the palazzo with its crenellated tower and one-handed clock… snaking through the early-morning vendors in Piazza di San Firenze with their hoarse voices smelling of lampredotto and roasted olives.
The Primavera (Spring), also know as L’allegoria della primavera (The Allegory of Spring), is a large panel painting in tempera paint by the Italian Renaissance painter Sandro Botticelli, displayed in the Uffizi Museum in Florence.
It has been described as “one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world,” and “one of the most popular paintings in Western art.”
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It was in Venice, Italy, at the Galleria Internazionale d’Arte Moderna located in Ca’ Pesaro, the most important baroque Venetian palace, that Robert Langdon, the main character in Dan Brown’s Inferno, saw for the first time Gustave Klimt’s masterpiece The Kiss while it was on loan from Vienna.
Langdon credited Venice’s Ca’ Pesaro with arousing his lifelong gusto for modern art.
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The François Vase is a large Attic volute krater decorated in the black-figure style.
A real masterpiece of ancient pottery and the epitome of black-figure painting, the François Vase can be considered a landmark in the study of Greek pottery as it marks a turning point in the art’s development, constituting a great advance in Athenian pottery and painting styles.
