Giorgio Vasari was a very prolific and eclectic artist. He was born in Arezzo in 1511 and died in Florence in 1574, and has an important role in Dan Brown’s Inferno.
He was a brilliant polymath, and his expertise covered a number of different subjects, including writing, painting, and planning.
The Gates of Paradise is the main gate of the Baptistry of Florence (Battistero di San Giovanni), located in front of the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
The Porta del Paradiso, in Italian, was created by Florentine goldsmith and sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti between 1425 and 1452 and installed in the eastern portal of the Baptistery.
The Gates have been praised by generations of artists and art historians for their compelling portrayal of scenes from the Old Testament.
Over time, the seventeen-foot-tall, three-ton bronze doors became an icon of Renaissance, one of the most famous works of art in the world.
The workmanship of panels demonstrates that the Florentine artists had mastered linear perspective and the classical idiom by the early 15th century.
According to The Lives of the Artist by Giorgio Vasari, the door—once known just as the East Door—was named the Gates of Paradise by Michelangelo Buonarroti because of its striking beauty.
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Who is Beatrice? Beatrice was the main inspiration for Dante Alighieri‘s Vita Nuova and is commonly identified with the Beatrice who appears as one of his guides in his masterpiece La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy). Did Beatrice really exist? The life of this famous woman is shrouded in mystery. Many historians have questioned whether…
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Here you find information and history about the Medici family, the world famous Italian noble family that had a great power in Florence from the 15th to the 18th century.
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The city of Florence staged the world premiere of Inferno, the third film to be adapted from the Dan Brown novels about symbologist Robert Langdon. The city hosted one of the largest film premieres ever held in our country. The premiere was on October 8, 2016, at Teatro dell’Opera in Florence. However, special events were…
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The dome that covers the Florence cathedral (the Santa Maria del Fiore cathedral) is known as Filippo Brunelleschi’s dome.
When it was designed, it was the largest dome in the world.
This immediately created problems as its size prevented the traditional method of construction. Its structure is a double shell supported by sturdy pillars.
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Limoncello is the Italian word referring to an intensely lemon-flavored liqueur most famously associated with and produced in Sorrento, the Amalfi coast, and the island of Capri, but also very popular throughout all of Italy. Limoncello is made from lemon zest (strictly non-treated), water, alcohol, and sugar. It is a beverage usually consumed after meals,…
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In his last novel Inferno, Dan Brown decided to tackle the theme of global overpopulation, referring also to the Black Death (Peste Nera) of 1348, which killed a third of Europe’s population.
As in all his books, however, he prefers to ask questions of his readers rather than give them solutions.
