Architecture

Check out this nicely done article, written and photographed by someone very close to me. I borrowed a photo - I hope he doesn't mind!

We did it!

Thesis is defended and soon to be submitted.

Thanks, BVM.

Picture Tag

I got tagged a couple of days ago by Mama Goose to share a random picture. And I'm tagging 4 more people:

Tongue In Cheek
Oysterblogger
Nuria
Brand New Eyes

Here's what you have to do:
1. Go to the 4th picture folder on your computer

2. Post the 4th picture in that folder

3. Explain the picture

4. Tag 4 more bloggers

Here's what I found:



This is Rafa's passport photo from last summer. He looks so serious. His father must have told him not to laugh while he was taking the picture because he is usually laughing and smiling all over the place. We went to Spain last summer for 2 weeks, and had a lovely time. Oops -- it's almost 2 years ago -- it was summer of 2007! I hope that we get to go again this summer!

A few years back I saw a painting by Murillo in the Fine Arts museum of Seville, and it was a boy who looked exactly like Rafa. This photo reminds me of that painting, the same serious look. Murillo is a Spanish painter from the 17th century who worked quite a lot in Seville.

Here are a couple of Murillo paintings -- I think the portrayal of the child looks like Rafa because of the coloring and the eyes. I wonder about who his models were. And it makes me think that perhaps Rafa is more Sevillano than San Franciscan.


Murillo. La virgen de las servilletas, Seville.



Murillo. Madonna and Child, Dresden.


This child looks more like Luisito.


Murillo. Madonna and Child, Corsini Gallery

Cheers!

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In the 1340s

There is so much political history of interest in medieval Florence: the famous Guelph and Ghibelline feud, with exiles and triumphant returns, and the subsequent division within the Guelph party. There was war with Lucca, with Pisa, with Milan, with the Papal States. The city was ruled by despots Charles of Valois and Walter of Brienne.

Famine, plague, flood, and fire struck in turn.

New city walls were being built, and new churches, new palaces, and new piazzas.

Charles Eliot Norton studies Sienna, Pisa, and Florence in contrast. "The new cathedral in an Italian city was the witness of civic as well as religious devotion, of pride and of patriotism consecrated by piety. It was also the sign of the favor of Heaven in the bestowal of the prosperity of which it gave evidence."1



This is one of my favorites from 1340 because the baby is lifting his arms up to his mother so that she will hold him, just like Louis does with me.

Gene Brucker describes the period in his book entitled Renaissance Florence. "The guild regime established in 1282 initiated one major project after another: the reconstruction of the old Badia and the third circle of walls in 1294, the cathedral in 1296, the palace of the Signoria in 1299. Work on the cathedral and walls progresses very slowly in the early fourteenth century, but the tempo of construction quickened in teh 1330s when the walls were finally completed. The foundations of the cathedral campanile and the Loggia of Orsanmichele were laid down in 1334 and 1137; the reconstructing of the Ponte Vecchio began immediately after its collapse furing the 1333 flood and was finished twelve years later. Meanwhile, the great basilicas of the mendicant orders, S. Maria Novella and S. Croce, were being completed, subsidized by the contributions of pious Florentines and also by occasional grants from the communal treasury."2

The documents from the 1330s of the Misericordia confraternity from the 1330s mainly discuss election of officers and the administrative structure of the confraternity, indications that the organization was at a stage where it was busy focusing internally, on operations, so that in the 1340s they could focus outward.

1. Norton, Charles Eliot. Historical Studies of Church Building in the Middle Ages: Venice, Siena, Florence. pp. 21-22

2. Brucker, Gene. Renaissance Florence.p. 25

A Telegram

Dear friends STOP No time for blogging STOP In throes of writing thesis STOP Send Booze STOP And cookies STOP And meals for the children STOP Really mean it about the booze STOP

The Sistine Chapel

One day a screw fell on the floor under the kitchen table. Rafa called me over to tell me about it, and I crawled down under the table to inspect the situation. I looked up at the underside of the table to see where the screw had fallen from and I noticed that the whole underside of the table was covered with drawings.

"Wow," I said. "How did this get here?"

Rafa and I laid on our backs for a few minutes under the table, and then I called Pa over.

"Pa, ven a mirar esto."

So the three of us laid on our backs on the floor under the kitchen table, looking up. Luisito was taking a nap.

"I colored under the table when I was little," Rafa said. "When I was 3 years old. I'm not going to do it anymore."

"Huh," I said. "Hmmmm," Pa said.

Every once in a while we add to the composition on the underside of the kitchen table. Because now that it's started, it would be a shame to leave it unfinished.

Misericordia of Florence

Painted on the wall of the Museo del Bigallo in Florence is a figure with a red mantle and white cope which rises above a cityscape represented below with majestic height and a weightlessness belonging to a spiritual being. This figure has been called the Madonna della Misericordia for many years, until William Levin, in his monograph, The Allegory of Mercy, explained that the figure is actually an allegorical representation of the mercy of God. Levin discusses the history of referring to this figure as the Madonna and as an allegory of mercy. He provides evidence to show that this figure is an allegory, and not a Madonna-figure, including pointing to the inscription in her crown which reads: misericordia domini.


This is the very heart of spiritual Florence; in 1244 the confraternity acquired land here, and commissioned a fresco to decorate the exterior wall, inside the loggia, which, although privately-owned space belonging to the confraternity, it is open to the public. It provides shade from the Tuscan sun, hot on the piazza, and would have seen a good deal of foot traffic, accordingly. It is in this public space that the confraternity elected to locate a fresco that embodies the very essence of their organization.

What did the Florentine Misericordia organization choose as subject matter for their public face – the public face of a group that had acquired some of the most valuable real estate in Florence, and was establishing its importance and central role in the spiritual institution of the city for the next 600+ years? What better than to portray the very same city of Florence in her piety? The fresco is a mirror held up to the citizenry: it is a reflection of the merciful works being done in the city of Florence by her citizens. Due to the public nature of its location, there is a clear dialogue between the fresco and the city; between the confraternity of the Misericordia and the community that it serves. The fact that the fresco was a public piece of art representing the public face of the confraternity, and not a semi-public or private piece, kept indoors, illustrates the protagonism which the city holds in these dealings, as well as the sense of self-fashioning, of conscious definition of self, the confraternity, as agent for good, for virtue. The fresco represents spiritual Florence, and portrays Florence as a city of pious citizens in which mercy is a celebrated virtue. The Misericordia confraternity members are included amongst a representative group of virtuous Florentine citizens, under the motto that appears as the text of the upper central roundel, the first of the roundels on the Misericordia figure, reading: misericordia dei plena est terra. The rest of the series of roundels on the figure help to clarify how the virtue of mercy should be practiced by the citizens. Overall, the initial impression related by the fresco is that of a virtuous city, dedicated to works of mercy.

San Antonio de la Florida

In a small church in a quiet part of Madrid is a fresco cycle by Goya from the 1790s.


The church is called San Antonio de la Florida, and the fresco cycle illustrates the miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua.


The cupola is filled with this story, colorful, lively, animated, with characters in typical Madrid-style dress interacting around a painted balcony, under a light-filled sky.






It is definitely off the beaten path in Madrid, but well worth the visit. Check to see that it is open before going, and then finish up with a coffee at the Cafe del Oriente.

Rafa's Impression of Vacation

Rafa has done a very impressionistic representation of our vacation, complete with trees, creek, sunshine, path, cabin, and himself with a camera.



hmm, no food.......how can our impressions differ so?

Spiritual Architecture

Spiritual architecture reflects the preoccupations of the communities that commission and design it. At times these preoccupations are well-documented by first-hand sources who provide us with insight into contemporary aspirations, ideals, and challenges. At other times, documentation never existed, or was never intended to be archival and has since been lost. Some reconstruction of society and events can be done from indirect sources; we can study contemporary reports or objects for indications of these same preoccupations, topical themes that were addressed with frequency in the society, and with these studies hope to come closer to an understanding of the motivations behind the formation of some of the most lasting and most inspiring of works.







Thick-walled Romanesque monasteries express austerity with the simplicity of their arches made from brick and local stone. Centuries later we can still sense the rules that governed the days of the inhabitants. Gothic cathedrals raise the eye upward to the skies with their verticality and lightness. The rib vaulting and soaring towers accompany prayers heaven-ward.

With Vitruvius as a guide, Renaissance architects return to the elegance of symmetry and proportion that characterized classical buildings, and used ancient Rome as a model as often as possible. Vitruvius’ relation of the human figure to the fundamental geometry and proportion of architecture serves to affirm the renaissance beliefs that “man is the measure of all things,” as seen Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing of Vitruvian Man, and Leon Battista Alberti’s De re aedificatoria.

Orphans

In the Loggia del Bigallo near the cathedral in Florence, orphans were put up for adoption in the Middle Ages.

I have a special interest in orphans because my grandmother was orphaned at the age of 9, along with her sister, aged 3, and her brother, aged 6.

The Confraternity of the Bigallo cared for orphans as the charitable work that they confraternity did for the city. In the Middle Ages, and indeed until social services came into being as Dickensian-style state institutions, private groups, often religious, shouldered the charitable and philanthropic responsibilities in their communities.

There was also a hospital for children in Florence, Ospedale degli Innocenti, in Brunelleschi's Santissima Annunziata square. I like to think that the orphans enjoyed their life in such a lovely place.

My grandmother remembered her life with the nuns as strict but always fair. She was always well-treated, and she received a good education and training so that she could support herself in life. In fact, she kept in touch with some of the nuns until they passed away.

St. Gertrude's Academy, Rio Vista

from the David Rumsey map collection

Rafa's Pictures

Rafa wants to add a couple of his pictures, so here they are.

BEN 10



10 BEN


If you don't kow who Ben 10 is, go here.

Street corner prayers

Rome is famous for its fountains, of course.



Ma in front of fountain at Pantheon

But what really made an impression on me were the many sacred carvings and paintings on street corners in Rome -- every time you look up you see an image calling you to prayer.


Virgin and Child

Virgin Mary

mosaic Madonna

Ah, Rome

Grandma and Grandpa are in Rome. I was pregnant with Rafa when we were in Rome, and he says that he remembers the trip from my tummy.


marble at the Vatican

a villa garden

We had fettucini with salmon and fresh fava beans for dinner tonight to celebrate.


the Roman forum

Papa taking a photo on the Piazza del Popolo

Trecento

Trecento Florence was a glorious place, a place where art and architecture and craft reached a magnificence, the scale of which would be hard to replicate. Is there another city where so many of the major monuments were developed in such a short span of time, and where such a high percentage of them are counted as world heritage ?

Some of the major medieval monuments are: the Duomo, the Campanile, and the Baptistery, the Bargello, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Croce, San Lorenzo, Orsanmichele, Palazzo Vecchio. Some of the major sculptors, painters, and architects are: Giotto, Daddi, Orcagna, Ghiberti, Brunelleschi, Bonaiuti, Pisano, di Cione, Michelangelo, Botticelli.

The wonderful thing is that so many of these artists worked together. The artistic climate must have been exciting, stimulating, inspirational. Daddi was an apprentice in Giotto's workshop. Orcagna and Daddi collaborated at Orsanmichele. Orcagna and di Cione were brothers. Daddi and di Cione both worked at the Bigallo. Brunelleschi and Michelangelo both work on San Lorenzo. Ghiberti and Brunelleschi competed for the Baptistery doors project and the dome project.

Florence was indeed one big artists' workshop at this time, culminating in the Duomo project -- everyone made a contribution at some point or other:
Giotto -- capomaestro (campanile)
Daddi -- painting
Ghiberti -- capomaestro
Pisano -- capomaestro
Brunelleschi -- capomaestro (dome)
Michelangelo -- scuplture
Orcagna -- 1357-66 committee member
Bonaiuti -- 1357-66 committee member
Nardo di Cione -- painting
Jacopo di Cione -- cathedral project
Benci di Cione -- master mason
Neri di Fioravanti -- 1357-66 committee member

Aalto Glass

Papa collects Aalto vases. He has a beautiful collection of glass in all sorts of beautiful colors and organic shapes.











Maybe these boys weren't born with silver spoons in their mouths, but they drink their water from Aalto glass!