Following up on a comment (an as I sit here in my high medieval tower hearing the winds howl through the stone) I want to discuss the institution of Patron Saints. To me, the key to how Patron Saints were understood in the Middle Ages and Renaissance is the concept of the Heavenly Court. Heaven […]
I mentioned a few weeks ago a busy week including a Joust. The Joust in question was the Giostra della Stella (Joust of the Star), is held in Bagno a Ripoli, formerly its own town, now legally a Florentine suburb. When it was annexed (20th century) in order to maintain civic identity it started having […]
When one has an altarpiece, and wants to flank the central Christ or Virgin with a pair of solid, unobjectionable companions, ones which make no particularly strong statement about one’s patron or native city, one can always fall back on Peter and Paul. Saint Peter (San Pietro) Common attributes: Keys, one gold one silver or […]
I made a day trip to Bologna, our neighbor to the north, home of one of the greatest old universities, world-renowned in the Renaissance for its medical school. A friend who studied professors’ families and households had invited me to join her on a boat tour of the medieval underground canals which were constructed to […]
Imagine if you will the perfect snoozing morning. September is just beginning to cool from summer to real fall. Slices of sun stray between the shutter slats, striping the bed with warmth. The constellations on the midnight blue comforter have long since exhausted their reserves of glow-in-the-dark, but it’s time for the gold and orange […]
In galleries, museums, and even on the art-spotted streets of Florence, friends and I love to play “Spot the Saint” – trying to identify the saints in art without looking at the blurb. I know it sounds flippant to make a game of it, and perhaps it is flippant, but it is also in an […]
There is a district, just west of the center of Florence, which I refer to as the “Thousand Dollar Purse” district. Here the truly extravagant end of European fashion displays itself for the delectation of the envious masses. Here one can spend $500 on sunglasses, $1,000 on boots, and ooh and aah over purses whose […]
American friends who have traveled extensively in Italy, or some other regions of the Earth, smile with an instant, knowing understanding when I say “bathroom suspense.” I grew up to expect going to the bathroom to be simple, relaxing, an almost unthinking break in which simple repetition and the brief suspension of work and interaction […]
I have returned from a jaunt to Rome, and with great stealth and industry obtained this footage of the rare beast in its natural habitat. The most common species inhabits the blocks around the Colosseum, but this specimen I sighted outside the Pantheon. Here he is at the end of his pattern, acquiring a tip […]
One of my great life goals has been a delicious pasta sauce that can be made in the time between putting the pasta in the water and draining it, and that has minimal clean-up and non-perishable ingredients, so you can have them constantly on-hand. I have succeeded. The winning sauce is a variant on Amatriciana, […]
"Warm, generous, and inviting," Inventing the Renaissance provides a witty and irreverent journey through the fantasies historians have constructed about the supposed Dark Ages and golden Renaissance, and exposes the terrible yet often tender reality beneath.
