Art sights in Italy
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Cappelle Medicee
Nowhere is Medici conceit expressed so explicitly as in their mausoleum. The soaring and rather overblown main chapel is sumptuously adorned in baroque style with granite, marble and semi-precious stones. From here a corridor leads to the stark Sagrestia Nuova (New Sacristy), Michelangelo’s first architectural work and showcase for three of his most haunting sculptures. Aurora e Crepusculo (Dawn and Dusk) lounges on the sarcophagus of the unpopular Lorenzo Duke of Urbino (1492–1519), to whom Machiavelli dedicated The Prince. Notte e Giorno (Night and Day) marks the spot opposite where a son of Lorenzo il Magnifico is buried. The unfinished tomb of Lorenzo il Magnifico…
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Chiesa di San Luigi dei Francesi
Church to Rome’s French community since 1589, this baroque church boasts no less than three canvases by Caravaggio: La Vocazione di San Matteo (The Calling of Saint Matthew), Il Martiro di San Matteo (The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew) and San Matteo e l’Angelo (Saint Matthew and the Angel), together known as the St Matthew cycle. These were among Caravaggio’s earliest religious works, painted between 1600 and 1602, but they are inescapably his, featuring down-to-earth realism and stunning use of chiaroscuro (a three-dimensional effect created with contrasting highlights and dark shading). Before you leave the church, take a moment to enjoy Domenichino’s colourful 17th-c…
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Chiesa di Sant’agostino
This early Renaissance church is a favourite of soon-to-be mums, who pop in to pay their respects to Jacopo Sansovino’s sculpture of the Virgin Mary, the Madonna del Parto (1521). The Madonna also features in Caravaggio’s Madonna dei Pellegrini (Madonna of the Pilgrims; 1604) in the Cappella Cavalletti. Although harmless to modern eyes, this painting caused uproar when it was unveiled in 1604, thanks to its depiction of Mary as barefoot and her two devoted pilgrims as filthy beggars. Painting almost a century before, Raphael provoked no such scandal with his fresco of Isaiah, visible on the third column in the nave.
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La Pietà
Originally called Chiesa di Santa Maria della Visitazione but fondly nicknamed La Pietà, this Giorgio Massari–designed church is best known for its association with the composer Vivaldi, who was concertmaster here in the early 18th century – hence its current sporadic use as a concert hall. The original church was located next door, and a few fragments of it are visible in the Hotel Metropole.
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Basilica di Sant’Apollinare in Classe
The brilliant star-spangled apse mosaic of the Basilica di Sant’Apollinare in Classe is a must-see. The basilica, 5km southeast of the city centre, was built in the 6th century on the burial site of Ravenna’s patron saint, who converted the city to Christianity in the 2nd century. To get there take bus 4 or 44 to Classe.
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Collegiata
The 13th-century Palazzo del Podestà and its tower, the Torre della Rognosa, look across to the town’s Romanesque basilica. Access is up a flight of steps. Its bare facade belies the remarkable 14th-century frescoes that stripe the interior walls like a vast medieval comic strip.
Along the northern aisle are frescoes of key moments from the Old Testament by Bartolo di Fredi. Opposite, covering the walls of the south aisle, the school of Simone Martini illustrates New Testament scenes. On the inside wall of the facade, extending onto adjoining walls, Taddeo di Bartolo probably scared the daylights out of pious locals with his gruesome depiction of the Last Judgment. The…
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Basilica di Santa Maria Novella
The flesh and bones of this Dominican church, completed in 1346, may be medieval, but the finishing touches include some of the most seminal works of the Renaissance. Leon Battista Alberti’s super-refined facade influenced generations of church architects with its classic motives and balanced geometry. Inside, Masaccio’s fresco Trínita (Trinity, 1427), on the nave’s left flank, is considered the first Renaissance painting, with its distinctly Roman setting and almost perfectly realised, three-dimensional perspective. Note the ominous words of the fresco’s skeleton, which translate as ‘I was as you are, and you will become as I am.’ Its fresco cycles – in particular F…
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Chiesa di Santa Maria del Carmine
Doting mothers, political drama and the odd miracle: it’s little wonder that this veteran church plays a starring role in Neapolitan folklore. According to legend, when Conrad (Corradino) of Swabia was charged for attempting to depose Charles I of Anjou in 1268, his mother, Elisabetta di Baviera, desperately tried to collect the money required to free her son. Alas, the money arrived too late, Conrad lost his head and his grief-stricken mamma handed the cash to the church (on the condition that the Carmelite brothers prayed for him every day). They agreed, the church went up and a monument to Conrad still remains in the transept. Yet Christ’s own mother is the real prot…
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Oratorio dei Crociferi
Humble though it may seem from the outside – especially after the opulence of I Gesuiti across the street – this simple 12th-century oratory is positively plastered on the inside with 16th-century masterpieces by Palma Il Giovane. The oratory was originally part of a hospice set up by brothers of the Crociferi order to give shelter to pilgrims and provide assistance to the sick, and found a powerful benefactor in the 13th century: Doge Renier Zen. Doge Pasquale Cicogna ordered the place frescoed in honour of the Crociferi, Doge Zen, Venice, and (of course) himself. With works like his 1585 Doge Renier Zen and the Endowment of the Crociferi, Palma Il Giovane set the wa…
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Arezzo Cathedral
Arezzo's cathedral, at the top of the hill, was started in the 13th century, yet was not completed until well into the 15th century.
In the northeast corner, to the left of the bulky, intricately carved main altar, there's an exquisite fresco of Mary Magdalene by Piero della Francesca, itself dwarfed in size but not beauty by the multi-tiered, rich marble reliefs of the adjoining tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati, featuring a frieze of priests and an acolyte chanting while holding a censer, a prayer book and candles. Off the north aisle, the Capella della Madonna del Conforto has a pair of fine glazed terracotta images from the della Robbia workshop. On the right as you enter …
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Chiesa di San Pancrazio & Museo Marino Marini
As early as the 9th century a church stood here. The shabby-looking version you see today is what remains of the original building from the 14th and 15th centuries. The church, deconsecrated in the 19th century, now houses the Museo Marino Marini. Donated to the city by the Pistoia-born sculptor Marino Marini (1901-80), the collection contains about 200 of the artist's works, including sculptures, portraits and drawings. The overwhelmingly recurring theme appears to be man and horse, or rather man on horse.
The figures are, in some cases, simple-looking chaps in various poses suggesting rapture or extreme frustration; the horses too seem to express a gamut of emotion. At …
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Chiesa Santa Maria del Parto
Founded by poet Jacopo Sannazzaro, this Renaissance favourite was built on land donated to him by King Frederick of Aragon in 1497. The church was completed shortly before the poet died in 1530. Sannazzaro's tomb sits behind the altar.
Created in 1537 by Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli, Bartolomeo Ammannati and Francesco del Taddain, it features various mythological gods, including Apollo, Minerva, Pan and Mars in a depiction of Arcadia.
Another resident icon is Leonardo da Pistoia's painting of St Michael Vanquishing the Devil, also known as the Devil of Mergellina. Tradition holds that the devil in question was a lusty local lass who'd made a move on the unwavering bishop Dio…
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Via Giulia
Designed by Bramante in 1508, Via Giulia is a picture-perfect road lined with colourful Renaissance palazzi and potted orange trees. At its southern end, the Fontana del Mascherone depicts a 17th-century hippy surprised by water spewing from his mouth. Just beyond it and spanning the road is the ivy-clad Arco Farnese, designed by Michelangelo as part of an ambitious, unfinished project to connect Palazzo Farnese with Villa Farnesina on the opposite side of the Tiber. Continuing north, on the left, in Via di Sant’Eligio, is Chiesa di Sant’Eligio degli Orefici, the 16th-century goldsmiths’ church designed by Raphael.
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Cenacolo di San Salvi
Dominating the refectory wall in what was once a part of the San Salvi monastery is one of Andrea del Sarto's most extraordinary frescoes (1527). In this scene of the Last Supper, the diners gather at an austere table beneath a grand trompe l'oeil vault. Curiously, the tavern owner and an employee are peering at the proceedings from a window above and behind them.
They watch as Jesus hands Judas (who sits among the apostles and not customarily alone on the other side) a piece of bread to indicate that he is the apostle who will betray him. There is a collection of other works by Andrea del Sarto's contemporaries on show. You are more than likely to have the place to yours…
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Badia Fiorentina
Founded in 979 by the Countess Matilda of Tuscany, the woman who also granted the city its liberty upon her death, the Badia Fiorentina (Florentine Abbey) is among the city’s oldest institutions built just as Florence emerged from the Dark Ages. Except for the Romanesque campanile (bell tower), today’s church is largely a Renaissance construct, with a splendid coffered ceiling and Filippino Lippi’s Apparition of the Virgin to St Bernard to your left as you enter through the small cloister. It is here that Dante watched Beatrice at her prayers in the 1270s. The church is open to visitors three hours a week. Otherwise it is reserved for prayer and meditation.
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Chiesa della Santissima Annunziata
Established in 1250 by the founders of the Servite order and rebuilt by Michelozzo and others in the mid-15th century, this Renaissance church is most remarkable for the post-Renaissance painters who worked here together and helped found the mannerist school. There are frescoes by Andrea del Castagno in the first two chapels on the left of the church, and the frescoes in Michelozzo’s atrium include work by del Sarto as well as Jacopo Pontormo and Il Rosso Fiorentino (the Redhead from Florence). Also look for the fresco by Perugino in the fifth chapel and a mosaic lunette of the Annunciation by Davide Ghirlandaio, Domenico’s little brother, above the main entrance.
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Hangar Bicocca
To the north-east of the city centre is this stunning, multipurpose exhibition space of Hangar Bicocca, in a vast industrial site that once was the heart of the Pirelli company’s operations. Its smartly curated temporary shows are certainly worth a look, but the big, and we mean big, attraction is a permanent installation by German artist Anselm Kiefer. The seven concrete-and-lead towers of The Seven Heavenly Palaces are a teetering 15m tall, tucked under the dark blue canopy of the 7000-sq-metre space. The precarious, ruined shells invoke the mythical, mystical yearning of their title as well as the abject destruction of postwar Europe.
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Chiesa di San Barnaba
It is no coincidence that this early-14th-century church lies on the corner of Via Guelfa, as it was built to celebrate a victory by the Florentine Guelphs over a Ghibelline (pro-Holy Roman Empire) army from Arezzo on 11 June 1289, the feast day of St Barnabus, to whose intercession Florence attributed victory. The entrance is topped by a ceramic Madonna col Bambino (Madonna and Child) by Giovanni della Robbia (added in the 16th century).
Bright frescoes adorn part of the left wall as you enter. Used by the local Filipino community, the church is open intermittently.
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Cappella Sansevero
The simple exterior of the Cappella Sansevero belies the sumptuous sculpture inside. The centrepiece is Cristo Velato (Veiled Christ), Giuseppe Sanmartino’s jaw-dropping depiction of Jesus covered by a veil so realistic that it’s tempting to try and lift it. Also intriguing is Corradini’s Pudicizia (Modesty), which is more erotic than modest. Downstairs are two meticulously preserved human arterial systems, testament to the bizarre obsession of alchemist Prince Raimondo di Sangro, the man who financed the chapel’s 18th-century makeover.
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Chiesa San Pietro a Maiella
Dedicated to hermit Pietro del Morrone, upgraded to Pope Celestine V in 1294, this church is a striking combo of 14th-century Gothic restraint and blingy baroque. The latter is exemplified by its rich wooden ceiling, featuring 10 superlative paintings by Mattia Preti. Further baroque touches are provided by Cosimo Fanzago and Massimo Stanzione, whose Madonna Appearing to Celestine V hangs in one of the side chapels on the right. Naples Conservatory – one of Italy’s finest music schools – is housed in the adjoining convent.
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Chiesa San Giovanni a Carbonara
Built on the site of an Angevin carbonarius (waste disposal and incineration site), the Chiesa San Giovanni a Carbonara is a Gothic church, chapel and cloister complex famed for its priceless booty of sculpture. Ferdinando Sanfelice’s 18th-century double-flight staircase leads up to the church, in which the colossal mausoleum of King Ladislas soars 18m behind the main altar. Fusing Renaissance and Gothic styles, it was a collaborative effort between Andrea de Firenze, Tuscan sculptors and northern Italian artists.
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Chiesa di Santa Felicità
Possibly founded by Syrian merchants as early as the 2nd century, the current church is largely a Renaissance construction. Its most extraordinary feature is Brunelleschi’s small Cappella Barbadori, which is adorned by frescoes by Jacopo Pontormo (1494–1557) of the Annunciation and a Deposition from the Cross, in garish reds, pinks and oranges. Note also that the Corridoio Vasariano passes right across the facade so the Medici could hear Mass like any good Christians, but without having to mix with the common folk.
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Cathedral
The cathedral was built in the 12th and 13th centuries. Highlights include a small fresco, the Procession of the Magi by Benozzo Gozzoli, behind a terracotta Nativity group tucked away in the oratory at the beginning of the north aisle. There is also an exquisite 15th-century tabernacle by Mino da Fiesole that rises above the high altar. Just west of the cathedral, the 13th-century baptistry features a small marble font by Andrea Sansovino.
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Chiostro dello Scalzo
Painted for a Catholic brotherhood that showed its faith by going barefoot (scalzo), Andrea del Sarto’s monochromatic fresco cycle is ranged around a Renaissance cloister of unlikely elegance, considering the brotherhood’s professions of humility. Completed between 1509 and 1526, the cycle depicts the life of St John the Baptist in 16 scenes – all in shades of grey. The ensemble also reveals del Sarto’s artistic growth as he helped forge the new mannerist style.
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Gaspar Borchardt
Home of the prized Stradivari violin, Cremona is the premier exponent of the delicate art of making the perfect stringed instrument. All of the great violin-making dynasties started here, including Amati, Guarneri and Stradivari.
Today there are 100 violin-making workshops in the streets around the Piazza del Comune that can be visited, including Gaspar Borchardt. The tourist office has a list, and can advise on those where English is spoken.
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