Bernardo Rucellai

The tale of a meeting between Leonardo and Savonarola in the summer of 1495, later reported by Vasari (1550 and 1568) but confirmed by a memorandum remained in Leonardo's possession (Codex Atlanticus, f. 628 r), which refers explicitly to a "mission" assigned to him (presumably by Ludovico Sforza) to go to Florence, in order to get (through a competent mediator, probably Bernardo Rucellai) a detailed report about the new political rules promoted by the friar, lends credibility to a hypothesis of comparison between their anthropological conceptions, especially as they emerge from their "transfigured" use of the prophetic semantics, despite their shared repudiation of astrological quackery. If, on the one
hand, Savonarola's preaching does not have any properly predictive character, in terms of intentional "divination", standing rather as a projection or representation of the contingency of the current days, in purely political terms, Leonardo's riddles, which he literally called "prophecies", on the other hand - and similarly - transform the genre of presages or predictions into entertainment tools for courtly audiences, that, however, in some cases, become a vehicle for a critical evaluation of the troubles of contemporary society. The likelihood that, on the occasion of his convocation in Florence in 1495, Leonardo was able to listen to Savonarola's sermons, so steeped in apocalyptic prophecy, may provide an
explanation to the appearance of writings called "prophecies", among his notes, just in the last five years of the century. Their underlying vision of man, clearly pessimistic, offers significant points of contact with the negative anthropology advocated by Savonarola's preaching, which also makes use of animal apology, especially in the conceptual and ideological interpretation of the "anti-human" conflictuality among men, that makes them "beasts" towards themselves, in a sort of anticipation of Hobbes' famous motto homo homini
lupus.

Starting with the world famous Ambassadors by Hans Holbein, where a lute with a broken string features mysteriously and prominently, this article aims to explore the origins of the symbolism of the lute with a broken string from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, and to highlight how a symbol can be progressively constructed along its transitions through various cultures. In doing so, philosophical, literary and iconographic sources have been taken into account in order to unveil the hidden but solid connection that links the enigmatic musical instrument staged in Holbein’s masterpiece with its most distant ‘sources’ - rooted in Greek and Roman classical antiquity  -  and with those chronologically closer to it. Special attention is placed on the re-elaboration and re-interpretation of those same sources in Fifteenth-century Italian Culture and, in particular, on the Florentine Humanists’ political use and re-shaping of a classical metaphor: that of a composite harmony (or of the lack of it) associated with the idea of good (or bad) government.

Collezione d'Arte A. Menarini 2015
cartonato con sovraccoperta
24 × 31,5 cm, 270 pp.
immagini a colori

isbn 978-88-7461-292-5 italiano

Il volume, dedicato al genio rinascimentale di Leonardo, si presenta non come una semplice monografia della vita dell’artista ma come una fitta trama in cui s’intrecciano in modo inedito fonti storiche e produzione artistica, sapientemente dosate in un linguaggio colto ma accessibile al grande pubblico. Attraverso, dunque, le principali opere su tavola ma anche quelle meno note, come i numerosi bozzetti e schizzi, si scopre il tratto multiforme della carriera di Leonardo dove convivono non solo l’arte classica con i soggetti “più tradizionali” ma anche l’arte militare con i disegni di innovative macchine da guerra, l’urbanistica con i congegni idraulici e l’anatomia con i particolari anatomici di rara bellezza, tutti riprodotti in immagini di altissima qualità corredate da didascalie italiane e inglesi. Tutta la produzione leonardiana va letta, inoltre, alla luce dell’incontro e del confronto con gli autori e le personalità del suo tempo, come – tra gli altri – Savonarola a Machiavelli, per i quali non mancano puntuali rimandi.
Un libro innovativo che non tralascia neppure le ultime opere scoperte come le controverse Bella Principessa e Gioconda “Isleworth”, e il recentissimo quanto straordinario Salvator Mundi.

The article proposes the documentation relating to the epitaphs that adorned the lost grave of King Alfonso II of Aragon in the Cathedral of Messina. These texts are analyzed both under the historical aspect and in relation to their literary and textual dimension.

Benedetto da Maiano’s terracotta bust of Filippo Strozzi (ca. 1475, Bode Museum Berlin, Inv. no. 102) is considered to be a model of the signed and dated marble portrait in the Louvre – and a rare testimony to the working practice of a quattrocento sculptor. Unfortunately, almost exactly 400 years later, the original polychromy of the terracotta bust fell victim to this assumption. Although Wilhelm von Bode after the purchase emphasized the “excellent preservation of the old painting“ and praised its high-quality execution, the curator of the collection in Berlin-Dahlem decided to remove it in 1977. However, hitherto unnoticed analyses of the binding agent and pigments as well as unpublished photographs of the removal of the painting (fig. 1) indicate that the polychromy of the Berlin portrait must have been part of the original design.

This is also supported by a comparison with other terracotta busts, some of which are little known. The portrait of an unknown woman in the Bode Museum in Berlin (Inv. no. 1575) and the bust of Bernardo Rucellai in the Bayrisches Nationalmuseum in Munich (Inv. no. 53/93, fig. 2) are good examples of what the painting of the Berlin Strozzi must have looked like. The two objects also show the relationship between terracotta and painting in quattrocento portrait busts: in contrast to the self-confident polychromy of the Madonna reliefs in stucco and clay, which competes with the sculptural values, the mostly only thinly applied painting of the busts seems to subordinate itself to the terracotta core. Nevertheless, it should be noted that in the eyes of contemporaries it was polychromy that made the terracotta works complete.

My contribution, which is sketched here in its main features, deals with the painted and modelled surface of Florentine terracotta busts. It is to be shown what significance the surface has for the evidence of the ‘face‘ and for the object as a whole.

St. Augustine's "De Civitate Dei" and Matteo Palmieri's "Vita Civile" as sources of Leonardo's political vision.
Leonardo and Machiavelli on the archeological discovery of Castellina in Chianti (1507) and the question of the "aeternitas mundi", in the context of the intellectual milieu of Bernardo Rucellai's "Orti" in Florence.

In 1471, the Medici-sponsored poet Luigi Pulci penned a frottola on female vanity, “Le galee per Quaracchi,” in which he enumerates all the cures and cosmetics required by the Florentine elite for a weekend party at the Rucellai suburban villa at Quaracchi. Pulci’s lengthy inventory of natural ingredients and surgical instruments, though satirical, is clearly based on contemporaneous books of secrets, or recipes. Thus, not only is this frottola an invaluable primary source for understanding the materials and techniques of early modern aestheticism, but it also, in its encyclopedic range, calls attention to the dangerous lengths some women went to achieve an ideal beauty. From the harmless (pumpkin, elder flower, lily) to the toxic (mercury, lead white, and arsenic), nature could either produce desired effects or destroy the body. This presentation will include the first full English translation of “Le galee per Quaracchi” (author's translation).