Florence
aleks.sierz
The recent fuss about British culture being anti-Catholic just because some civil servant wrote a spoof memo satirising the Pope’s upcoming visit may have been overblown, but it is certainly true that, in the past, Italy was a byword for rank corruption. To doughty English Protestants, Rome was a stew of sin and Italians were Machiavellian plotters and idolators. Little wonder that Thomas Middleton’s 1621 tragedy, a large-stage revival of which opened yesterday, is brimful of illicit sex, cunning intrigues and vicious revenge - and set in Renaissance Italy.We are at the Medici court ruled by Read more ...
fisun.guner
This superb exhibition of Italian Renaissance drawings, featuring 100 works and chosen from the outstanding graphic collections of the Uffizi and the British Museum, explores the evolution of the preparatory sketch in the 15th century. We learn how artists began to experiment with the medium in order to create finished paintings that were far more compositionally and stylistically ambitious, far more dramatic and full of movement, than anything that had come before. And though the drawings themselves were never meant to be seen outside the artist’s studio, we learn that by the early part of Read more ...