MICHELE DI RIDOLFO DEL GHIRLANDAIO, portrait of a man

Based on this news I’d say the Chinese LOVE Italian painting. The exhibit From the Collections of the Uffizi Gallery. The Genres of Painting: Landscape, Still Life & Portrait Paintings opens this week in Changsha at the Hunan Provincial Museum opens November 30th 2010. In Shanghai and Wuhan the traveling show drew 850.000 visitors. Some rather good quality works (check out the beautiful photos below) have been sent and it’s nice to know that some people in these more remote areas will have the chance to experience Italian art in person.

From the Collections of the Uffizi Gallery. The Genres of Painting: Landscape, Still Life & Portrait Paintings

Hunan Provincial Museum, 30 november 2010 – 22 February 2011

www.uffizichina.com

By 1925, Alfredo Lensi, the city of Florence’s architect, deriding “the fusty antique dealer’s poor taste”, had painted the walls of Bardini’s palazzo a yellow ochre and rearranged the entire gallery so the art was shown in chronological order.

Isabel Stewart Gardner, arbiter of Bostonian taste and creator of her own museum at Fenway Court, saw Bardini’s blue walls in the 1890s. She purchased a number of items from Bardini for her collection. In March 1900, she wrote to art dealer Bernard Berenson, asking “…will you please some day, get on a piece of paper the blue colour that Bardini has on his walls. I want the exact tint. Perhaps some little person can paint it on a piece of paper.”

Isabel Gardner wrote again to Berenson later in the year, “…When you get there (you are there) please do get me a piece of paper painted with the blue of Bardini’s walls. You know you promised me before. I am working hard over my new house.”

Berenson wrote back, right away:

I was most sincerely pleased to hear from you, after so long a silence – even tho’ you mildly scolded me for not having gotten you a sample of Bardini’s blue. The truth is that when you wrote about it last year, I saw Bardini about it directly. He solemnly assured me he would send it [to] you in a day or two….This time I went down and approached him. He was profuse in apologies, and to make sure that now you really got it, I told him to give it to me. I enclose it, the sample, and with it, the receipt for preparing it…

Unrelenting, Mrs. Gardner inquried again: “Did you compare them [the paint chip and wall]? In case you have not, will you kindly do so. I enclose a piece. The important [thing] is to get the tint exactly…”

Visitors to both the Bardini Museum and the Isabel Stewart Gardner Museum can be glad they finally got the tint exactly right.

Ann Reavis has remained insatiably curious in Florence for the past  ten years and helps other like-minded visitors through www.friendinflorence.com. She also writes the wonderfully detailed blog, with geeky art history and library articles TuscanTraveler.com.

1) Pronto Treno: Trenitalia’s iphone app is the best way to access train timetables while on the fly. During the #ashcloud crisis it also proved to be the only way to buy tickets (and it works on all smartphones). It’s free. Internet connection required.

2) WorldNomads.com Italian-English translator. Italians LOVE it when you try to order your pizza or simply say thank you (grazie) in their language. When they switch to English immediately it’s not because of your awful accent but because most of them also like practising their English. This app is tried and true (it’s been out since 2006) but it’s free and reasonably reliable. It does not require internet connection.

3) Uffizi Gallery iphone app. Free until May 3d 2010. If you want more information on the paintings you see in the museum, but you don’t want to buy the inane audioguide, this is the app for you. It starts with a map, you click the room you’re in and then it gives you a list of the major works with a photo; click this for more textual information. Not all works are described in detail though there is a basic list. This is based on the database developed by Parallelo for the Uffizi website and it is not a very good app because it’s not in any way interactive or innovative, but at least you don’t have to wade through a heavy guidebook or carry geeky audioguide to get some basic information. And best of all, no internet connection required.

Don’t forget: MAPS is a super useful application when traveling – I couldn’t have found my way to all the conference locations in Venice without it. The compass in the 3G means not only did it find where I was, but it told me in what direction I was pointing. This has come in handy many times since.

Finally, remember… Arttrav uses a wordpress plugin that makes it compatible with all smart phones, so you can use it on the fly without waiting ages for everything to load.

Source: metmuseum.org. Bronzino, Head of a Curly-Haired Child, ca. 1527. Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

A guest post from my Mom, lucky duck went to New York!

This exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City closes April 18, 2010

A few weeks ago we visited Manhattan. Actually we stayed in New Jersey but went into town every day through the Lincoln Tunnel. My daughter told me about the Bronzino drawing exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum (organized in collaboration with the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi and the Polo Museale Fiorentino, Florence), and we devoted a fair bit of time to what was really a very interesting exhibit, even for someone who knows very little about the artist, or about the late Mannerist movement his drawings inspired.

The audio guide was very informative and a beautiful catalogue of the exhibit was also produced for those who wish to explore the subject in more depth than is possible during a few hours at an exhibition.

The exhibit is arranged chronologically in three distinct parts with Bronzino’s early drawings (1515-1540) being presented first. Here the viewer learns that Bronzino apprenticed with Jacopo Pontormo and many of his early drawings are virtually indistinguishable from those of his master. In fact, attribution between Bronzino and Pontormo is a tricky question in this period. Both Pontormo and Bronzino approached drawing in the same manner – as preparatory to finished works like frescoes or tapestries – so these drawings were never meant to stand alone and the fact that so many have survived is astonishing.

The second section, and I think the most interesting, shows Bronzino’s drawings during his most famous period, as court artist for Cosimo I de Medici and Eleonora di Toledo (1540-1553). All of the known preliminary drawings for the frescoes on the walls and ceilings of Eleonora di Toledo’s chapel in the Palazzo Vecchio, as well as those for the altarpiece, are on display. Some are fleeting studies with various attributes of life models drawn on both sides of the same drawing paper; others are presentation pieces and, as such, very complete and more reflective of Bronzino’s paintings.

photo: metmuseum.org. Bronzino, Joseph with Jacob and His Brothers, ca. 1546–48. Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Something I found fascinating were Bronzino’s preparatory and demonstration drawings for a tapestry series, The Story of Joseph, commissioned for the Sala dei Duecento at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. They were produced by the Medici Tapestry manufactury and woven by Flemish weavers. The final cartoons for these tapestries are no longer extant so these drawings are the only clue to the instructions from which the weavers worked. The drawings are meticulous and detailed and the play of light and shadow is well delineated. The surviving tapestries are not all assembled in one collection so it is particularly interesting to see these eight drawings and modelli together and to muse upon the Joseph story’s meaning for Cosimo I during this particular time.

The last grouping is of Bronzino’s late works (1553-1572).  Here you do not see drawings for  huge commissions like those of his time as a favoured court artist.  The wall panels indicate that two reasons for this were Cosimo’s preference for Vasari, who returned to Florence in 1554, and  Eleonora’s death in 1562.  My favourite drawing in this section was one of the demonstration drawings  produced for the temporary festival decorations celebrating the marriage of Francesco de’Medici to Joanna of Austria in 1565 – the Virtues and Blessings of Matrimony Expelling the Vices and Ills. The drawing, reminiscent of many of Michelangelo’s studies, is very detailed and shows many meticulously drawn figures in a variety of interconnected poses. The exhibit also displays three preliminary studies for Bronzino’s late fresco at S. Lorenzo, The Martyrdom of St. Lawrence (1565).

The last  exhibit room displays the famous Bronzino painting Portrait of a Young Man (1530’s), from the Metropolitan Museum’s own collection.  The wall panels show the underdrawing and changes made to this painting that were discovered through infrared reflectography and x-ray-radiography, engendering a fascinating discussion of what such technologies can add to an appreciation and understanding of art.

A related exhibition of Bronzino paintings is due to open at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in September and I hope to be able to see this in a new light, having had the chance to see many of the preparatory drawings. [editor’s note: The exhibit in Florence is NOT the same one as the New York one but a complement to it.  Bronzino: Pittore e poeta alla corte dei Medici is open September 24 2010 until January 23, 2011.]

Profiles of the bases of columns for the Laurentian Library, British Museum

Michelangelo: Anatomy as Architecture consists of drawings, archival pages, and engravings on loan from the finest collection of Michelangelo drawings and the ancestral home, the Casa Buonarroti in Florence, Italy.  The exhibition explores new research in Michelangelo architectural studies, includes digital reconstructions of buildings never before believed to be influenced by Michelangelo, and lectures by world-renowned scholars on Michelangelo.

The Muscarelle Museum of Art at The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg VA will be the only U.S. venue for Michelangelo’s treasured drawings!

From: February 6, 2010 to April 11, 2010.
website

The exhibition now on display at the HIGH museum of art in Atlanta brings to public eye the importance of Leonardo as sculptor through an examination of the sculpture that Leonardo studied, the sketches and studies he created for his own sculptural projects (the majority of which were never realized), and his interactions with other Renaissance sculptors.

To me, the brilliance of this exhibition lies in its proposing two “new” sculptural works by Leonardo to the public – one small, and one very big. Let’s start with the small one.

Guest curator Gary Radke (who was my professor at Syracuse University) has examined the recently cleaned Silver Altar of the Florentine Baptistery (1477-1483) and suggests that two figures in it are by the hand of Leonardo while he was still in the workshop of his master, Verrocchio. All the figures in the relief were created separately and inserted into the background, allowing for more than one artist to have contributed to the composition. The delicate lines of the proposed Leonardo figures, compared to the harsher linearity of the other figures in the relief, make for a convincing argument; we can easily parallel this observation with the recognition of the angel on the left in Verrocchio’s Uffizi Baptism (see this on wga.hu) as being by the young Leonardo in a similar style.

Leonardo, Study for the Sforza Monument, ca. 1488–1489, The Royal Collection © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

In contrast to the small scale of this work, which requires you to look closely with a magnifying glass, you cannot miss the 26 foot tall horse on display outside the museum. This is a reconstruction of a work planned by Leonardo to glorify Duke Francesco Sforza mounted on horseback (on commission of the patron Ludovico Sforza). This was to be a twice-life-sized bronze equestrian monument in action. A full scale model was completed in clay for an imperial wedding in 1493, but the bronze was never cast because, as Radke writes in his essential textbook on the Italian Renaissance (Art in Renaissance Italy):

Ludovico requisitioned the necessary bronze to produce cannons in an ill-fated attempt to keep French troops from invading Italy… The model was destroyed when it was used for target practise by soldiers after Ludovico’s fall from power in 1499. (p. 318, 1^st ed).

Finally risen from the dead, the horse has been manufactured by Florentine artisans and shipped by UPS; it took a few days to put back together (think humpty dumpty) as per the amazing time-lapse video posted by the museum.

Leonardo, “Studies for the Trivulzio Monument,” ca. 1508–1510, Royal Library, Windsor Castle, 12355, Royal Collection © 2009 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

I have my reservations about the accuracy of the big horse in comparison to the Study for the Sforza Monument of 1488 (Royal Library, Windsor, 12358r) and to the later Studies for the Trivulzio Monument (Royal Library, Windsor Castle, 12355) both on display in the show. While these drawings both show a bucking horse over a defeated enemy, dominated by an energetic rider, the reconstructed horse stands alone. In this position, it is highly reminiscent of Donatello’s Gattamelata in Padova, with its tame tail and controlled hooves; surely an intended reference since the exhibition also explores Leonardo’s relationship to earlier Florentine sculptors including to the great Donatello.

On the other hand, the reconstructed horse has something of the grace of Leonardo, and may reflect one of the earlier, more static poses that the artist planned for the Sforza monument. In the end, mounting a horse (pun intended) of this size is certainly a coup, and it well serves the purpose of suggesting the magnitude of what Leonardo’s sculptures might have been, had money and peace been on his side.

A note on tickets and membership: Adult tickets cost 18$ and members get in free. As a previous resident of Atlanta I can tell you that membership at the HIGH is a great deal; the monthly Jazz nights and hands-on activities are exemplary of good museum education and something I hope to import to Florence (despite my limited influence). See www.high.org for details.

About Leonardo da Vinci (from High Museum press release)
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) is widely recognized as a scientist, inventor, philosopher, writer, designer, sculptor, architect, and painter. His artistic apprenticeship took place in Florence in the workshop of painter and sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio. In the early 1480s, he left Florence for the court of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, where he was to spend much of his career. During his early Milanese period he painted his iconic Last Supper. He fled Milan after the French invasion of the city in 1499 and returned to Florence, where he painted the Mona Lisa, and continued his technological, geographical, and scientific studies. He returned to Milan in 1506, and after spending some time at the Papal Court in Rome, accepted an invitation from Francis I, King of France, to work at his court, where he remained until his death.

MORE INFO: At the High Museum of Art in Atlanta from October 6 2009 until February 21, 2010; a modified version of the exhibition will travel to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles (March 23 through June 20, 2010). Organized in collaboration with the Opera di Santa Maria del Fiore and the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence, Italy. The accompanying publication, “Leonardo da Vinci and the Art of Sculpture,” is supported by the Friends of Florence, a non-profit international foundation based in the United States. The exhibition is curated by Gary M. Radke, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities at Syracuse University and Consulting Curator of Italian Art at the High Museum of Art. Restoration of Rustici’s “John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharisee” from the façade of the Baptistery in Florence was sponsored by the Friends of Florence.

With thanks to: Gary Radke, Guest Curator; Cassandra Champion Streich, Public Relations.

All photos used with permission.

The complete list of 48 works is not publicly available, but it includes the aforementioned Raphael, the famous Bernini bust of Scipione Borghese (which I don’t think has ever left its home), a Botticelli madonna and Caravaggio’s Young St. John the Baptist. The list involves about 20 works normally exhibited at the Borghese, and the rest are from storage.

If you went to the Borghese right now, would you be angry not to find those 20 works on display? That’s part of the argument against this move that has been put forth by the president and members of the International Council of Museums: moving major works for 6 months will harm international tourism towards Rome. The Borghese isn’t lying empty; it’s hosting the show “Caravaggio / Bacon” … in which the St. John might have found a good place.

The superintendant of Roman Museums, Rossella Vodret, counters that the Japanese are paying for restoration of a number of works AND, more importantly, that this Italia-Japan partnership is likely to bring an immediate return measurable in an increase in visits from wealthy Japanses tourists. This latter statement is based on a 25% increase in Japanese tourism to Italy after the controversial loan of Leonardo’s Annunciation from the Uffizi to Japan.

To this I’d add that making peace with Japanese tourists is a good idea after this summer’s debaucle of a Japanese tourist being hit with an 694 euro bill for a restaurant meal in Rome. (The restaurant has since been shut down, while an offer on the part of the mayor of Rome for a free “replacement” holiday in Italy to the victim was politely turned down as a “waste of taxpayers’ money”.)

But the big question is: should museums make major loans like this, gambling on FUTURE tourism, or keep their works at home to satisfy current tourists?

Source: Japan/Borghese loan reported in Corriere della Sera article 10/10/09 p. 45

For further reading on arttrav: Florentines react to moving Donatello’s bronze David to Milan for three weeks.

Michelangelo, The Torment of Saint Anthony, c. 1487–88. Oil and tempera on panel. Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth

“Michelangelo’s first painting”, the Torment of Saint Anthony, is on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York June 16, 2009-September 7, 2009 in the European Paintings Galleries, 2nd floor. It is on loan from the Kimbell Art Museum of Fort Worth (TX), who acquired the painting in July 2008 at a London auction for its permanent collection. This is the first painting by Michelangelo to enter an American collection – quite a coup for the Kimbell’s director Dr. Eric McCauley Lee!!

The painting has been known for quite some time but was somewhat ignored due to yellowed varnish and overpainting that has now been removed by conservators at the Met. Vasari recounts that Michelangelo made a ‘colour drawing’ of the Schongauer print when he was only 13 years old; Condivi also describes the event in detail. Scholarly articles in support of the attribution are forthcoming.

Read the excellent press release from the Kimbell with a history of the work and a convincing analysis of its attribution.

Information on the exhibition direct from metmuseum.org:

Michelangelo’s biographers wrote that his first painting copied a well-known engraving by the German artist Martin Schongauer (1448-1491).  Made in about 1487-88, The Torment of Saint Anthony has been known for many years, although it has not always received proper attention due to accumulations of discolored varnish and disfiguring overpaints, which obscured the qualities of the picture’s masterful execution and remarkable color palette.  Michelangelo’s First Painting will showcase recent technical examination and scholarly analysis by the Metropolitan Museum’s conservators and curators that identify the painting as the one described by Michelangelo’s biographers.  In addition to The Torment of Saint Anthony, works from the Metropolitan Museum’s collection will include Portrait of Michelangelo by Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566) and a facsimile of the Schongauer engraving, Saint Anthony Tormented by Demons.  The painting was acquired recently by the Kimbell Art Museum, where it will return this fall for display as part of its permanent collection.

For further reading: An excellent book on works by the Young Michelangelo:

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Jane Fortune

 SUBJECT: The Biblical legend of David and Bathsheba recounts how David saw the wife of Uriah bathing in the garden of her home. (I guess they were neighbours – David had stepped out onto his own loggia to get some air.) He summoned Bathsheba to his palace and one thing led to another… and then to their offspring Solomon. Artemisia’s canvas focuses on the lithe body of the nude Bathsheba, but David is up there in the left hand corner on the loggia.

REPETITIONS: Like many artists of her day, Artemisia, being a good businesswoman as well as artist, had no qualms

Ohio Museum of Art

about producing various close versions of a painting for patrons who requested them. There are apparently “at least six other versions,” the closest of which is in Potsdam. Unfortunately I could not find a reproduction of that for you, so here is one in Ohio instead. Artemisia’s female take on the female nude was much in demand by her patrons, and this was a good subject matter for her to display her ability.

THE PITTI VERSION is documented as hanging in the apartment of the Grand Duke in the Pitti Palace in 1662. Later that year, in a document recently revealed by scholar Lucia Meoni, the Florentine tapestry weaver Pietro Fevere was commissioned to weave a copy of the painting. The tapestry is well preserved in the deposits of the Pitti. The David and Bathsheba was probably painted for Ferdinand II de’ Medici around 1635 while Artemisia Gentileschi was working in Naples. He was familiar with her work because she had worked for the Medici court of Cosimo II during her years of residence in Florence from 1613-20.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Susanna and the Elders, sd 1610

In fact, the STYLE of the painting is an interesting blend of her later Neapolitan style and the works of her pre-Caravaggist youth. This is particularly evident in the smooth unidealized flesh of the nude figure, and of the very specifically referential pose of Bathsheba, which should recall that of Susanna in Artemisia’s first and dated work, the Pommersfelden Susanna and the Elders of 1610. If Artemisia brought this work with her when she left Rome after the trial of 1612, Florentine publics may still remember it. The position of Bathsheba’s hands, purportedly adjusting her hair, are too artificial not to be referential, yet the pose is toned down to be much less dramatic. While Susanna’s hands hopelessly protest the illicit gaze of the Elders on her left, Bathsheba’s hands are not aimed at the intruder who is in the loggia at her right, but rather serve as a convenient sheild for one breast and a way to create an interesting twisting pose for the whole body. Indeed, as Director of the Palatine Gallery Serena Padovani says, “the classical language Artemisia elaborates here is rather distant from the theatrical force of her early Florentine phase, although the elongated figure of Bathsheba is similar to the Allegory of Inclination she painted in the Casa Buonarroti in 1615.” Artemisia also played with other referential elements: the “artemisia gold” fabric at right is typical of her oeuvre in general, while the water carrier on the left looks to me like a citation of Raphael’s Stanza dell’Incendio.

 THE RESTORATION carried out by Nicola Ann MacGregor, Elisabetta Codognato and Sandra Freschi was a challenging one. The work had been stored improperly, causing massive paint loss which had been filled in at some point with ugly dark grey paint that just made the lacunae more obvious. There was also some inpainting and some yellowed glaze. They first had to remove all the paint that was not Artemisia’s, at which point there were distracting big white areas over about a third of the canvas. This was no case for what MacGregor called “interpretative inpainting”, so the team carefully toned down the white areas to merge with adjoining ones using shades of neutral. As half the face and one eye of Bathsheba is missing its original paint, one of the greatest challenges was to make this less obvious but not create a face that was not faithful to the original. The restorers were greatly successful, as the painting is now legible, consolidated, and open for study.

DISPLAY: The Palatine Gallery display is historically dictated, so there’s no room for the “new” Artemisia in the permanent collection. The work is currently in Pisa with the Galileo exhibit, and then is scheduled for a tour of the United States TBA. Upon return to Florence, it may find a home in a closed room of the Pitti that could be opened upon request. Here’s hoping that a new museum space can be created in which we could study this work alongside others by Artemisia and her female colleagues.

Bibliography:
The factual information about the restoration and documentation of this work is based on notes taken at the conference (18/05/09) and on the pamphlet created for the restoration, available for purchase online.

Jane Fortune wrote an article about the restoration in The Florentine.

For further reading, I promise a post on Artemisia with full bibliography soon, but in the meantime you may also be interested in the female biographical film project.

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Recently restored on-site in the museum so as not to remove it from view, it is now in Milan for a short visit on occasion of the trade show “Campionaria delle qualita’ italiane”. There’s a little buzz in the local papers about the appropriateness of this venue for Donatello’s work.

The Anglo community newspaper The Florentine asked for readers’ opinions on the question of the physical as well as cultural risk of moving the David, and on the appropriateness of moving Donatello’s sculpture to Milan for the trade show. Their article seems prompted by a polemical article in the Corriere Fiorentino by art historian Tommaso Montanari (no link provided, unable to find online). As summarized by the author of the article in The Florentine, amongst other things, Montanari maintains that the David should not “be used to fulfill the ministry’s [Sandro Bondi's] latest cultural mission to bring Italy’s greatest artworks to the people, instead of bringing people to see the art.” Interestingly, thus, Montanari sees the move of the David as part of the same movement that prompted the loan of the Chimaera of Arezzo, yet as far as I know, he has not (yet) protested that loan despite the Etruscan Bronze being perhaps the most important work on display in the Archaeological Museum.

This is my response to The Florentine
You ask an interesting question with regards to the appropriateness of Donatello’s Bronze David in the context of a trade fair devoted to Italian competitiveness, innovation, and craftsmanship. In this show, the sculpture is intended to represent “made in Italy” and the Italian economy. Putting the work in its historical context indicates that on one hand the characterization within a competitive ambiance of artistic excellence is appropriate, but the Italy-wide and economic aspect is ahistorical.

We don’t really know the context of the commission for the bronze David; it’s assumed that it was a Medici commission and destined for the courtyard of their palace because it was documented there in 1469. In 1495, during a Medici exile, the statue was ‘adopted’ by the republican government and put in a courtyard in the Palazzo Vecchio. While they took the Judith and Holofernes by the same artist and adapted its meaning to their political aims, the David stood inside, his adolescent cockyness unfit for public eyes.

This private placement reflects the style, subject, and context of the work’s creation. In the 1440s, Donatello also made other weird bronze sculptures – the other great example, also in the Bargello, is the Attis-Amor, a putto in chaps with winged sandals, a tail, and poppies on his belt, whose meaning is extremely unclear. Artists and patrons in the mid-Quattrocento loved a good iconographic mystery; it made for good after-dinner conversation and massaged viewers’ egos. Donatello was taking on a challenge when he made this work. His subject matter is the well-known David, but his approach to the figure is innovative, in that it is different from works that preceeded it. It has inexplicable details like the costume and the designs on Golaith’s helmet. As the recent restoration reveals, the artist’s choice of bronze has a luscious warm effect that is highlighted with gold leaf. This subversively sexy David must have been a very private commission in which the artist innovated and competed with the past. As for craftsmanship there is no question that the bronze pour was a technical success; the new cleaning and display of the work allows us to see its perfection up close, and even observe some small unplugged holes that Donatello thought we’d never notice.

But the innovation, competition, and craftsmanship of this Renaissance sculptor took place within a private, limited, local, and scholarly ambiance that is totally different from that which can be represented by a modern trade show. Obviously, in the Quattrocento there was no Italy, no made-in-Italy, and no penninsula-wide unified economy. Donatello worked within an elite market of humanists, not as an exporter of quality goods. If I were to choose a better representative work from the Renaissance, it would be a bolt of quality wool made in Prato or Florence. Now that’s a commercial product that was appreciated across Europe, and that contemporaries mentioned in letters as being of much better quality than that produced anywhere else.

I think there’s nothing wrong with the David being absent from the Bargello for a month, but that the choice of this work as a representative of Italian production is ahistorical. The trade show’s slogan “I Capolavori delle aziende italiane… più uno” shows that it was a stretch even for them to accommodate Donatello’s David into the meaning of the show.

INFO: 18,000 Milanesi went to view Donatello’s Bronze David for free over the weekend of May 7-10 at Fieramilanocity.  David will be staying in Milan until May 31 2009, and can be viewed for free.

Open: 10.00-19.00
Fieramilanocity, Piazzale Carlo Magno 1, 20149 Milano
http://www.lacampionaria.it/

Description of the exhibit from the Getty website: “Inaugurating a partnership with the National Archaeological Museum in Florence, this exhibition traces the myth of Bellerophon and the Chimaera over five centuries of classical art. Featured is a masterpiece of Etruscan sculpture known as the Chimaera of Arezzo: a large-scale bronze of the triple-headed, fire-breathing monster that was slain by the virtuous hero. From its ancient dedication to the supreme Etruscan deity in a sanctuary at Arezzo to its Renaissance display in the Medici collection, the Chimaera has endured as an emblem of the triumph of right over might.” The loan statue will be displayed alongside works from the Getty Collections and other loans from Rome, Naples, Basel, New York, Boston, and Atlanta.

The loan of the Bronze Chimaera is part of a planned, long-term collaboration between the Getty and the Archaeological Museum of Florence announced here, signed by Michael Brand, Sandro Bondi, Stefano De Caro, and Fulvia Lo Schiavo. It is part of Culture Minister Bondi’s interest in promoting locations and works of art that are off the usual tourist radar. In the near future, the two museums plan to collaborate on an exhibit at the Getty villa of other Greek, Roman, and Etruscan bronze sculptures from the Florentine collection; then, at a later date, a show on Etruscans.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? Do you think that the Chimaera and the Archaeological museum of florence are so obscure that they require promotion through a grand tour? Post your opinions here!

WHERE:
The Getty Villa, Malibu
July 16, 2009-February 8, 2010
Admission is free, reservations must be made online.
Open Thursday through Monday, 10am-5pm.
17985 Pacific Coast Highway in Pacific Palisades, California USA.