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unusual facts about Florentine



Accademia Fiorentina

While the Infiammati supported the suggestions of Pietro Bembo and Giovan Giorgio Trissino that the language of Boccaccio and Petrarch should serve as a model for literary Italian, the Umidi believed it should be based on contemporary Florentine usage and on the language of Dante.

Aimery IV of Narbonne

Giovanni Villani, the Florentine chronicler, calls him "Nerbona" throughout his account.

Alfred von Reumont

On the history of Florence and of Tuscany he wrote Tavole cronologiche e sincrone della storia fiorentina (1841; Supplement, 1875); Geschichte Toscanas seit dem Ende des florentinischen Freistaats (History of Toscany since the end of the Florentine freestate, Gotha, 1876–77); and a work on Lorenzo de' Medici (Leipzig, 1874, and again 1883).

Anna Balsamo

In 2003, Anna Balsamo was appointed Vice-President to the Florentine association Poets Chamber founded in 1930 by Domenico François on suggestion of Giovanni Papini.

Antonio Pucci

Antonio di Puccio Pucci (c. 1350–after 1416), Florentine politician and architect

Armenian carpet

Francesco Balducci Pegolotti, a Florentine merchant stationed in Cyprus, reported in his La pratica della mercatura that from 1274 to 1330, carpets (kaperts) were imported from the Armenian cities of Ayas and Sis to Florence.

Bernardino Poccetti

Born in Florence, he was initially trained as a decorator of facades and ceilings, enrolling in 1570 in the Florentine painters guild for such work, the Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, (Academy of the Arts of Drawing).

Biagio d'Antonio

For much of the last quarter of the 15th century he was active in Faenza, but his style continued to reflect Florentine innovations.

Bronzino

Towards the end of his life, Bronzino took a prominent part in the activities of the Florentine Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, of which he was a founding member in 1563.

Buonaccorso Pitti

In 1401, while serving as the Florentine ambassador to Bavaria, he, his brothers, and their descendents were ennobled by Rupert, King of Germany, after having saved his life by thwarting a poisoning attempt by the Duke of Milan.

Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi

Catello di Rosso Gianfigliazzi was a Florentine nobleman who lived in the late 13th century around the time of Giotto and Dante.

David Herlihy

His study of the Florentine and Pistoiese Catasto of 1427 is one of the first statistical surveys to use computers to analyse large amounts of data.

Florentine School

Some of the best known artists of the Florentine School are Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Lippi, Masolino, and Masaccio.

This was echoed in the work of Pisan painters in the 12th and 13th centuries, notably that of Giunta Pisano, who in turn influenced such greats as Cimabue, and through him Giotto and the early 14th-century Florentine artists.

A similar approach to light was used by his contemporaries such as Bernardo Daddi, their attention to naturalism was encouraged by the subjects commissioned for 14th-century Franciscan and Dominican churches, and was to influence Florentine painters in the following centuries.

Galilei

Alessandro Galilei (1691–1736), Florentine mathematician and architect

Galleria dell'Accademia

As well as a number of Florentine Gothic paintings, the gallery houses the idiosyncratic collection of Russian icons assembled by the Grand Dukes of the House of Lorraine, of which Leopoldo was one.

Gasparo Molo

According to Kenner, it is not necessary to suppose that he gave up his connexion with the Florentine court at this time, because, in the following years, he struck medals for the court in Mantua, as well as coins for Guastalla and Castiglione, especially as he was again working in Florence in 1614 (certainly in 1615).

Giovanni di Buiamonte

Giovanni di Buiamonte was a Florentine nobleman who lived in the late 13th century around the time of Giotto and Dante.

Il cappello di paglia di Firenze

Il cappello di paglia di Firenze (literally translated as The Florentine Straw Hat but usually titled in English language productions as The Italian Straw Hat) is an opera by Nino Rota to an Italian-language libretto by the composer and Ernesta Rota, based on the play Le chapeau de paille d'Italie by Eugène Labiche and Marc Michel.

Le ragazze di San Frediano

The story follows the escapades of a Florentine mechanic, a local "Don Giovanni," who romances several women simultaneously and secretly.

Ludovico Trevisan

An account of his victory is also available in an important contemporary war poem, Trophaeum Anglaricum by Florentine humanist Leonardo Dati, which praises Trevisan's caution as much as his impetuosity, comparing him to captains of antiquity such as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Luisa Miller

In Verdi's mind, he had the perfect subject, to be based on the novel L'assedio di Firenze ("The Siege of Florence") by Francesco Domenico Guerrazzi which glorified the life of the 16th Century Florentine soldier Francesco Ferruccio.

Margherita Farnese

On 2 March 1581 she married Vincenzo Gonzaga, the future duke of Mantua, probably with the political aim of creating an anti-Florentine alliance between the Gonzaga and Farnese families, after their long feud since 1547, when Ferrante Gonzaga had organised a plot against Pier Luigi Farnese first duke of Parma and Piacenza.

Master of the Marble Madonnas

The name "Master of the Marble Madonnas" was coined by Wilhelm von Bode in 1886, who noted several points of similarity linking these sculptures to the production of well-known Florentine masters such as Mino da Fiesole, Antonio Rossellino, Desiderio da Settignano, and Benedetto da Maiano but which are generally inferior in quality and execution.

Medici giraffe

Lorenzo had built special stables for it, either at the family's villa at Poggio a Caiano or in the Via della Scala in Florence itself, with heating to protect it from the damp Florentine winters.

Melchior Paul von Deschwanden

After going to Lausanne to learn French (1835–1836), he returned home until 1838-1840 when he studied at the Florentine Academy and whilst there he won first prize for an oil of a male nude; and yet he was particularly drawn to the works of Fra Angelico.

Nicoletta Machiavelli

The daughter of a Florentine father and of an American mother, she is a descendant of philosopher and author Niccolò Machiavelli.

Old Supreme Court Building, Singapore

The pediment sculpture (an allegory of justice) which characterized the Supreme Court is a work by Florentine sculptor Augusto Martelli.

Palazzo Corsini

In 1736, the Florentine Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini, nephew of Pope Clement XII (formerly Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini), acquired the villa and land, and commissioned the structure now standing.

Papal bull

In 1535 the Florentine engraver Benvenuto Cellini was paid 50 scutes to recreate the metal matrix which would be used to impress the lead bulls of the Pope Paul III.

Pitigliano

Later, in medieval times were extended by the Aldobrandeschi and further fortified by the Orsini in the Renaissance period, when he commissioned the Florentine architect Antonio da Sangallo the Younger to give a more impressive structure of the entire defensive perimeter.

Portrait of Clarissa Strozzi

The painting depicts a girl from the old Florentine family of Strozzi.

Portsmouth Cathedral

The north tower transept contains a ceramic plaque of the Virgin and Child by the Florentine sculptor Andrea della Robbia.

Postage stamps and postal history of Tuscany

The image is based on the Renaissance sculpture by Donatello of a lion called the Marzocco which was originally commissioned for Pope Martin V and moved in 1812 to the Piazza della Signoria in Florence where it became a symbol of Florentine liberties.

Raimon Vidal de Bezaudun

Vidal also took pains to argue for the superiority of lemosí (or Lemozi, i.e., Occitan) over other vernaculars, prompting the Florentine poet Dante Alighieri to write a De Vulgari Eloquentia justifying the use of the Tuscan vernacular as opposed to the Occitan.

Richard Fremantle

Some additions to a late Trecento Florentine: the Master of San Martino a Mensola' (Edam, 1973)

SACI

The institution was founded in 1975 by painter Jules Maidoff, whose goal was to offer the finest and most challenging training to the next generation of artists, art historians, and art conservators, as well as the opportunity to live out a full, first-hand immersion within Florentine culture and customs.

San Pietro, Perugia

The polygonal belltower, on the right of the portal, was rebuilt in 1463-68 with Florentine-Gothic lines, based on a design by Bernardo Rossellino).

Soderini

Francesco Soderini (1453–1524) Florentine diplomat and religious leader

Squarcialupi

Antonio Squarcialupi, Florentine organist and composer to Lorenzo de' Medici

Stendhal syndrome

Although there are many descriptions of people becoming dizzy and fainting while taking in Florentine art, especially at the Uffizi, dating from the early 19th century on, the syndrome was only named in 1979, when it was described by Italian psychiatrist Graziella Magherini, who observed and described more than 100 similar cases among tourists and visitors in Florence.

Telemaco Signorini

The following year he exhibited for the first time, showing paintings inspired by the works of Walter Scott and Machiavelli at the Florentine Promotrice.

Terino da Castelfiorentino

Terino da Castelfiorentino (born 1230s/1240s) was a Florentine poet from Castelfiorentino in the Valdelsa.

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz

In connection with its negation of spatial depth by compressing figures into the foreground, the early Florentine Mannerists—Rosso Fiorentino, Pontormo and Parmigianino—are mentioned, as well two paintings by Tintoretto: the Crucifixion and the Resurrection of Lazarus, the latter because of the horizontal row of spectators behind the miracle.

The Merciful Knight

This picture is based on an 11th-century legend retold by Sir Kenelm Digby in Broadstone of Honour, its hero is a Florentine knight named John Gualbert (an anglicisation of Giovanni Gualberto).

Vino Greco

Curiously, the 14th century Florentine merchant Francesco Pegolotti records in La Pratica della Mercatura (c. 1340) that vino greco was exported from Italy to Constantinople, the Byzantine Greek capital.

Wallenstein Palace

The Florentine Giovanni de Galliano Pieroni (1586-1654), engineer and army colonel, played an important role in the construction.


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