Leon Battista Alberti was an Italian Renaissance humanist author, artist, architect, poet, priest, linguist, philosopher, and cryptographer; he epitomised the nature of those identified now as polymaths. He is considered the founder of Western cryptography, a claim he shares with Johannes Trithemius.
David is a masterpiece of Italian Renaissance sculpture, created from 1501 to 1504 by Michelangelo. With a height of 5.17 metres, the David was the first colossal marble statue made in the early modern period following classical antiquity, a precedent for the 16th century and beyond. David was originally commissioned as one of a series of statues of twelve prophets to be positioned along the roofline of the east end of Florence Cathedral, but was instead placed in the public square in front of the Palazzo della Signoria, the seat of civic government in Florence, where it was unveiled on 8 September 1504. In 1873, the statue was moved to the Galleria dell'Accademia, Florence, and in 1910 replaced at the original location by a replica.
Aldo Rossi was an Italian architect and designer who achieved international recognition in four distinct areas: architectural theory, drawing and design and also product design. He was one of the leading proponents of the postmodern movement.
Giorgio Vasari was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect, who is best known for his work The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, considered the ideological foundation of all art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born.
Andrea del Verrocchio, born Andrea di Michele di Francesco de' Cioni, was a sculptor, Italian painter and goldsmith who was a master of an important workshop in Florence.
Andrea di Cione di Arcangelo, better known as Orcagna, was an Italian painter, sculptor, and architect active in Florence. He worked as a consultant at the Florence Cathedral and supervised the construction of the façade at the Orvieto Cathedral. His Strozzi Altarpiece (1354–57) is noted as defining a new role for Christ as a source of Catholic doctrine and papal authority.
Florence Cathedral, formally the Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Flower, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome engineered by Filippo Brunelleschi. The exterior of the basilica is faced with polychrome marble panels in various shades of green and pink, bordered by white, and has an elaborate 19th-century Gothic Revival façade by Emilio De Fabris.
Giovanni Battista Guarini was an Italian poet, dramatist, and diplomat.
Arnolfo di Cambio was an Italian architect and sculptor. He designed Florence Cathedral and the sixth city wall around Florence (1284–1333), while his most important surviving work as a sculptor is the tomb of Cardinal de Braye in S. Domenico, Orvieto.
Pietro da Cortona was an Italian Baroque painter and architect. Along with his contemporaries and rivals Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Francesco Borromini, he was one of the key figures in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important designer of interior decorations.
Pier Luigi Nervi was an Italian engineer and architect. He studied at the University of Bologna graduating in 1913. Nervi taught as a professor of engineering at Rome University from 1946 to 1961 and is known worldwide as a structural engineer and architect and for his innovative use of reinforced concrete, especially with numerous notable thin shell structures worldwide.
Francesco da Sangallo (1494–1576) was an Italian Renaissance sculptor, the son of the architect and sculptor Giuliano da Sangallo.
Giotto's Campanile is a free-standing campanile that is part of the complex of buildings that make up Florence Cathedral on the Piazza del Duomo in Florence, Italy.
The Action Party was a liberal-socialist political party in Italy. The party was anti-fascist and republican. Its prominent leaders were Carlo Rosselli, Ferruccio Parri, Emilio Lussu and Ugo La Malfa. Other prominent members included Leone Ginzburg, Ernesto de Martino, Norberto Bobbio, Riccardo Lombardi, Vittorio Foa and the Nobel-winning poet Eugenio Montale.
Giovanni Battista Caccini or Giovan Battista Caccini was an Italian sculptor from Florence, who worked in a classicising style in the later phase of Mannerism.
The Loggia del Bigallo is a late Gothic building in Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. It stands at the corner of Piazza San Giovanni and via Calzaioli; tradition holds the site near the Baptistry of Florence was donated by a benefactor.
Alberto Ziveri (1908–1990) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola Romana. He is known for his urban landscapes and realist narrative scenes. His use of chiaroscuro in paintings such as Postribolo (1945) recalls the Settecento style.
Irene Parenti Duclos (1754–1795) was an Italian painter and poet. Her work as an expert copyist of old master paintings was highly valued in her era, and brought her honors from several Italian art academies. Moreover, she achieved particular renown as a pioneer in the revival of encaustic painting.
Visitation is a tempera on panel painting usually attributed to Perugino, executed c. 1472–1473, now in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence. An early work by the artist from around the same time as Nativity of the Virgin, whilst he was still heavily influenced by Andrea del Verrocchio, it probably originated as part of the predella for a lost altarpiece. It shows the Visitation, with the Virgin Mary's mother Saint Anne to the left. In the left background is Francis of Assisi receiving the stigmata and in the right background is Florence's patron saint John the Baptist - this may indicate that the lost altarpiece was intended for a Franciscan monastery in Florence such as Santa Croce.
