Creation and the Fall are a pair of 1420-1425 frescoes by Paolo Uccello, produced for the Chiostro Verde (Green Cloister) in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. As with the other frescoes in the cloister, it shows scenes from the Book of Genesis in monochrome, terra verde or "verdeterra" (giving the cloister its name), a pigment based on silica and iron oxide. The upper lunette shows Creation of the Animals and the Creation of Adam (244×478 cm) and the rectangular work below shows Creation of Eve and the Fall (244×278 cm). Both works have now been transferred to canvas and were restored in 2013–2014, after which it was considered moving them to an internal room within the complex. [1]
Fall is comparable to Masolino's Temptation of Adam and Eve in the Brancacci Chapel, produced around the same time. The two frescoes were the first in a cycle in the cloister and he later followed it up with another fresco there, Scenes from the Life of Noah . All the cloister's frescoes were restored in 1859 but damaged in the 1966 Florence flood. They were all detached after the flood, their sinopia removed (and now stored by the Superintendency) and relocated in 1983, though some are still under restoration. [2]
Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. In his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano, which were wrongly entitled the Battle of Sant'Egidio of 1416 for a long period of time.
Masaccio, born Tommaso di Ser Giovanni di Simone, was a Florentine artist who is regarded as the first great Italian painter of the Quattrocento period of the Italian Renaissance. According to Vasari, Masaccio was the best painter of his generation because of his skill at imitating nature, recreating lifelike figures and movements as well as a convincing sense of three-dimensionality. He employed nudes and foreshortenings in his figures. This had seldom been done before him.
Alesso or Alessio Baldovinetti was an Italian early Renaissance painter and draftsman.
Andrea del Castagno or Andrea di Bartolo di Bargilla was an Italian Renaissance painter in Florence, influenced chiefly by Masaccio and Giotto di Bondone. His works include frescoes in Sant'Apollonia in Florence and the painted equestrian monument of Niccolò da Tolentino (1456) in Florence Cathedral. He in turn influenced the Ferrarese school of Cosmè Tura, Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de' Roberti.
Santa Maria Novella is a church in Florence, Italy, situated opposite, and lending its name to, the city's main railway station. Chronologically, it is the first great basilica in Florence, and is the city's principal Dominican church.
The Basilica della Santissima Annunziata is a Renaissance-style, Catholic minor basilica in Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. This is considered the mother church of the Servite Order. It is located at the northeastern side of the Piazza Santissima Annunziata near the city center.
The Basilica di Santa Croce is a minor basilica and the principal Franciscan church of Florence, Italy. It is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about 800 metres southeast of the Duomo, on what was once marshland beyond the city walls. Being the burial place of some of the most notable Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, the poet Foscolo, the philosopher Gentile and the composer Rossini, it is also known as the Temple of the Italian Glories.
The Sistine Chapel ceiling, painted in fresco by Michelangelo between 1508 and 1512, is a cornerstone work of High Renaissance art.
The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance artist Masaccio. The fresco is a single scene from the cycle painted around 1425 by Masaccio, Masolino and others on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. It depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, from the biblical Book of Genesis chapter 3, albeit with a few differences from the canonical account.
The Basilica di Santo Spirito is a church in Florence, Italy. Usually referred to simply as Santo Spirito, it is located in the Oltrarno quarter, facing the square with the same name. The interior of the building – internal length 97 m (318 ft) – is one of the preeminent examples of Renaissance architecture.
The Battle of San Romano is a set of three paintings by the Florentine painter Paolo Uccello depicting events that took place at the Battle of San Romano between Florentine and Sienese forces in 1432. They are significant as revealing the development of linear perspective in early Italian Renaissance painting, and are unusual as a major secular commission. The paintings are in egg tempera on wooden panels, each over 3 metres long. According to the National Gallery, the panels were commissioned by a member of the Bartolini Salimbeni family in Florence sometime between 1435 and 1460. The paintings were much admired in the 15th century; Lorenzo de' Medici so coveted them that he purchased one and had the remaining two forcibly removed to the Palazzo Medici. They are now divided between three collections, the National Gallery, London, the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and the Musée du Louvre, Paris.
Museo Nazionale di San Marco is an art museum housed in the monumental section of the medieval Dominican convent of San Marco dedicated to St Mark, situated on the present-day Piazza San Marco, in Florence, a region of Tuscany, Italy.
Florentine painting or the Florentine School refers to artists in, from, or influenced by the naturalistic style developed in Florence in the 14th century, largely through the efforts of Giotto di Bondone, and in the 15th century the leading school of Western painting. Some of the best known painters of the earlier Florentine School are Fra Angelico, Botticelli, Filippo Lippi, the Ghirlandaio family, Masolino, and Masaccio.
Santa Maria del Carmine is a church of the Carmelite Order, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, in Tuscany, Italy. It is famous as the location of the Brancacci Chapel housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, later finished by Filippino Lippi.
San Frediano in Cestello is a Baroque-style, Roman Catholic church in the Oltrarno section of Florence, region of Tuscany, Italy. The name cestello derives from the Cistercians who occupied the church in 1628. Previously the site had a 1450s church attached to the cloistered Carmelite convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli.
Italian Renaissance painting is the painting of the period beginning in the late 13th century and flourishing from the early 15th to late 16th centuries, occurring in the Italian Peninsula, which was at that time divided into many political states, some independent but others controlled by external powers. The painters of Renaissance Italy, although often attached to particular courts and with loyalties to particular towns, nonetheless wandered the length and breadth of Italy, often occupying a diplomatic status and disseminating artistic and philosophical ideas.
The Funerary Monumentto SirJohn Hawkwood is a fresco by Paolo Uccello, commemorating English condottiero John Hawkwood, commissioned in 1436 for Florence Cathedral. The fresco is an important example of art commemorating a soldier-for-hire who fought in the Italian peninsula and is a seminal work in the development of perspective.
Nylars Church is a 12th-century round church in the village of Nylars near Rønne in the south of the Danish island of Bornholm. Originally designed for a defensive role, the solid structure contains a series of 13th-century frescos, the oldest of Bornholm's four round churches.
The Thebaid is a tempera on canvas painting by Paolo Uccello, executed c. 1460, also known as Scenes from the Lives of the Saints and Monks and The Life of the Holy Fathers. It was originally painted for the monastery of San Giorgio alla Costa in the Oltrarno area of Florence and later moved to the Uffizi. It is now in the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence.
Scenes from the Life of Noah are a pair of frescoes painted in 1436–1440Ref? by Paolo Uccello in the Chiostro Verde of Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Like the other frescoes in that cloister, they deal with stories from the Book of Genesis and are painted in monochrome tempera with terra verde as pigment, that referred to the authority of antique bronze sculpture, and gave the cloister its name.