Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 360,930 inhabitants in 2023, and 984,991 in its metropolitan area.
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.
Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, known mononymously as Donatello, was an Italian sculptor of the Renaissance period. Born in Florence, he studied classical sculpture and used his knowledge to develop an Early Renaissance style of sculpture. He spent time in other cities, where he worked on commissions and taught others; his periods in Rome, Padua, and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy the techniques he had developed in the course of a long and productive career. His David was the first freestanding nude male sculpture since antiquity; like much of his work it was commissioned by the Medici family.
Filippo di ser Brunellesco di Lippo Lapi, commonly known as Filippo Brunelleschi and also nicknamed Pippo by Leon Battista Alberti, was an Italian architect, designer, goldsmith and sculptor. He is considered to be a founding father of Renaissance architecture. He is recognized as the first modern engineer, planner, and sole construction supervisor. In 1421, Brunelleschi became the first person to receive a patent in the Western world. He is most famous for designing the dome of the Florence Cathedral, and for the mathematical technique of linear perspective in art which governed pictorial depictions of space until the late 19th century and influenced the rise of modern science. His accomplishments also include other architectural works, sculpture, mathematics, engineering, and ship design. Most surviving works can be found in Florence.
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.
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.
Renaissance art is the painting, sculpture, and decorative arts of the period of European history known as the Renaissance, which emerged as a distinct style in Italy in about AD 1400, in parallel with developments which occurred in philosophy, literature, music, science, and technology. Renaissance art took as its foundation the art of Classical antiquity, perceived as the noblest of ancient traditions, but transformed that tradition by absorbing recent developments in the art of Northern Europe and by applying contemporary scientific knowledge. Along with Renaissance humanist philosophy, it spread throughout Europe, affecting both artists and their patrons with the development of new techniques and new artistic sensibilities. For art historians, Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from the medieval period to the Early Modern age.
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 Basilica di San Lorenzo is one of the largest churches of Florence, Italy, situated at the centre of the main market district of the city, and it is the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III. It is one of several churches that claim to be the oldest in Florence, having been consecrated in 393 AD, at which time it stood outside the city walls. For three hundred years it was the city's cathedral, before the official seat of the bishop was transferred to Santa Reparata.
The Pazzi Chapel is a chapel located in the "first cloister" on the southern flank of the Basilica di Santa Croce in Florence, Italy. Commonly credited to Filippo Brunelleschi, it is considered to be one of the masterpieces of Renaissance architecture.
The Agony and the Ecstasy (1961) is a biographical novel of Michelangelo Buonarroti written by American author Irving Stone. Stone lived in Italy for years visiting many of the locations in Rome and Florence, worked in marble quarries, and apprenticed himself to a marble sculptor. A primary source for the novel is Michelangelo's correspondence, all 495 letters of which Stone had translated from Italian by Charles Speroni and published in 1962 as I, Michelangelo, Sculptor. Stone also collaborated with Canadian sculptor Stanley Lewis, who researched Michelangelo's carving technique and tools. The Italian government lauded Stone with several honorary awards for his cultural achievements highlighting Italian history.
Two different crucifixes, or strictly, wooden corpus figures for crucifixes, are attributed to the High Renaissance master Michelangelo, although neither is universally accepted as his. Both are relatively small figures which would have been produced in Michelangelo's youth.
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.
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.
The historic centre of Florence is part of quartiere 1 of the Italian city of Florence. This quarter was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1982.
Piazza del Duomo is located in the heart of the historic center of Florence. It is one of the most visited places in Europe and the world and in Florence, the most visited area of the city. The square contains Florence Cathedral with the Cupola del Brunelleschi, the Giotto's Campanile, the Florence Baptistery, the Loggia del Bigallo, the Opera del Duomo Museum, and the Arcivescovile and Canonici's palace. The west zone of this square is called Piazza San Giovanni.
The Santa Croce Crucifix is a polychrome wood sculpture by Donatello, perhaps from c.1406-1408, or 1409–10. If the former is the correct dating, then Donatello was a young artist working in Lorenzo Ghiberti's workshop and beginning to get his own commissions. It is now in the Cappella Bardi di Vernio, just off the left transept of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy.
The Florentine Renaissance in art is the new approach to art and culture in Florence during the period from approximately the beginning of the 15th to the end of the 16th century. This new figurative language is linked to a new way of thinking about humankind and the world around it, based on the local culture and humanism already highlighted in the 14th century by Petrarch and Coluccio Salutati, among others. Filippo Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio's innovations in the figurative arts at the very beginning of the 15th century were not immediately accepted by the community, and for some twenty years remained misunderstood and in the minority compared to international Gothic.
Brunelleschi Crucifix in 1975
Exhibited in 2012 (right), beside the crucifix of Michelangelo (centre) and crucifix of Donatello (left).
Rear view from 2012 exhibition
Displayed in the chapel to the left of the main altar at Santa Maria Novella
Giotto's painted Crucifix with the Madonna and John the Evangelist, hanging in the nave at Santa Maria Novella
