The Italian comic Alessandro Siani once said that when you visit the South of Italy, you cry once when you arrive and then again when you leave. It is nearly impossible to understand this expression unless you start to understand …
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DEATH OF LEONARDO, JEAN AUGUSTE DOMINQUE INGRES, 1818, PETIT PALAIS, PARIS, FRANCE On May 2, 1519, Leonardo Da Vinci passed away at the Chateau Clos Lucé, in Amboise, France. Why was Leonardo in France? Because three years earlier, King …
“Cheer up, there’s dirt in the piazza!” Although much of the nuance is lost in translation (“Coraggio, c’è terra in piazza!”), this expression best embodies what the Palio means for the Sienese. That no matter the gravity of one’s predicament, …
Twice a year, on July 2 and August 16, the city of Siena, Italy transforms its main medieval square into an arena of unbridled fury. Ten bareback horses and their respective jockeys race three laps at breakneck speed around a …
I know that most of you are waiting for me to sneak in a haymaker of a reproach about the present political reality in the United States. But as I wrote in the opening line of this blog series, the …
In my last blog Find Myself a City (or at this point a country) to Live In, we examined the effects of good government as represented in the homonymous mural by Ambrogio Lorenzetti in the medieval oval office of Siena, known …
These days it is way too easy for just about any discussion to degenerate into a polarized and uncompromising political debate.But the great thing about this next series of blogs is that I don’t have to get political. The art does …
On June 9, 1311, while all government offices and stores were closed for the occasion, an altarpiece known as the Maestàwas carried in solemn procession from the workshop of its artist, Duccio di Buoninsegna, to the high altar of the recently …
In 1226, the great medieval city-state of Siena commissioned the construction of a new cathedral atop the highest of the city’s 3 hills. (see below) Following a longstanding Tuscan tradition (see Pisa, Lucca, San Gimignano, etc.), the new church was …
The Lucchesi (see people from the Tuscan town of Lucca) claim authorship of the above proverb, except for the architect part, as they were constantly at war with the Pisans. The Livornesi (see people from the Tuscan coastal city of …