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Newly restored works at the Academy Gallery Discover Leon Battista Alberti
[Susan Glasspool]
Don't miss Florence's tribute to the great artist and architect, Leon Battista Alberti (1406-1472), today considered artistically equal to Brunelleschi or Michelangelo and superior to Michelozzo, Sangallo, Vasari or Ammannati, thus making this show the cultural event of the year. Part of the Albertian Celebrations, this unusual exhibition describes two aspects of Alberti: as creator of great architectural buildings (Palazzo Rucellai, the Santa Maria Novella facade, the SS. Annunziata tribune, the Rucellai Chapel in San Pancrazio with the little Temple of the Holy Sepulchre and other works), and theorist, whose aesthetic ideas effected the figurative arts of the time. By the mid 15th century Alberti’s Florentine Humanism had spread to all the main cities in Italy.
The cultural sphere that developed under Alberti’s influence and his exceptional artistic theories are illustrated with about 100 paintings and sculptures that also integrate the conquests of the previous generation (Brunelleschi, Masaccio and young Donatello). Elegant painted interiors and buildings by Fra Angelico, Benozzo Gozzoli, Scheggia, Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano, Neri di Bicci, Antonio and Piero del Pollaiolo, the young Botticelli and others; bas-reliefs by Donatello, Ghiberti, Filarete and Rossellino; goldsmithery by Maso di Bartolomeo, the famous Louvre Plate and jewels from the Medici collections; glazed Della Robbia terracottas; a reconstruction of the altar in the little Temple in SS. Annunziata; Greek style drawings, miniatures, designs for the Villa of Poggio a Caiano by Sangallo and young Leonardo; medallions by Pisanello and De’ Pasti with emblems and portraits of Alberti and his sphere; books written and often illustrated by Alberti himself (Della Pittura, 1435, De Statua, 1440 c., De Re Aedificatoria, 1452), manuscripts and early editions.
Alberti's monumental architecture is not simply described, but used to show how it reflected his ideas. Apart from his commissions for the Rucellai family, he also created chapels in San Miniato al Monte and in SS. Annunziata for Piero, son of Cosimo the Elder; the Badia Fiesolana, Medici villas (Fiesole and Poggio a Caiano); the Rossellino cloisters in Santa Croce and the portico for Brunelleschi's Pazzi Chapel; the marble decor in the Cathedral cupola that aesthetically equals Brunelleschi’s masterpiece. Few people realise the significance of his aesthetic and artistic revolution, or the effects these renewed classical styles were to have in the future.
The three Ideal Cities from the Museums of Urbino, Baltimore and Berlin, on display together for the first time, exemplify the circulation of Alberti’s ideas among his contemporaries. These masterly paintings, attributed variously to Piero della Francesca, Botticelli, Luciano Laurana, Francesco di Giorgio Martini and young Bramante, though the original drawing was presumably by Alberti himself, are amazing portrayals of an articulated and unitary Renaissance Humanistic city, where old and new miraculously are blended together and steeped in reasoning and beauty.
Leon Battista Alberti
& Florence
Reasoning
and beauty in the arts of the Renaissance
Palazzo Strozzi - Piazza Strozzi
Info: tel. 055.2645155
Curators: Cristina Acidini
and Gabriele Morolli
Sponsors: Florence City Council, the Board of Florentine Museums, the University of Florenced, the Ente Cassa di Risparmio of Florence and Firenze Mostre.
Hours: 10am-1pm - 4-7pm.
Closed on Mondays.
From March 11th to July 23rd 2006
www.firenzemostre.com
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