The Time of the Mobooks is dawning.

It will happen within the next 10 years. What? The appearance of the Mobooks, a cross between movies and books.
When an author creates a file with his new novel, or with his new history book, it will be uploaded to a computer.
The second step will be for the computer to read it in a fraction of a second, then all the characters, landscapes, situations, will be changed into images selecting particular historical and artistic patterns.

Music will be set looking into existing files and, when necessary, it will be created anew. Then a film will be created sentence by sentence and words by words using look-humans cartoons. In a few seconds the author of the book will have a film made out of his book, which could be sold as a DVD together with the traditional book made of paper. In the future, perhaps, only the film will be produced without the book itself.
This is a process which is already taking place at a low pace but in a matter of years supercomputers will be able to create films by themselves at a very low budget and at an increased speed and artistic quality.

So, the old say ‘Never judge a book by its movie’ will soon disappear, because the movie will be the book, or as we should say the Mobook.

 

 

Cactus Moon Publications of Tempe, Arizona, has bought my latest book.

Here is their press release:

 

Cactus Moon Publications is proud to announce the acquisition of Dew of Heaven by Angelo Paratico.
Angelo is an Italian writer, novelist and historian. Born in Turbigo, 25 miles from Milano, in 1955, he studied chemistry, classic history and literature. In 1983, he moved to Hong Kong, China where he currently resides with his family.
His area of studies were around chemistry, classic history, and literature.
South China Morning Post is a publication for which he freelances among several newspapers and magazines. He has been a frequent guest on RTHK Morning Coffee with Phil Whelan.
Dew of Heaven is the latest novel written by Angelo Paratico among many others including: Leonardo Da Vinci: A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy, Ben, and The Karma Killers.
Look for Angelo’s latest release this Summer!
http://www.angeloparatico.com/

The Miraculous History of China’s two Palace Museums by Mark O’Neill


The Miraculous History of China’s two Palace Museums a new book by Mark O’Neill.

We meet Mark O’Neill at a restaurant in Causeway Bay for a dinner organised by our friend Albert Lin. It is a convivial presentation of Mark’s latest book, published by Joint Publishing (H.K.) Company, in English and Chinese.
This book makes indeed fascinating reading for all lovers of Oriental art who had always heard in different variants over the years the famed history of the Imperial Chinese collection. But with this work, so well documented and wonderfully written, most of the facts will be concentrated in a single oeuvre. And I must say that, after reading it, it  makes wonderful reading which should not be missed!
On November 5, 1924, Emperor Puyi was finally expelled from the palace in which emperors had lived for 5 centuries even if he had been allowed to live there after the 1911 revolution.  The Republican government removed the deposed emperor when it was discovered that he, the eunuchs and other court officials, were responsible for the widespread thefts within the palace’s imperial treasures. They then planned to transform it into a Museum like the Louvre and the British Museum in London. In fact, on 10th October,1925, the Palace Museum opened its doors in what had been the Forbidden City, in the centre of Beijing. It exhibited the treasures and art works of the Imperial family. It was a first time in China’s history and a result of the advice of intellectuals of the time, who did not want to see the treasures fall into the hands of warlords or politicians. Later, like a miracle, the Palace Museum lived through and survived the most turbulent period of China’s modern history.

During the war with Japan and the civil war, the pieces were moved several times over thousands of kilometres – but no piece was even damaged or stolen. Nor were they destroyed by fire, damp or insects. Finally, a portion of them arrived safely in Taiwan. The pieces were moved in the middle of the night, with a military escort. Soldiers armed with machine guns rode on the roof of the train carriages carrying the crates on their journey south.
From Nanjing, the crates were moved to Shanghai for safekeeping and stored in a Catholic church in the French Concession. The government later built a modern museum in Nanjing, the new capital, in which to store them.

In 1933, after the Japanese army had conquered Manchuria and was threatening northern China, the directors of the original museum, in Beijing’s Forbidden City, moved 19,600 crates of treasures to keep them out of the clutches of the foreign aggressors. After all-out war began, in 1937, the directors hid the pieces in southwest China. In 1948 and 49, then president Chiang Kai-shek shipped 2,972 crates to Taiwan, where he built the National Palace Museum in 1965. The Forbidden City Palace Museum now boasts 1.8 million pieces, including 53,482 paintings, 75,031 works of calligraphy and 159,734 items of copper, as well as 603,000 ancient books and documents, 367,000 pieces of porcelain and 11,000 sculptures, some of which date back to the Warring States Period (475-221BC). The museum in Taiwan possesses 696,000 pieces, including works of art, rare books and historical documents. Museums around the world compete to show exhibitions fom the two collections. Last year, the Palace Museum attracted 15 million visitors. The collection consisted of 1.17 million pieces, according to the first ever inventory, and the Palace Museum opened on October 10, 1925, the 14th anniversary of the Republic of China.

When Japan began its full-scale invasion of China in 1937, the museum directors decided to move the pieces again, out of the reach of enemy bombers. There were three major routes to the southwest provinces of Guizhou and Sichuan. Over the next eight years, museum crates were stored in temples, caves, tunnels, private homes and other safe places.
After the Japanese surrender in August 1945, the pieces were gradually moved back to Nanjing, but civil war prevented their return to Beijing. During the eight-year odyssey in the southwest, no pieces were lost or stolen, say Fung Ming-chu, director of the National Palace Museum, and her predecessor, Chou Kung-shin – a tribute to the dedication of the staff who accompanied the collection. Today there are two Palace Museums, one in Beijing and the National Palace Museum in Taipei, which are continually adding to their collections and sending exhibitions abroad. This allows people all over the world to marvel at the beauty of Chinese art.

It is a great miracle that no piece disappeared but Mark O’Neill has the answer explaining it. Having been part of the Emperor’s collection they were considered Sacred Relicts by the common Chinese, communists included, and this could explain why they were not stolen or destroyed. They were all seen as a sort of Holy Grail!

 

Mark O’Neill, born in London, was educated at Marlborough College and New College, Oxford where he graduated with a degree in English Language and Literature. He worked in Washington DC, Manchester and Belfast before moving to Hong Kong in 1978. He has lived in Asia since then, working in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, China and Japan for Reuters News Agency and the South China Morning Post. He now lives in Hong Kong and works as a journalist, writer and university lecturer. He speaks and writes French, Mandarin, Cantonese and Japanese. He has settled down in Hong Kong where he works as an author.

Mausoleo d’Augusto. Siamo ancora fermi al Palo!

Si pensava d’essere vicini all’inizio del restauro, ma all’apertura delle offerte delle imprese concorrenti si e’ scoperto che molte fra queste erano troppo basse.
Il bando e’ da rifare!

http://www.storiainrete.com/10934/in-primo-piano/restauro-mausoleo-augusto-offerte-irregolari-salta-appalto/

Articolo del 18 Agosto 2014.

Voglio scrivere questo articolo in italiano, non in inglese, perché i panni sporchi li dobbiamo lavare in casa.

Gaio Giulio Cesare Ottaviano Augusto spirò duemila anni fa – il 19 agosto del 14 dopo Cristo – a Nola, in Campania, nelle braccia di sua moglie, Livia Drusilla e del suo figlio adottivo ed erede, Tiberio. Aveva 75 anni. Augusto volle morire nella stessa camera dove era morto suo padre, Gaio Ottaviano, quando lui era un bambino di 4 anni. Evidentemente il suo genitore non lo aveva più scordato. A partire dalla sua vittoria contro Antonio e Cleopatra ad Anzio del 31 a.C. non aveva più fronteggiato seri contendenti al potere supremo. Era stato molto prudente, attento, fortunato e il potere lo aveva mantenuto con discrezione, non con la sprezzante ostentazione tipiche del suo padre adottivo e prozio, Giulio Cesare.

I 2000 anni della sua scomparsa verranno celebrati in tutto il mondo, anche in Italia. Ma l’Italia perderà una grossa occasione per accendere i riflettori sui propri favolosi tesori culturali che tutti ci invidiano. L’attenzione verrà piuttosto focalizzata sulle nostre pecche, sulla nostra disorganizzazione e sulla nostra litigiosità. Mentre il sindaco Marino polemizza con il Foreign Office britannico perché questo ha messo in guardia i turisti in vista alla Città Eterna di fare attenzione al portafogli – quasi che questi avvertimenti siano dovuti a sentimenti anti-italiani invece che a segnalazioni di scippi e di borseggi – assisteremo allo spettacolo indegno di chiusure, di mancanze e di ritardi.

Solo l’Ara Pacis – rimessa insieme 75 anni fa per celebrare la nascita di Augusto – sarà visitabile. Anche una parte della Domus Augustea sul Palatino sarà accessibile ai visitatori – una delle sue sale ha degli splendidi affreschi originali – questa fu la modesta abitazione che Augusto acquistò dagli eredi di Quinto Ortensio e nella quale poi abitò.

Bene fin qui. Ma passiamo ora ai punti dolenti. Il Mausoleo d’Augusto – la sua tomba – resterà chiusa perché  non si è riusciti a racimolare i 4 milioni di euro necessari per restaurarla in tempo. 4 miseri milioni di euro! Sarebbe bastato organizzare un accorto sistema di emissioni dei biglietti d’entrata e si sarebbero potuto agevolmente raccogliere i fondi necessari, bastava andare da una banca forniti dei necessari nulla-osta e questa avrebbe visto l’affare e tirato fuori i soldi necessari. Sarebbe bastato un po’ d’impegno e di fantasia, tagliando le pastoie burocratiche. Questo imponente mausoleo, ormai un rudere, si trova in Piazza Augusto Imperatore, nel mezzo di quello che fu il Campo Marzio. Ha le dimoensioni di un campo di calcio, e proprio lì furono deposte le ceneri di molti dei parenti di Augusto, sia di quelli che lo precedettero che di quelli che lo seguirono: Marcello, Marco Agrippa, Druso, Ottavia Minore, Gaio e Lucio, Poppea, moglie di Nerone e tanti altri. Era sormontato da una statua bronzea di Augusto che venne fusa nel medievo e, all’entrata, stavano due obelischi egizi. Oggi uno si trova in Piazza dell’Esquilino e uno di fronte alla Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. La sua struttura fu diroccata al tempo della invasione dei Visigoti e poi usata come fortezza dei Colonna. Un parziale recupero fu tentato nel 1930 – vi si tenevano dei concerti – ma oggi è ridotto a una latrina a cielo aperto, usata da barboni e da immigrati clandestini.

Altra notizia triste di questi giorni: le scuderie fatte costruite da Augusto per alloggiare i cavalli che garaggiavano al Circo Massimo – scoperte sotto a Via Giulia nel 2009 – e descritte dalla stampa come una scoperta straordinaria – verranno nuovamente sepolte poiché mancano, anche in questo caso, i soldi necessari per restaurarle. Si era pensato all’inizio di sistemarle giusto per il 19 agosto 2014, ma avendo miseramente fallito, l’unica alternativa è di ricoprirle di tessuti impermeabili e poi ri-seppellirle, sperando che in futuro, disponendo di fondi, si decida di riscavarle. Lo stesso triste fato attende la tomba di Marco Nonio Macrino, un generale di Marco Aurelio nativo di Brescia, scoperta pochi anni fa a Saxa Rubra. E’ una tomba di grande ricchezza che viene da molti considerata come la sepoltura del vero Gladiatore, interpretato da Russell Crowe nell’omonimo film. Anche questa sta per essere ricoperta di terra, nonostante la grande disperazione degli archeologi che ci lavorano, solo perché mancano i 2 milioni di euro necessari per la sua sistemazione.
In quanti avrebbero pagato per visitare la tomba del Gladiatore? Io credo centinaia di migliaia di turisti da tutto il mondo, e a 20 euro a testa ne bastavano 100.000!

Mi chiedo cosa il Ministro per i Beni Culturali e il Turismo, Dario Franceschini, abbia da dire in proposito. Franceschini fa parte di un partito che chiese le dimissioni di un suo predecessore per via del crollo d’un muro a Pompei e, nonostante il fatto che siede da poco su quella poltrona, non puo’ chiamarsene fuori. Avrebbe dovuto muoversi prima, urlare, lamentarsi, intenarsi ai ruderi o meglio ancora avrebbe dovuto studiare delle alternative per trovare i fondi. Il sindaco di Roma, Ignazio Marino, ha la sue responsabilità ma la gran parte della colpe ricadono proprio sul Ministro Franceschini e sui suoi immediati predecessori, Massimo Bray e Lorenzo Omaghi, e stendiamo un velo pietoso su Giancarlo Galan e Sandro Bondi, pure loro incompenti e disinteressati al proprio lavoro. La scusa della mancanza di fondi è, appunto, solo una scusa. Bastava muoversi per tempo, bastava prepararsi. Che vergogna, e che fatica essere italiani.

 

 

 

Giambattista Viotti, The Italian Composer of the Marseillaise

 

Here are links to my articles about the musical score of the Marseillaise having been taken by Rouget De L’Isle from the Italian Giambattista Viotti, when he composed the famous song which is today the French National Anthem.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Who-composed-the-Marseilla-by-Angelo-Paratico-Modernity-160119-126.html

Here is the original music by Viotti written long before the Marseillaise:

-In Italian on 20/01/2016 and published on the blog La Nostra Storia by Dino Messina, Corriere della Sera:

Il lungo cammino della Marsigliese, che aveva un padre italiano…

-And on the l’Italiano:

http://www.litaliano.it/index.php/cultura/notizie/1500-la-marsigliese-ha-origini-italiane

 

 

A new Mona Lisa discovered in a private collection in St. Petersburg.

News and discoveries on Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa seem never ending. It has been announced a few days ago that a team of experts are analyzing a new version of it kept in a private collection in St. Petersburg which seems extremely close to a Leonardo’s original.

It may well be another high quality copy, perhaps produced by one of the pupils of Leonardo, Francesco Melzi or Boltraffio or Salai. Silvano Vinceti, a well known expert on Leonardo, claims to be already sure of the fact that it was painted at the time of Leonardo and Carlo Pedretti seems to agree with him. The columns appearing in this version are found also  in a original sketch drawn by Leonardo, some art historians thought that the Mona Lisa had no columns because they were sawn off, but tests carried out the Louvre had demonstrated that poplar wood table was never cut.

“There are many indicators pointing to the Tuscan artistic genius,” Vinceti told ANSA. “But of course it’s only a hypothesis.”

The Mona Lisa was sold by Salai to King Francis I of France for the staggering amount of 2.604 gold lire, this could have created a great interest among Leonardo’s pupils to create copies of the same painting.

Now the problem is to establish which is the original and which is the copy. The discovery of two other ladies below the Louvre’s Mona Lisa by Pascal Cotte seems to point to the fact that they have the real one, while the Prado’s Mona Lisa and the St. Petersburg’s Mona Lisa should be high quality copies produced by the ‘bottega’ of Leonardo.

I am presenting a new hypothesis on the origin of the Mona Lisa in the latest version of my book which could fit into this scenario. My new idea is only available on the kindle version:

An old Mona Lisa beneath the visible Mona Lisa? According to the BBC…

The current view on the Mona Lisa is that Leonardo Da Vinci had worked at the painting between 1503 and 1519, first in Florence and later in France.

There has long been debate about the Mona Lisa’s true identity even if, for centuries, it has been widely believed to have been Monna Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a Florentine silk merchant and money-lender, Francesco del Giocondo. This was based on Giorgio Vasari biography of Leonardo, even if Vasari was talking about a head, not a portrait.

Pascal Cotte a respected expert on light technology challenges that theory. He believes the image he has reconstructed underneath the surface of the painting is Leonardo’s original Lisa, and that the portrait named Mona Lisa is in fact, a different woman. Pascal Cotte was the expert who had confirmed the authenticity of the Bella Principessa and indicated that there were three points, hitherto unnoticed, suggesting where it had been pulled out of a book. This was later confirmed: the painting had been pulled out of a late XV century codex known as the Sforziade  a national treasure of Poland, which was donated by King Francis I to the King of Poland in 1517.

He said: “The results shatter many myths and alter our vision of Leonardo’s masterpiece forever. When I finished the reconstruction of Lisa Gherardini, I was in front of the portrait and she is totally different to Mona Lisa today. This is not the same woman.”

He also claims to have found two more images under the surface of the painting – a shadowy outline of a portrait with a larger head and nose, bigger hands but smaller lips. And he says he has found another Madonna-style image with Leonardo’s etchings of a pearl headdress.

In my book Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance Italy Lascar 2015, I had claimed the same thing: Lisa Gherardini has nothing to do with the Mona Lisa hanging at the Louvre and that the image we now see is just a ghost emerging from Leonardo’s Past. In fact she is the image of his mother, as claimed in 1910 by Sigmund Freud. See http://www.lascarpublishing.com/leonardo/

Here is the link to the BBC article and their upcoming documentary:

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-35031997

Bernardo Bembo has nothing to do with the Lichtenstein Lady by Leonardo Da Vinci.

The Lichtenstein Lady 

It is also known as the Ginevra de’ Benci at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. and it is seen by most art critics as the first portrait created by a 22 years old Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519).
The influence of Flemish painters like Jan Van Eyck (c.1390-1441), Hans Memling (1435-1494) and Petrus Christus (1410-1472/73) is extremely strong. This portrait is a haunting, gloomy picture, possessing a magnetic spell similar to that exerted by the Mona Lisa at the Louvre Museum. Once you stare into her sad face, you will never be able to forget her: she will remain carved into your subconscious. It is kept under bulletproof glass with armed guards keeping a close watch on it. According to Andrè Suarès (1) this picture lack the ‘the tears and music of love’ and she is similar to an algebraic equation, according to Serge Bramly(2). It is a small picture on a Lombardy’s white poplar wood panel, like the Mona Lisa, having the size of 39 x 37 cm but the lower part of it, as well as the right side, was sawn away by at least 8 inches, and looking at the reverse of the painting we can see the mutilation in the wreath. Up to the year 1866 this picture was assigned to Lucas Cranach (1472-1553) and only after that it was correctly attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci by Art Historian Gustav Waagen(3).
At close examination the slit of Ginevra’s bodice had been overpainted. Probably she was keeping her hands close to her breast or perhaps the top of some flowers were ending there. There is a sketch of hands made by Leonardo in the Windsor Collection which could fit it but that is just guess.
This attribution has been confirmed recently by forensic scientists who had found Leonardo Da Vinci’s fingerprints on it for we know that Leonardo used his fingers to smooth details of his paintings and his fingers were used for the face of Ginevra and for the juniper leaves on her back.

Ailsa Mellon Bruce
This impressive painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery by the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. Ailsa Mellon Bruce (1901 – 1969) was the daughter of Andrew W. Mellon (1855 – 1937) a controversial, roguish, but extremely successful financier who, after amassing a huge fortune during WW1, began collecting old masters’ paintings. He then became Secretary of the Treasury from 1921 to 1932 and U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 1932 until 1933. In 1930 he was quick to seize a golden opportunity offered by Stalin’s indifference to the arts: the Soviet dictator had ordered to the directors of the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad to raise cash by selling artworks. Mellon took home 21 incredible paintings paying what was for him a pittance, just to mention a couple of them: Raphael’s Alba Madonna and Jan Van Eyck’s Annunciation. In 1936 Mellon convinced President Roosevelt to build the National Gallery of Art in Washington and donated his collection to the American people, even financing and supervising the construction of that imposing building.
In 1967, his daughter Ailsa purchased Leonardo Da Vinci’s  Lichtenstein Lady from the Princely House of Lichtenstein, paying five million dollars for it. A hefty sum of money in those days: possibly the equivalent of 100 millions today but clearly still a bargain. How this portrait got it into Lichtenstein in the first place it is anybody’s guess and it is normally seen as a portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci.

Who was Ginevra de’ Benci?
Tradition has that this is a portrait of the seventeen years old Ginevra de’ Benci, daughter of Amerigo de’ Benci, painted on the occasion of her marriage with Luigi di Bernardo di Lapo Niccolini, on 15 January 1474. In Florence, Ginevra not only was a famous beauty but also an accomplished poet, possessing a classic instruction. We have two sonnets by Lorenzo de’ Medici in which her charm and beauty are celebrated.
That Leonardo Da Vinci was a friend of the brother of Ginevra, Giovanni, it is certain because he left his unfinished Adoration of the Magi – today at the Uffizi Museum, Florence – in the house of Amerigo de’ Benci, Giovanni and Ginevra’s father, when in 1482 he had departed to Milan.
Giorgio Vasari (4) in his Life of Leonardo Da Vinci dated 1550 (second edition 1568) mentions that he had painted a wonderful portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci and also the Anonimo Magliabecchiano (5) as well as the Book of Antonio Billi confirm it.
Granted that Leonardo had indeed painted her portrait, are we sure that this the Lichtenstein Lady is really Ginevra de’ Benci? The fact is that we are not sure, as in most of the things created by Leonardo Da Vinci. Critics tend to believe that she is, simply because at her back there is a juniper tree, ginepro in Italian, therefore Ginevra. A rather weak argument and when we look at her it is hard to believe that this lady was only seventeen years old and that she was a great beauty who had the Venetian ambassador Bernardo Bembo (1433-1519)  lose his head for her.

Bernardo Bembo
This lady, more than a girl, looks like a mature woman and, furthermore, she seems like going to a funeral, more than going to her marriage: she wears no jewelry on her neck and carries a funereal black sash on her shoulder. If really this work was delivered by Leonardo on the date of her marriage, as it is claimed, then he should have begun it at least one year earlier, when she was only sixteen years old. But we know for a fact that Leonardo could not be pushed to work fast, not even by kings and queens. Quite the contrary!
Because of the wreath on the back – not painted by Leonardo Da Vinci – some see a connection with the Venetian Ambassador Bernardo Bembo (6). There is a garland of a juniper and a palm painted in the back with the words Virtvtem Forma Decorat normally translated as Beauty adorns Virtue. The laurel and the palm were present in Bembo’s own device.
Bernardo Bembo was married with Elena Marcello, who gave him several children including the famous humanist Pietro Bembo. It is claimed that this painting was commissioned by the Venetian Ambassador Bernardo Bembo, a friend of the Benci, because his family motto was Virtvs and Honor (Virtue and Honor), with a laurel and palm, which is similar to that we find on the back of the painting.
Legend has that has soon as Bernardo Bembo arrived in Florence he was in love with the newly married Ginevra de’ Benci. It is claimed that it was a just a platonic, intellectual love, of the kind sung by Dante and Petrarca but we cannot be sure about it because, in spite of his motto, he was certainly not a gentleman. We have several letters he penned in Florence requesting favors and money for himself and for his family by the Medici, creating a clear conflict of interests with the interests of the Country he was representing. Bernardo Bembo was very close to the circle of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici and in fact he did business with them which had little to do with diplomacy, borrowing large sums of money from them.
Bembo’s first stint in Florence begun in January 1475 and lasted until the month of May 1476, and he struck a great personal friendship with Giuliano and Lorenzo de’ Medici. Proof is that on 15 October, 1510 when Giuliano de’ Medici, the duke of Nemours and patron of Leonardo Da Vinci, was in Venice, he did stay in Bembo’s house
Bernardo Bembo was still in Venice on the 23rd of December 1474 when the Senate appointed him Ambassador to Florence, he then reached Florence in January 1475 because there he witnessed the famous giostra which had inspired the Stanze by Angelo Poliziano. They were games organized to celebrate the league between Florence, Milan and Venice. Because of such close relationship with the Medici, the Venetian Senate sent Bembo back to Florence a second time as their representative in July 1478, after the murder of Giuliano de’ Medici during the Pazzi conspiracy. He will stay in Florence for two more years but the levity and happiness of his first stay could not be repeated because of the different situation in the Italian Peninsula and in Florence.
Ginevra married on January 14, 1474 and Bembo arrived as Venetian ambassador in 1475. The Florentine year was beginning ab incarnatione – that is the 25th of March – and therefore the true date of Ginevra de’ Benci’s marriage should be moved ahead of one year, to January 14, 1475, it is thus impossible that the portrait was commissioned by Bembo for the marriage of his platonic sweetheart as most of the books dedicated to Leonardo Da Vinci are claiming. As we have said Bernardo Bembo arrived in Florence in January 1475 – not ab incarnatione this time – and this is certain because he was there when the great Giostra won by Giuliano de’ Medici, was staged and it really happened in January 1475.  Such tournament was a celebration of the peace brokered by Lorenzo de’ Medici in November 1474 with an alliance between Florence, Milan and Venice.(7)
Because of such clear date sequence it seems clear that Bernardo Bembo had nothing to do with the Lichtenstein Lady’s portrait .

Fioretta Gorini
At the Bargello Museum in Florence there is a marble bust attributed to Andrea del Verrocchio (1435 – 1488) – Leonardo da Vinci’s teacher – believed to represents Fioretta Gorini (1453? – 26 April 1478). She is holding a bunch of flowers close to her chest (fioretti or fiorellini in Italian). Carlo Pedretti is one of the few to believe that represented there is actually one of the favorite of Lorenzo de’ Medici, Lucrezia Donati (1447 –1501) who had married Niccolò Ardinghelli, a merchant who died in 1496. (8) This opinion by Pedretti has merits, because Lorenzo de’ Medici, after married Clarice Orsini for state reasons had always her in his mind and there is trace of a commission from Lorenzo to Verrocchio to paint her portrait. There we may notice the same somber, funereal, expression on the portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci at the National Gallery.(9)
Virtually nothing is known about this Fioretta, mistress of Giuliano de’ Medici but her surname, Gorini, seems not Florentine. Fioretta gave birth to Giulio de’ Medici on May, 26 1478, pope Clement VII, dyeing at childbirth, one month after the murder of her lover, Giuliano de’ Medici. It is likely that Bembo had met the courtesan Fioretta Gorini there, even if we have no details about this meeting, nor about the unlucky Fioretta.
The latin motto on the back could well refer to the virtuous Fioretta, not to the virtuous Ginevra who had repelled the unrecorded amorous advances of Ambassador Bembo. The so called portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci could rather be the portrait of Fioretta Gorini. The baby born to Fioretta was taken to be baptized by Antonio Giamberti da Sangallo (1443-1516), an architect and a close friend of Giuliano and then presented to Lorenzo de’ Medici, who accepted him into the Medici’s household.
Having been so close to Lorenzo and his deceased brother, Giuliano, Bernardo Bembo may have thought a sensitive move to commission to Leonardo Da Vinci a portrait of the deceased Fioretta, to be given to her orphan son, the future pope Clement VII. Hence the origin of the back of the painting, reminding Bembo personal device, and possibly because of the subject we can see a reason for Giulio de’ Medici to get rid of that painting, not wanting to let people know that his mother was a courtesan.

Is she Caterina, the mother of Leonardo Da Vinci?
That Leonardo painted a portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci is sure, but it seems also sure that it has been lost or that it is hanging in a Museum gallery with a wrong attribution.
This is a leonardesque mystery similar to the head of Monna Lisa del Giocondo, which Leonardo painted but has probably nothing to do with the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. During the Renaissance when an artist received a commission for a portrait he was not free to deliver something which would not please the sitter, like in our days did Francis Bacon’s unflattering portrait of Queen Elisabeth II…When Leonardo painted the Lady with the Ermine for Ludovico Sforza he painted the real Cecilia Gallerani, and when he painted another of his favorites, Letizia Crivelli, in a picture known as La Belle Ferronnière he had the real lady portrayed.
The likeness of the marble bust at the Bargello, thought to be Fioretta Gorini, with Leonardo’s Lichtenstein Lady‘s painting is just too great to be missed. It might also be that this marble bust was not sculptured by Verrocchio – in fact its attribution is uncertain, like for most of Verrocchio’s works, with the exception of the David and the Bartolomeo Colleoni equestrian monument in Venice.
We believe that this marble bust could well be the only sculptures in existence by Leonardo da Vinci. But we are not the first to make such claim and we do believe that there are strong supporting arguments.
It seem to us that with the Lichtenstein Lady Leonardo da Vinci was painting a similar dead woman represented in the marble bust, changing somehow her facial expression but keeping the same silken blouse and the same hairstyle and bloodless skin. The slit in the bodice of the painting at the National Gallery had been badly over-painted; this is another indication that originally it was closer to the marble bust and the overpainting was probably due to the fact that the top of the sprig of flowers was visible there, or the top of her fingers.
The Medici had a tradition of keeping their mistresses secret and they may have not revealed to Verrocchio and Leonardo the true identity of the lady they were representing, nor their real appearance. This is a process which Giuliano de’ Medici duke of Nemours will perhaps follow years later in commissioning a portrait of Pacifica Brandani to Leonardo, which is now known as the Mona Lisa of the Louvre.
For such commissions there was no need to deliver a portrait which resembled the dead person; it could be idealized according to the wishes of the artist. In the case of Mona Lisa Leonardo had may have painted a dreamlike image of his mother’s smile, as Sigmund Freud wrote in his 1910’s essay but in the case of the Lichtenstein Lady he may have in fact copied his mother as she really was. In this picture the Chinese characters of her face are even stronger than in the case of the Mona Lisa and a further hint lays the fact that the face of Leonardo in the Adoration of the Magi is very similar to that of Ginevra de’ Benci. Leonardo Da Vinci may have used his facial traits to sketch the face of Fioretta Gorini or he may have used his mother’s facial traits. Leonardo may have sketched his mother, Caterina, during one of his visits to Vinci and then he transposed her features into the painting of a dead lady who had given birth to a Medici, destined to the papacy. The Chinese traits of this lady are clear and impressive, then the only concession he seems to have made the clients who commissioned the picture could be her blonde hairs, a symbol of fairness also in those years. The art of coloring hairs was widespread in Italy since Roman times.
Thus the Latin motto on the back could be raised to a loftier signification: the wretched Chinese slave (10) that was his mother, in spite of her unfamiliar face, was to be honored up to our days because of her virtue.

1) Suarès Voyage de Condottiere, Paris, 1931.
2) Bramly, S. Leonardo. The Artist and the Man, 1991, p. 150.
3) Pedretti C. Leonardo & Io, Milan, 2008, p. 88.
4) Giorgio Vasari, The Lives of the Eminent Painters and Architects, 1st Ed. Florence, 1550. He drew Ginevra, the daughter of Amerigo Benci, a beatiful portrait, and then abandoned the work of the friars, who recalled Filippino, though he was prevented from finishing it by death.
5) Anonimo Magliabecchiano (known also as Anonimo Gaddiano). In Florence he painted a portrait of Ginevra d’Amerigho Benci from Nature, a work which was so finished that it seemed not a portrait but Ginevra herself.
6) Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Fond. Treccani, Vol. 8 1966.
7) Pedretti, Carlo Leonardo & Io, Milan, 2008, p. 501.
8) Walter, Ingeborg Lorenzo il Magnifico e il suo Tempo, Rome, 2005. Dj legname, drentovi la fighura della testa della Lucherezia de’ Donatj
9) Hans Mackowsky, William Suida et al.
10) Paratico A. Leonardo Da Vinci. A Chinese Scholar Lost in Renaissance’s Italy, Lascar Publishing, p.60

Il Celebre Paesaggio di Leonardo Da Vinci del 5 Agosto 1473 rappresenta la Valdinievole

 

 

Abstract

The View of the Valdarno sketched by Leonardo Da Vinci in 1473, the first work dated and taken by some art critics as the first example of pure landscape in European history, actually represent the Valdinievole not the Valdarno. The reason of this lays in the fact that Leonardo wrote that the 5th of August was the day of the Saint Mary of the Snow. But there is only one village in Tuscany dedicated to such festivity and that is Chiesina Uzzanese, in Valdinievole.

Al Museo degli Uffizi di Firenze si conserva un celebre schizzo eseguito da Leonardo Da Vinci. Questo viene considerato importantissimo per vari motivi, che andremo qui di seguito ad analizzare. Si tratta d’un foglio di carta di 19.6 x 28.7 cm. che Leonardo utilizzò su entrambi i lati. I disegni sul rovescio sono soltanto abbozzati e vi troviamo una frase difficilmente interpretabile, scritta da sinistra verso destra, che Zollner dice essere:

io morando danto sono chontento

Sul diritto troviamo invece una magnifica veduta della Valdarno, secondo alcuni, mentre secondo altri si tratterebbe della Valdinievole. Dimostreremo qui che la Valdinievole è l’interpretazione più corretta.
La notevole importanza di questo disegno – pur essendo solo uno schizzo preparatorio – consiste nel fatto che è la prima opera datata di Leonardo sulla quale egli vi pone la data, infatti vi leggiamo in maniera speculare, da destra a sinistra:

dì di santa Maria della neve addi 5 dagghossto 1473

Leonardo aveva 21 anni e questo, secondo alcuni critici d’arte, è il primo paesaggio europeo dove non compaiono figure umane, un fatto comune in Cina, ma che in Europa non s’era mai visto prima.

Come possiamo dunque dire che questo schizzo fu ispirato a Leonardo dalla Valdinievole? Secondo la nostra ipotesi ciò è dovuto all’accenno da lui fatto alla Madonna della Neve, che in effetti veniva festeggiata il 5 agosto dalla Chiesa Cattolica, mentre per la Chiesa Greco Ortodossa quel giorno è la festa della vigilia della trasfigurazione di Gesù sul Monte Tabor.

L’accenno da parte di Leonardo a una festa religiosa è strano, perché sappiamo da Giorgio Vasari che in gioventù egli fu animato da un forte spirito anti-Cristiano. Ma fu forse motivato da un fatto straordinario che l’indusse ad aggiungere alla data anche l’anniversario liturgico?

La festa della Madonna della Neve ebbe inizio nel IV secolo, con papa Liberio, allorché un nobile romano di nome Giovanni e sua moglie, non avendo figli, decisero di offrire i propri beni alla Santa Vergine per la costruzione d’una chiesa. La Madonna approvò il loro disegno e gli apparve in sogno fra il 4 e il 5 agosto, dicendo che avrebbe compiuto un miracolo nel luogo dove voleva veder sorgere la Chiesa: vi avrebbe fatto cadere la neve.
La mattina seguente i due coniugi parlarono al papa e scoprirono che anche lui aveva fatto lo stesso sogno e insieme si recarono sul luogo indicato: l’Esquilino. Lo trovarono coperto di neve! E il papa vi tracciò il perimetro della erigenda chiesa seguendo la superficie del terreno innevato. Quella chiesa fu detta Liberiana, mentre il popolo la chiamava ad nives (della neve). Fu poi demolita e ingrandita da Sisto III (fu papa dal 432 al 440) e, in ricordo del Concilio di Efeso, la chiamò Basilica di S. Maria Maggiore. In seguito, a partire dal 1568, la denominazione ufficiale della festa liturgica della Madonna della Neve fu cambiata e dedicata alla Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, con la celebrazione ferma al 5 agosto.

Il miracolo della neve caduta ad agosto non fu più citato negli annali ecclesiastici, perché considerato leggendario e non documentato. Ma il culto sulla Madonna della Neve restò sempre forte e fra il XV e il XVIII secolo si ebbe la sua massima diffusione, con molte chiese a lei dedicate e con grandi celebrazioni agostane che coinvolgevano intere città e borghi, dove il miracolo veniva ripetuto con una pioggia di petali di rosa bianca che cadevano dall’interno della cupola, durante la Santa Messa.
In Italia si contano oggi 152 edifici sacri fra chiese, santuari, basiliche minori ecc. intitolate alla Madonna della Neve e ogni regione ne possiede una notevole quantità, per esempio: Piemonte 31, Lombardia 19, Campania con 17.

In Toscana questo culto non fu molto praticato e ci risulta che vi esista, ed esisteva, una sola chiesa dedicata alla Madonna della Neve: questa si trova a Chiesina Uzzanese, che oggi conta poco meno di 5.000 abitanti, in provincia di Pistoia. La chiesa della Madonna della Neve che vi sorge fu realizzata intorno alla metà dell’Ottocento sulla base di un edificio più antico, anch’esso avente la stessa Patrona. Sulla sua facciata in pietra con timpano triangolare vi troviamo un portale d’ingresso seicentesco ed e’ affiancata da un campanile di recente costruzione a struttura aperta.

Chiesina Uzzanese si trova sul limite occidentale della Valdinievole, di cui è il comune più piccolo, a nord-ovest del Padule di Fucecchio e a nord delle colline delle Cerbaie. Dunque per via di tale accenno da parte di Leonardo Da Vinci ci par lecito pensare ipotizzare che egli passò per Chiesina Uzzanese quel giorno, prima o dopo la sua escursione estiva, durante la quale non trascurò di disegnare su di un foglio, anche se non è possibile pensare che Leonardo lo abbia completato di getto, essendo molto preciso e dettagliato, e ci ritornò sopra nei giorni successivi. Dunque l’accenno alla Madonna della Neve gli può essere stato suggerito dalle celebrazioni festive alle quali aveva assistito quel giorno, e che gli erano rimaste impresse nella memoria.

 

Is the stealing of Artworks in Verona an act of Terrorism?

A colossal theft was carried out in the evening of 19 November 2015 in Verona, at the Castelvecchio Museum. A well organised band of criminals had just a cashier and one single, not-armed guard, to subdue before leaving with 17 masterpieces and half-destroying another picture. Here are the missing pictures:

Jacopo Tintoretto 
Lactating Madonna
Moving the Arc
Banquet of Baltassar
Samson
Judgement of Solomon

Peter Paul Rubens
Dame with licnidi

Mantegna
Holy Family

Domenico Tintoretto
Man’s portrait
Portrait of an Admiral

Pisanello
The Madonna of the Quail

Bellini
San Jerome

G.F. Caroto
A boy with a sketch
Young Benedectine

Hans de Jode
Port at sea

Giovanni Benini
Portrait of Girolamo Pompei 

Italian newspapers are reporting that the total value of the stolen works is around 15 million euros. If this estimate comes from the director of the Museum, the 63 years old Paola Marini, who at the time of the robbery was at the Restaurant “12 Apostles” to receive a prize, she should consider resigning. She will be leaving anyway, called by Minister Franceschini to work at the Culture’s Ministry in Rome. Only last week a Modigliani was sold for 170,4 million USD, therefore how can Dr. Marini and the Italians who read newspapers believe what she says, thus deluding themselves into thinking that all the stolen works are only worth 10% of a Modigliani?
In fact the total loss for Verona and Italy may well be in a range varying between 3 to 5 billion USD in the open market, although these paintings are so famous that it is absolutely impossible to sell them, but this fact can only increase our anguish because they may be lost forever. Let us just mention one of the pictures: the Pisanello’s Madonna, an incredible masterpiece painted by Sienese who lived in Verona, Antonio Pisanello (1355 – 1455), one of the most mysterious artists ever existed,  who may have travelled to Costantinople. We may say that this lost picture of Holy Mary is at the same level, or even above, of the Mona Lisa of Leonardo kept at the Louvre Museum in Paris.

So, why have they been stolen if they are not sellable? To ask for a ransom or, as the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi has rightly suggested, could this be a new chapter of the Jihad carried out by the terrorists of Isis? Italians benpensanti see Sgarbi’s utterance as one of his usual exaggerations but they have no idea how poorer Verona, and us all, are after such tragedy