Today I want to talk to you about Botticelli’s Birth of Venus, and the representation of the ultimate ideal of female beauty and where Botticelli derived his inspiration. This is a small detail of Botticelli’s much larger painting, that I painted when I was a student in Florence. I attended a course in the Oltrarno...

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The other day I received an email from Sabrina who is studying Art History at the University of Vienna in Austria. She is writing her thesis on la Pieve in Arezzo and asked if she might use a couple of photos I took of the church. In return I asked her to send me a...

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Cimabue was a Florentine painter who lived from 1251 until 1302. He is significant in that he is one of the first painters to shift from stylistic representations popular during the medieval ages, signifying a turning point in Art History toward the Renaissance. Paintings before Cimabue were flat with little or no depth and figures had...

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It seems the Ponte Vecchio in Florence is always in the news for one reason or another! Are you familiar with the famous landmark? Have you walked across one of the original Florentine bridges that connect the Oltrarno to the city center? At the foot of the bridge, it is said Dante waited each day for...

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