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The beauty of Perugia doesn’t come from her majestic monuments or impressive squares, but from the personal experience that is felt by walking through the alleys of her historical centre.

Saint Ercolano church

Wandering the city’s streets, it’s possible to end up being in wonderful corners with stunning landscapes that are captured by lots of tourists, arrived in the city exactly for this peculiarity. As an unrepeatable treasure hunt of amazing and unique views, inspiration for paintings by all the ages’ artists.

In the frescoes of the Priori Chapel, a chapel inner the National Gallery of Umbria, it’s portrayed the pictorial cycle of Saint Ludovico da Tolosa and Saint Ercolano lives, by the Perugian artist Benedetto Bonfigli. The episodes of Saint Ercolano’s life, one of the three patrons of Perugia, show a representation of the city in the fifteen century, with the numerous towers not yet destroyed. Even if the landscape it’s different from today, some elements are still recognizable.

The episode La presa di Perugia da parte di Totila [Totila’s siege of Perugia] features the Goti conquer of the city and the martyrdom of Saint Ercolano, whose burial is portrayed on the lower right, just in front of the well identifiable façade of the homonymous church.

 

 

La presa di Perugia da parte di Totila [Totila’s siege of Perugia], by Benedetto Bonfigli

The next episode, Prima traslazione del corpo di Sant’Ercolano dalla prima sepoltura alla Basilica di San Pietro [Translation to San Pietro], shows the displacement of the Saint obsequies from the Saint Ercolano church to the Saint Peter cathedral, with a huge procession. In this fresco is possible to see in the foreground, on the right, the red and white façade and the impressive bell tower of the Saint Peter cathedral.

Translation to San Pietro, by Benedetto Bonfigli

While, on the centre of the background, it’s visible the basilica church of Saint Domenico with his famous stained-glass window and the bell tower, whose upper part was demolished after the Rocca Paolina construction. Another example of a Renaissance representation of Perugia, it’s portrayed in the panel Gonfalone della Giustizia by the most famous Perugian artist, Il Perugino. In this painting, which is now in the National Gallery of Umbria, it’s seen, in the foreground, a view of the Porta Eburnea district, one of the five districts of the historical centre of Perugia, as a beautiful postcard from the sixteen century.

Gonfalone della Giustizia by Il Perugino

One of the most famous Perugian landmark is the Rocca Paolina. Built by the will of Pope Paolo III Farnese, from whom it takes the name, was erected between 1540 and 1543, as an emblem of the Pope supremacy over the city. After the annexation of Perugia in the kingdom of Italy, it was gradually destroyed, till the small portion visible today. Two little paintings of the Perugian artist Giuseppe Rossi, that are now in the National Gallery of Umbria, show the majesty and the impressiveness of the fortress that, before the demolition, englobed all the southside of the city.

It’s interesting how little it’s remained of the original structure: the Pope Palace, at the top right of the board, it’s today replaced by Piazza Italia, Giardini Carducci and Palazzo della Prefettura. While the so-called Tenaglia [Pincer], at the bottom left, stood in the place where today there is Piazza Partigiani.

The pictorial representation of Perugia’s beauties it’s not an exclusive prerogative of Perugian artists, but it’s seen also in foreign artists or artists that come from other parts of Italy that, after a long-term residence, fell in love with the city and portrayed it in fascinating paintings.

Arco Etrusco, by Luigi Marzo

Luigi Marzo is an artist from the area of Salento who, after coming to Perugia to study at the university, had been enchanted by the city, and decided to remain to live there. In the small expressionistic painting called Arco Etrusco, he represents one of the landmarks of the city, the north gate of the Etruscan wall. Marzo chose to portray the Arch focusing not on an accurate and objective representation but expressing through the painting his sensations and emotions over the place illustrated. The result is an intimate and personal artwork. The little painting by the Dutch artist Christian Seebauer, shows a view of Perugia from the Pincetto zone. Comparing the picture to a photograph, the confrontation is surprising. The punctuality ad accuracy with whom the painter has depicted all the details is really remarkable and demonstrates the admiration of Seebauer for the city, grown during his studies at the University for Foreigners of Perugia.

 

Perugia, Christian Seebauer

 

The last suggested painting belongs to Valerio Lombardelli, aka Wallas, an artist from the city of Pesaro. The print, titled Perugia, Quando Scende La Notte, Si Accendono Le Luci E Inizia Lo Spettacolo Dell’amore [Perugia, when the night falls, the lights come on and the show of love begins], represents the most emblematic place of the city, the IV November Square, with the Major Fountain and the staircase of the Priori Palace. The work, part of a series of paintings dedicated to the city, presents the typical characteristics of the artist’s style, with bright and unnatural colours and a light sight despite the starry night. A dual representation, intimate and explosive, that proposes herself as an invitation to visit Perugia.
The illustration of Perugia’s monuments and landscapes doesn’t end with these few examples, there are countless paintings and drawings by more or less famous artists that, every year, engage in the city representation.
A pure and simple act of love, a gratitude gesture to a city that hosted them and made them feel home. In fact, whether it’s writing, music or painting, art is a necessary expression of feelings, and there’s nothing that inspires more than a beautiful view.

 

Perugia, Quando Scende La Notte, Si Accendono Le Luci E Inizia Lo Spettacolo Dell’amore [Perugia, when the night falls, the lights come on and the show of love begins], Wallas

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Food and Wine

Soft and white inside, browned and slightly hardened on the outside, alone or as a side dish, the torta al testo has become a symbol of Umbria.

Bread has always been the fuel of the people, not just as a basic source of food, but also as a propulsion for the people’s revolts against tyranny and oppression. The rise of the price of bread has in many occasions throughout history been the pretext for uprisings and revolutions. Think of Chapter Eleven in Manzoni’s The Betrothed when the unreasoning crowd assaults the Forno delle Grucce baker’s shop, or the most notable sentence attributed to Mary Antoinette: «If they have no bread, let them eat cake». Within our regional borders, one may remember how the people of Perugia reacted to the papal victory of 1540 by boycotting his tax on salt, banishing it from the bread dough forever.

Though as the Nineteenth century approached with its industrial revolution bread became a common food, its preparation was still a long and laborious endeavor involving the entire family. Between one batch of bread and the other, 7 or 8 days could pass, because there were many ways stale bread could be employed and the mouths to feed were innumerous. The wait for more nutritious food could be very long especially for the peasants, bound to the hard work in the fields, so the torta al testo was born. 

 

prodotti tipici umbri

Torta al testo

The secret? How it is baked

Soft and white within, browned and slightly hardened on the outside, alone or as an accompaniment for the strong-flavored cheeses, the seasoned cured meats and the rich arrabbiata sauce used in the Umbrian tradition for meat stews – the torta al testo has become a symbol of our region. The dough is made with water, flour, salt and yeast – in the 1800s baking soda, sourdough or brewer’s yeast, in the 1900s idrolitina (baking soda and acid salt) was introduced, today ousted by baking powder. The name al testo refers to the half-inch thick disk used for baking.

Before gas stoves and cast-iron flat-pans became widespread, in the central-north areas of the region this disk was made of terracotta or river sand and clay and would be left to warm on a grill[1]. The testo – or panaro when in Gubbio and Città di Castello[2] – would have reached the perfect temperature when the flour doused on top turned yellow: then the bread, of the dimension and shape of the disk, would be laid on top to bake for about 15-20 minutes[3].

South of Todi, this white flat bread was cooked in the fireplace – previously warmed with the coals then brushed away – flipped and covered with warm ashes and cinder after it had browned. Half-way between the testo and the Terni-based fuoco morto (i.e. dead fire which cooks the pizza under the fire), were once more the peasants, who loved their torta al testo snacks in the fields. There, they could also pluck certain rock slabs, called dead or serene, later tempered to make sure it could resist heat and sudden changes in temperature[4] and turned into the perfect testo.

And if simplicity is not enough…

Creativity cannot be tied down and our forefathers knew this well, juggling restrictions and mouths to feed, they would refuse nothing that the land could offer. The torte al testo would sometimes include ciccioli[5] and pecorino cheese, olive oil – or pig fat -, eggs and grated pecorino cheese, diced bacon, raisins or dried plums, walnuts and yet again… pecorino, a prized ingredient in the mountainous areas where sheep herds were common.

The type of flour could also offer a curious variation, though today it has been abandoned for it is a painful recollection of a poor and difficult past[6]: corn flour was once used, mixed with wheat flour, salt and very hot water, forming a more granular dough which could only be kneaded by hand. This version of the torta would never be flipped and would cook for at least twenty minutes; it was often combined with cooked greens and potatoes, raw onions, beans and fava-beans.

A clarification

To be fair, Umbrians didn’t really invent this type of bread. In the way of cooking it, as in the dough and the shape, similar versions lost in the folds of time may be found, handed down from father to son, from conqueror to defeated.

If it is true that the torta al testo is originally nothing else but an unleavened bread, it is worth mentioning the Egyptian bread, which was similarly made out of spelt flour, water, salt and sometimes dates and coriander seeds. After some hours of rest, it was baked on a burning-hot stone, obtaining a bread with a «hard and shiny crust, dense, heavy and fragrant»[7].

Cato the Elder, in his De Agri Cultura dated 160 b.C., cites a certain placenta, similar in shape and lack of leavening to the torta al testo of the origins: «you shall carefully clean the fireplace, you will heat it to the right temperature, then you shall place the placenta. Cover it with a hot tile». Quite similar to the testuacium of Varro, similarly baked with the help of a roof tile, or to the panis artopticus, cooked under a bell[8].

Pliny the elder, on the other hand, offers a full list – though he himself specifies it is not complete – of the numerous types of bread available in Ancient Rome. One may note that for the Romans, there was no distinction between a focaccia (or pizza) and bread, especially when considering the panis subcinerinus or fucacius cooked under the cinder, the panis adipatus seasoned with bits of lard or bacon, or even the panis testicius, eaten by the legionaries after baking it on a clay tile, eloquent enough in its name[9].

The queen of the Umbrian table

Whether deriving from Ancient Rome or from the mefa made with flour, water and salt mentioned in the Tavole Eugubine, the torta al testo is the true queen of the Umbrian table. Easy, quick and tasty, it has the merit of deriving from a peasant’s meal and becoming a typical Umbrian dish. In its simplicity it is the expression of the local household and of the afternoons in the fields, with the sun shining on the bent backs and the lunch baskets full of this fragrant bread cooked on a testo.

 

[1] Cfr. R. Boini, La torta al testo, in «Percorsi umbri», n. 2-3 June 2006.

[2] In Gubbio the torta al testo is known as crescia (risen) because in the baking process it rises and thickens.

[3] Cfr. R. Boini, op.cit.

[4] The place where the blocks of stone were smoothened were called schiacciaie (“flatteners”) and the bread originally was called schiaccia (“flattened”). Cfr. O. Fillanti, La torta al testo in Umbria, Perugia, Promocamera, 2011.

[5] The ciccioli are the tiny bits of meat residual to the extraction of the pig fat, cfr. I. Trotta, Perugia a Tavola, Perugia, Morlacchi Editore, 2017.

[6] Cfr. R. Boini, La cucina umbra, Ponte San Giovanni (PG), Calzetti Mariucci, 1995.

[7] Cfr. www.vitantica.net, consulted on August 21st, 2019.

[8] Cfr. www.cerealialudi.org, consulted on August 20th, 2019.

[9] Cfr. www.taccuinigastrosofici.it, consultato il 19/8/2019.

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Art Culture

The 15th December of 1860, the extraordinary administrator Gioacchino Napoleone Pepoli set up the Provincia dell’Umbria by Act. No. 197: that way, the four previous pontifical delegations – Orvieto, Perugia, Spoleto, and Rieti – were united in one body. Also, the district (mandamento) of Gubbio was separated from the delegation of Urbino e Pesaro and united to the new body against the district of Visso, which was aggregated to Camerino. The Provincia dell’Umbria was organized in 6 districts (circondario), divided into 176 administrative municipalities (comuni) and 143 aggregated (appodiati) representing a surface of 9702 km2.

The Provincia dell’Umbria emerged among huge controversy and discontent that marchese Pepoli attempted to resolve both with words, calling peolple to give a demonstration of self denial “sacrificing traditions and local rivalries to homeland”[1], and with the force, suppressing any possible armed reaction.

 

 

Since the place of its construction was strategically defined, that is where once stood the much-hated papal symbol, Rocca Paolina, the Palazzo della Provincia has retained a major symbolic value. In this respect, the choice to assign the decorative enterprise of the interior to Domenico Bruschi is not a case. In fact, he had been working more than one occasion together with architect Antonio Cipolla, who had been entrusted with the provinding of the expert opinion, which was a plus, but especially Bruschi was the son of Carlo, who had taken part into the first War of Independence and this was a guarantee of intrinsic adhesion to modernity and of loyalty to unified Italy and its institutions. Therefore Bruschi’s cycle of frescoes, started in summer 1873 and finished at the time of the first provincial council held the 10th of September of the same year, has an as an extremely valuable symbol in order to sanction the officiality of the new institution. In the Sala del Consiglio Bruschi paints 8 allegorical figures representing the personification of the newly established political entities. He places the Provincia dell’Umbria and Italy facing each other next to the towns of Foligno, Orvieto, Perugia, Rieti, Spoleto e Terni “in a radial arrangement and essentially not hierarchical that underlines the harmonic participation of the parts to the whole”[2].

The Provincia dell’Umbria is placed – it’s not a case – in line with the President’s bench and it is represented seated on a stone throne with the coat of arms of Perugia, Foligno, Terni, Spoleto, Rieti e Orvieto and it is surmounted by the gonfalon of the Provincia dell’Umbria (a blue grifo passant on a red background). A hilly landscape in the background together with beech and olive branches that the woman supports with her right hand and nonetheless, on the left side, with the grain and the fruits oveflowing the cornucopia call to mind the agricultural vocation and at the same time the fertility of the Provincia dell’Umbria soil.

 

Domenico Bruschi, Provincia dell’Umbria, 1873 (Perugia, Palazzo della Provincia)

T

he woman wears splendid clothes of blue and gold brocade. The symbolism of the colours underlines the image that you wanted to put across, so while blue foreshadows mercy and loyalty, gold stands surety for legitimacy of power, glory and force. It is no coincidence that the eagle, always symbolizing cosmic power and here chosen as the subject holding the scroll with the name Provincia dell’Umbria in the Chamber 10 of the same Palace, stands out against a starry sky decorated in the same colours.

 

[1] The quotation is taken from G.B. Furiozzi, La Provincia dell’Umbria dal 1861 al 1870, Perugia, Provincia di Perugia, 1987, p. 7 e n. 10.

[2] S. Petrillo, La decorazione pittorica tra nuovi simboli, storia e politica per immagini, in F.F. Mancini (curated by), Il Palazzo della Provincia di Perugia, Perugia, Quattroemme, 2009, p. 218.

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Art Culture Events

Umbria preserves the memory of Raphael’s extraordinary artistic story; throughout the region, in fact, Rapahael left traces, direct or indirect, of his art.

Crucifixion Gavari

He was one of the most famous painters and architects of the Renaissance. He considered one of the greatest artists of all time, his works marked an essential path for all subsequent painters and he was of vital importance for the development of the artistic language of the centuries to come.
Raphael was born in Urbino in «the year 1483, on Good Friday, at the tree in the morning, by Giovanni de’ Santi, a painter no less excellent, but a good man of good talent, and capable of directing his children to that good way which, unfortunately for him, had not been shown to him in his beautiful youth»[1]. A second version identifies the artist’s birth day on 6th April.

The school of Perugino

The city of Urbino was decisive for young Raphael: indeed, from a very young age, he had access to the rooms of Palazzo Ducale, and he could admire the works of Piero della Francesca, Francesco di Giorgio Martini and Melozzo da Forlì.
But the real apprenticeship took place in Perugino’s workshop of Perugino, where he was able to rediscover, through the refined variations of the master, the rigorous spatial articulation and the monumental compositive order.
Raphael intervened in the frescoes of the College of Change in Perugia: his painting is recognizable where the masses of colour assume almost a plastic value. It is precisely in this context that Raphael first saw the grotesque, painted on the ceiling of the College, which later entered his iconographic repertoire.[2]
In 1499 a sixteen-year-old Raphael moved to Città di Castello, where he received his first independent commission: the Standard of the Holy Trinity, commissioned by a local confraternity that wanted to offer a devotional work as a token of thanks for the end of a plague. It is preserved now in the Pinacoteca Comunale di Città di Castello. It is one of the very first works attributed to the artist, as well as the only painting of Raphael remained in the city. The banner, painted on both sides, depicts in the front the Trinity with Saints Rocco and Sebastiano and in the direction of the Creation of Eve. The precepts of Perugino art are still evident, both in the gentle landscape and in the symmetrical angels.

 

Marriage of the Virgin for church of San Francesco.

 

In Città di Castello the artist left at least two other works: the Crucifixion Gavari and the Marriage of the Virgin for the church of San Francesco. In the first one it is easy to note a full assimilation of Perugino’s manners, even if we note the first developments towards a style of its own. Today it is conserved at the National Gallery in London. The second, however, is one of the most famous works of the artist, which closes the youthful period and marks the beginning of the stage of artistic maturity.
The work is inspired by the similar altarpiece made by Perugino for the Duomo of Perugia, but the comparison between the two paintings reveals profound and significant differences.
Entering the small but delightful church of San Francesco, next to the chapel calves, built in the middle of 1500 on a design by Giorgio Vasari, there is the altar of San Giuseppe, which contains a copy of the Marriage of the Virgin. The original, stolen by the Napoleonic troops in 1798, is kept in the Pinacoteca di Brera.

The works created in Perugia

Meanwhile, the artist’s fame soon began to spread throughout Umbria; thus he came to the Umbrian capital city: Perugia. In the city he was commissioned the Pala Colonna, for the church of the nuns of Sant’Antonio and in 1502-1503 the Pala degli Oddi, commissioned by the famous family in Perugia for the church of San Francesco al Prato.
In 1503 the artist undertook many trips that introduced him to the most important Italian cities such as Florence, Rome and Siena. But the commissions from Umbria were not long in coming: in 1504 was commissioned the Madonna and Child and saints Giovanni Battista and Nicola, called Pala Ansidei.
In the same year he signed in Perugia the fresco with the Trinity and Saints for the church of the monastery of San Severo, which years later Perugino completed in the lower band.
The work of crucial importance was the Pala Baglioni (1507) commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni to commemorate the bloody events that led to the death of Grifonetto, her son. The work was carried out for the church of San Francesco al Prato in Perugia. Raphael in the altarpiece represented the indescribable pain of a mother for the loss of her son and the vital disturbance, through a monumental composition, balanced and studied in detail.

 

Trinity and Saints

 

Raphael became the reference painter for the largest and most important families of Perugia such as the Oddi, Ansidei and Baglioni, establishing himself as a great artist of relief; in the contract of his work, the Coronation of the Virgin, for the church of the nuns of Monteluce, he was mentioned as the best teacher in town. Raphael died on 6th April 1520 of fever caused, as Giorgio Vasari specifies, «by loving excesses». This year marks the 500th anniversary of death.
The artist was at the top of the Renaissance artistic season, bringing his painting to the highest levels of beauty and harmony. Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo wrote: «Raphael had in his face that sweetness and that beauty of the traits that are traditionally attributed to Good».
He lived his life with great commitment and continuity, giving future generations his incredible talent and his precious art, so much that he already deserved the title of divine in life.

[1] Giorgio Vasari, The lives of the most excellent painters, sculptors and architects, Life of Raphael from Urbin, Firenze, 1568.⇑
[2] Paolo Franzese, Raphael, Mondadori Arte, Milano 2008, p. 13.⇑

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Art Culture

Pietro Vannucci, known as Il Perugino, is considered one of the greatest exponents of humanism and the greatest representative of Umbrian painting in the 15th century. The painter moves in a historical context that is that of late humanism. «In the city of Perugia was born to a poor person from Castello della Pieve, called Christophe, a son who at baptism was called Peter (…) studied under the discipline of Andrea Verrocchio». (The lives of the most excellent Italian architects, painters, and sculptors, from Cimabue to our times. Part two. Giorgio Vasari).

Self-portrait

Perugino was born in 1450 in Città della Pieve and its first Umbrian artistic experiences were probably based on local workshops such as those of Bartolomeo Caporali and Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. From a very young age he moved to Florence, where he started attending one of the most important workshops: Andrea del Verrocchio’s. The city of the Medici was fundamental for its formation.
His masterpieces conceal religious intimacy: the gentle hills typical of Umbria, the wooded landscape realized with more shades of green, the soft-patterned characters and the fluttering tapes of the angels are his decorative styling that he then transmitted also to his pupil: Raphael.

The works in Umbria and beyond

One of his first documented works is The Adoration of the Magi, and the gonfalone with the Pietà, both in the exhibition halls of the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. In 1473 Perugino received the first significant commission of his career: the Franciscans of Perugia asked him to decorate the niche of San Bernardino.
Later (1477-1478) is the detached fresco, today in the Pinacoteca Comunale of Deruta, with the Eternal Father with the saints Rocco and Romano, with a rare view of Deruta in the lower register; probably commissioned to invoke the protection of the Saints Roman and Rocco, since an epidemic of plague raged in the territory of Perugia. In 1478 he continued to work in Umbria, painting the frescoes of the Chapel of La Maddalena in the parish church of Cerqueto, near Perugia.
When he reached fame, he was called to Rome in 1479, where he carried out one of the greatest and most prestigious works: the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, work in which also Cosimo Rosselli, Botticelli, and the Ghirlandaio. It is here that he realizes one of his many masterpieces: The Delivery of the Keys to Saint Peter, the Baptism of Christ and the Journey of Moses to Egypt. In the next ten years Perugino continued to gravitate between Rome, Florence and Perugia.
Between 1495 and 1496, he created another masterpiece: the Pala dei Decemviri, so called because it was commissioned by the decemviri of Perugia. In the same period he worked on the decoration of the Sala dell’Udienza in the Collegio del Cambio in Perugia, a cycle completed in 1500. In 1501-1504 is the year in which he made the Marriage of the Virgin, painted for the Chapel of the Holy Ring in the Cathedral of Perugia, iconography taken by Raphael for the church of San Francesco in Città di Castello.

 

Marriage of the Virgin

 

Perugino continued to receive commissions; in fact he realized the Madonna of Consolation, the gonfalone of Justice and the Pala Tezi, preserved in the exhibition halls of the National Gallery of Umbria and the Resurrection for San Francesco al Prato. Excellent works of the painter are also preserved in Città della Pieve, not far from the border with nearby Tuscany. At Santa Maria dei Bianchi and the Cathedral of SS Gervasio and Protasio, there are some of his most significant works such as the Adoration of the Magi.[1]
Following the footsteps of Perugino, you must sop in Panicale, a picturesque village that is part of the most beautiful villages in Italy. In the Church of San Sebastiano there is the work the Martyrdom of San Sebastiano, an entire wall frescoed by the artist.

 

Martyrdom of San Sebastiano

 

Another important stop to discover the whole art of the Divin Pittore is Fontignano, where in 1511 Perugino established his workshop to escape the plague. But the painter died because of the plague in 1523-1524, while he was working on a fresco depicting the Adoration of the Shepherds commissioned for the small Church of the Annunziata. That fresco then was finished by his students, and finally a Madonna with child, the last work he completed in 1522.
Perugino was the initiator of a new way of painting; the artist goes in constant search of landscapes of wider breath, admiring the example of previous Florentines such as Filippo Lippi, Domenico Veneziano and Beato Angelico. The Perugino proceeds towards a slow and gradual conquest of the natural. The harmony inherent in the landscape of Perugia was created by a mystical approach with nature and by an art that, rather than being based on the intellect and training of the eye, as happened in Florence, flowed from the heart and strength of feelings.[2] The Perugino thus marked the taste of an era.

 

[1] Emma Bianchi, “Petro penctore”: l’Adorazione dei magi e la confraternita di Santa Maria dei Bianchi di Città della Pieve, in Perugino e il paesaggio, Silvana Editoriale, 2004, pp. 119-128.⇑
[2] Silvia Blasio, Il paesaggio nella pittura di Pietro Perugino, in Perugino e il paesaggio, Silvana Editoriale, 2004, pp. 15-41.⇑

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Art Culture

Berto di Giovanni is a very important Umbrian painter because he helps us understand how the art of Perugino and Raphael greatly influenced even the smallest Umbrian personalities.

Berto di Giovanni is mentioned for the first time in a notarial deed dated 3rd January 1488. His name appears in the freshman painters for Porta Sole, although some documents mention him as Alberto or Ruberto. He is mentioned Chamberlain of Art and in 1502 he receives various payments together with Eusebio da San Giorgio and Nicolò da Cesena for the fresco, now disappeared, of a room intended for the bishop in the canonical of the cathedral.

 


St. John the Evangelist writes the Apocalypse. Perugia, Nazioanle Gallery of Umbria

In Perugino’s workshop

Berto di Giovanni worked in Perugino’s workshop together with other notable personalities: Eusebio da San Giorgio, Sinibaldo Ibi, Ludovico d’Angelo and Lattanzio di Giovanni. The store was a small reality in which social contrasts, their own time and their own experience were shared. This community led to the development of a Koiné, a style in which it becomes really difficult to try to isolate individual shaded areas in precise contours, suffocated by the need to adhere to a common and winning style.[1]
The most important work is the Madonna and Child with Saints James the Greater and Francis; first in San Francesco del Monte and now in the National Gallery of Umbria. The Virgin, seated in a vast landscape, holds the Child in her lap, holding a wreath of flowers in her hands, the Saints kneeling beside her, while two angels in flight place a crown on her head. The Child derives from the overturned cardboard used for the Madonna of the Kress collection, now in the National Gallery of Washington, with appropriate modifications to the little face and the right arm to make him hold, very visibly, the crown of flowers. The landscape, which opens behind the protagonists, makes the table even more fascinating. The figurative language of the composition seems to be articulated on several registers: on the one hand the calmness of a typically composition by Perugino, on the other a more modern evolution of the characters.[2]
Dated 1507 is the Sacred Conversation, now in London at Buckinghain Palace, in which they are depicted the Nativity of the Assumption and the Marriage of the Virgin. The altarpiece shows a prevalent Peruginesque influence with some memories of Pala Ansidei by Raphael.The painter also participated in an excellent work, now preserved in the Vatican Art Gallery: the Coronation of the Virgin, made by Raphael, then completed by Giulio Romano and Francesco Penni. Berto di Giovanni took part in the construction of the predella, now in the National Gallery of Umbria.[3]

 

 

Banner in the cathedral of Perugia

 

In the four scenes the strong color contrasts show the clear influence of Giulio Romano. In fact in the last period, Berto di Giovanni was attracted by the great painter. Walking through the halls of the National Gallery of Umbria you can admire other masterpieces of the painter: St. John the Evangelist in Patmos with the Eternal and the Stories of the saint, which was executed for the Cistercians of St. Giuliana in Perugia. In the table we can see the clumsy representation of the evangelist taken from the figure of Pythagoras in the School of Athens. The last certain work preserved in the cathedral of Perugia is a standar painted in 1526 on the occasion of the plague.[4]

 

[1]Laura Teza, A painting in society: Perugino, Berto di Giovanni and the Store  of 1496, pp. 47-61, in Pietro Vannucci and the Perugian Painters of the early sixteenth century. Mondays of the Gallery. Proceedings of the Conferences 23 February- 10 May  2004, curated by Paola Mercurelli Salari, Superintendency for Architectural Heritage, Landscape, Umbria’s Historic Artistic and Ethno-anthropological Heritage, Perugia, Ponte San Giovanni.⇑
[2] F. Santi, National Gallery of Umbria. Paintings, sculptures and objects of the XV-XVI centuries, Rome, 1985, p. 140, considers it Giannicola, while F. Todini, The Umbrian painting from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, Milan, 1989, I, p. 278 e P. Mercurelli Salari, Painter from Perugia area 9. Madonna with Child, two angels, the Saints Giacomo Maggiore and Francesco, in Perugino and the landscape, catalog of the exhibition (Città della Pieve, 28 February-18 July 2004), Milan 2004 , p .60 close to Berto di Giovanni.⇑
[3] Dictionary of Painters and Engravers Biographical and Critical, by Michael Bryan, p. 119, New Edition Revised and Enlarged, Edit by Robert Edmund Graves B.A., of the British Museum. Volume I A-K, London 1886.⇑
[4] Encyclopedia Treccani, Biographical Dictionary of Italians, Volume IX, 1967.⇑

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Architecture Culture

I was talking to a friend of mine who decided to spend her holidays in Umbria. I found myself giving advice on local design-themed itineraries! Thinking about which stages could be more curious and interesting, I could not help mixing design with craftsmanship and architecture, facets of a single large area made of manual skills, planning and creativity that strongly characterizes the Umbrian territory.

Piazza Nuova in Fontivegge

Piazza Nuova in Fontivegge

 

During our chat, my friend was pleasantly surprised by the amount of small and large companies operating in these areas, but, to tell the truth, what she found most interesting was Aldo Rossi, architect and designer who worked in Perugia, drafting, in the Eighties, the project for the redevelopment of the Fontivegge district, designing a new face for the former Piazza del Bacio, now Piazza Nuova.

I will tell you what I told her a few days ago and I leave you some indications for a short route through this architectural work, the most important of Perugia in the Twentieth century.

The itinerary

Leave your car in Pian di Massiano and get the Minimetro: by doing so you can easily reach the Fontivegge district which, a few steps from the railway station, houses the complex of offices and houses that embrace the square. Coming from the station, you enter this space by passing through a large staircase; as soon as you go up, the feeling you have is to be extremely small because of the grandeur of the buildings surrounding this urban space. The eye is immediately enraptured by the main building, a modern temple with clock, characterized by a massive colonnade with a staircase that, like a fortress, dominates the area; on the sides, there are two other buildings with a highly rational character. In the center of the square stands a fountain with straight lines and a monolithic appearance, today – alas – without water. Other modern residential and commercial buildings complete the modern acropolis.

The architect accepted the assignment in 1983, designing the long-awaited business center. In fact, in the previous decade, the international competition launched by the municipal administration had been cancelled, since the winning project was too oversized and expensive to afford, especially because of the crisis that ran in the Seventies.

 

Architecture

Rossi, who was the first Italian to win the Pritzker Prize for architecture, designs a long brick-paved pedestrian square that follows the natural slope, similar to other Umbrian squares placed in the city center. Looking for dialogue and integration with the past, Aldo Rossi – in this as in many other projects – makes use of archetypes, recurring elementary geometric shapes in the history of architecture, easily recognizable and capable of making the project surprisingly innovative and traditional at the same time. In this regard, someone wanted to see in Piazza Nuova the modern revival of Piazza IV Novembre with the steps of San Lorenzo, Palazzo dei Priori and the Fontana Maggiore. Pure and essential geometries are also recurring in his projects as designers; at the beginning of the 1980s, Rossi devoted himself to this type of activity by designing miniature architectures for Alessi, creating poetic small-scale domestic landscapes; the Tea & Coffee Piazza project is the realization of this definition.

 

Piazza Nuova

Piazza Nuova

Stories, activities and projects

A story full of contaminations, therefore. I leave you with a last note: walking towards the park, you can notice a curious conical brick structure dating back to the 1920s, which break the penalty. It is the testimony of its original use, intended for one of the most important activities of Perugia; this brick tower is in fact a find of industrial archaeology: it is one of the old smokestacks of the Perugina confetti and chocolates factory that occupied this place from 1915 (year in which, in addition to the production of sugared almonds, the production line comes into operation cocoa powder and cocoa butter) until 1965, the year of transfer to the new industrial plant in San Sisto.

The original project, which also included the construction of a theater, was never completed and Rossi’s Piazza Nuova never played the role of modern acropolis desired at the time of the project. However, the charm of the monument remains intact. «I have always thought of architecture as a monument… only when it is realized as a monument does it constitute a place». A. Rossi

Rossi’s Piazza Nuova is also destined to have a new redevelopment; in these days, work began on the implementation of a project presented by the municipal administration. Who knows if this place will finally manage to have the long-awaited social and urban role thought by Rossi?

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Art Culture

Bernardino di Betto, known as Pinturicchio, was born in Perugia in 1454 by Benedetto di Biagio, in the neighborhood of Porta Sant’Angelo.[1] He was probably called Pinturicchio because of his tiny stature.

He was the heir to an important pictorial and miniaturist tradition, which has its precedents in Bartolomeo Caporali, Fiorenzo di Lorenzo and Benedetto Bonfigli. The Pinturicchio stood out as one of the architects of the great Renaissance season of rediscovery of classicism: in fact he copied the frescos of the Domus Aurea, and contributing to the spread of the grotesque.
He entered the Perugino’s workshop and collaborated with his teacher in Rome, between 1481 and 1482, creating two frescoes: the Baptism of Christ and the Circumcision of the sons of Moses in the Sistine Chapel.
In 1486 he executed the Stories of St. Bernardino that decorate the Bufalini Chapel in S. Maria in Ara Coeli. These frescoes were commissioned to the painter by messer Niccolò di Manno Bufalini, a concistorial lawyer, to recall the proximity between his family and the Baglioni of Perugia, thanks to S. Bernardino. In Rome he also came into contact with the painting of the Ghirlandaio and the Botticelli, who contributed to his artistic formation.
In the second half of the Fifteenth century, the artist made a small but delicious tempera on a table depicting the Madonna and Child and San Giovanni, preserved in the Duomo Museum in Città di Castello.

 

Madonna and Child and San Giovanni

 

The small table depicts Mary, Child Jesus, standing on the knees of her mother and Saint John the Baptist, who holds the inscription Ecce Agnus Dei. The three figures are bright on a broad background, with a composed and severe stylistic language.
The artist returned to Perugia on 14 February 1495, concluding, with the religious of the convent of S. Maria degli Angeli in Porta S. Pietro, the contract for the realization of the Polyptych of S. Maria dei Fossi, now in the Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria. The contract for the work has reached us and contains very detailed instructions about the realization, which was intended for the high altar for the church, called dei Fossi. The painter was at the time at the height of his success, favourite by Pope Alexander VI for whom he had just concluded the great undertaking of the decoration of the Borgia apartment.

 

Polyptych of S. Maria dei Fossi

 

The altarpiece is now composed of seven main panels; in the centre stands the Madonna with the child and Saint John, flanked by Saints Augustine and Jerome, dressed as a cardinal and with a model of the church in hand, perhaps the same Santa Maria degli Angeli. Above them two panels with the Announcing Angel and the Virgin announced. On the tree stands the dead Christ supported by two angels and the Dove of the Holy Spirit.
In 1497 the frescoes were painted for the decoration of the Eroli chapel in the Cathedral of Spoleto, portraying the Madonna and Child between San Giovanni Battista and Leonardo, immersed in a sweet lake landscape typical of the Umbrian school.
In 1501 Pinturicchio made another of his best works the chapel Baglioni in Santa Maria Maggiore in Spello. The decoration was commissioned by the Prior Troilo Baglioni. The company was the last important commission of the Pinturicchio in Umbria, before leaving for Rome and Siena.

Self-portrait

These frescoes bear the signature Bernardius Pictoricius Perusinus and represent on the walls: the Annunciation, the Adoration of the Magi, Jesus among the doctors, in the sails instead the four Sibyls and a self-portrait.
The Piccolomini bookshop in Siena, built in 1502, is considered his absolute masterpiece: powerful chromaticism, taste of detail, great attention to the decorative aspect, characterize the intervention of Pinturicchio in the library built in 1495 by Cardinal Todeschini Piccolomini in honor of Enea Silvio Piccolomini.
The last documented work of the artist is the Madonna in Gloria among the Saints Gregory the Great and Benedict, for the Olivetans of the church of Santa Maria di Barbiano near San Giminiano.
It was Vasari, thanks to an anecdote, who recounted his last years: the painter had found accommodation at the Friars of San Francesco in Siena and asked insistently to remove from his cell a trunk, but during the move this broke, revealing its treasure: five hundred ducats of gold, which belonged to the friars, filling the painter with sadness until he died.[2]
The artist died on 11 December 1513 in Siena. He rested in the parish of SS. Vincenzo and Anastasio.

 

[1] Giorgio Vasari, Le Vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, a cura di G. Milanesi, III, Firenze 1878, pp. 493-531.⇑
[2] Giorgio Vasari, Vite de’più eccellenti pittori, scultori e architetti, edizione commentata del 1878, vol. III, pag. 503-505.⇑

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Architecture Culture Tourism

An engineering masterpiece and monument-landmark of a civilisation which has been studied as much as it is mysterious: the Etruscan Well is an architectural wonder and live testament to the population which founded Perugia, as well as museum site known worldwide.

Etruscan Well

At no. 18 of the central Piazza Danti, a short walk from Piazza IV Novembre, the elegant open-air living room in town, well known due to the magnificent Fontana Maggiore, with Palazzo dei Priori and the cathedral of San Lorenzo around it there is an impressive structure dug into the underground rooms of Palazzo Sorbello, a stately home and headquarters of the Ranieri di Sorbello Foundation, a cultural association dedicated to the memory of Uguccione V Ranieri di Sorbello, a cosmopolitan intellectual, war hero, journalist and local history scholar. Following an intuition by Uguccione, around 1960, the first surveys were conducted on what he considered family property, to be studied and preserved; they confirmed that it was built by the Etruscans, something that had been forgotten despite continuing use by the local population over the centuries.
In the reception room, an introductory video constitutes the actual admission ticket to the wonders of Etruscan hydraulic engineering, presented using a basic approach, adding nothing to this spectacular natural site: the Etruscan Well is a millenary colossus, dating to the second half of the 3rd century B. C. which reaches underground as far down as 37 metres below road level. The well is still working today (even though it is no longer used as a source of drinking water), having been fed by the same three underground springs for more than two thousand years.

The well belongs to a class of engineering works spread everywhere, with the same purpose, although not always with the same shapes that, in the specific case of this structure, take on considerable dimensions: from the various speleological surveys carried out over the years it has been ascertained have a total size of 424 m3 reaching up to 424,000 liters of water.
The structure consists of a cylindrical barrel whose largest point is reached at the level of the water collection tank, where it is 5.60 metres wide and 12 m tall. The upper section of this room is definitely one of the highlights of the visit: the structure here is covered by large travertine slabs extracted from the quarries in Ellera (8 km from Perugia), a construction material which was also used to build the monumental walls around the town.
Also the top cladding of the well, supported by large slabs placed transversally and surrounded by stone beams which are stuck together without using any mortar or lime and forming two trusses weighing 8 metric tons each, is made of travertine. This homogeneity of materials and construction techniques found between the well and the Etruscan walls of Perugia, has made it possible to hypothesize that this was carried out from the beginning as a public work.

 

 

The presence of grooves detected on the surface of the travertine blocks of the upper cover has left us to suppose that for the collection of the water a rather simple system had to be used initially such as the use of buckets tied to a rope. A central pulley system would have been adopted only later, with the realization of the curb that still indicates the well at street level. In 1768, an iron lattice was made to close the mouth of the curb, on which two noble coats of arms were placed, still in iron, relating to two of the noble families who owned Palazzo Sorbello: the Eugeni counts and the Bourbon di Sorbello marquises.
The Ranieri di Sorbello Foundation has been managing the Etruscan Well since July 2016 and – during this period – it has completed an important mission aimed at enhancing the tourism experience for the visitor by means of a restoration and upgrading project with a view to enhancing the narration and use of the facility, also thanks to a fruitful collaboration with other museums in town dedicated to Etruscan archaeology, for example the Museo del Capitolo in Perugia, a starting point for the discovery of Underground Perugia: a journey that leads us inside the architectural stratifications of the acropolis of ancient Perusna (the ancient name of Perugia).

 

Palazzo Sorbello

 

The history of Perugia has deep roots, as does the Etruscan well: an incredibly unique monument which reminds us of a distant age, still allowing us to soak in its atmosphere.

 

For information about opening days and hours, please refer to: www.pozzoetrusco.it
The Wikipedia page on the Etruscan Well has been updated: https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pozzo_etrusco

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Art Culture Events Tourism

«Homo bulla est» (Erasmo da Rotterdam)

The motto of Erasmus of Rotterdam inspired by a sentence from Varrone, gave rise to the iconography of Homo bulla, widespread in the first half of the sixteenth century. The protagonists are puttos intent on blowing soap bubbles, unaware of being condemned a little more than the iridescent spheres produced in their game. The representations of Homo bulla are fully part of the category of Vanitas, didactic images in which the reference to fragility or evanescence, through elements such as cut flowers, crystals and soap bubbles, recalling the inevitability of death and the frailty of the earthly things. The Allegory of Jan Brueghel the Younger is very rich in this sense, in which many objects are depicted in the ephemeral joys of the senses.

 

Gunter Zint, Il ragazzo che vive nei pressi del muro, 1963.

The art of soap bubbles

The National Gallery of Umbria in Perugia, until 9 June 2019, faces this issue for the first time, traditionally related to the artistic genre of still life and vanitas. The exhibition, entitled Soap Bubbles. Forms of utopia between vanitas, art and science, curated by Michele Emmer, professor of Mathematics at the Sapienza University of Rome and Marco Pierini, director of the National Gallery of Umbria. The inspiration for the exhibition comes from a text by Michele Emmer, in which the interrelations with mathematics, painting, physics and architecture are explored.
«It’s a project that Emmer and I had in mind for a long time», says director Marco Pierini. «It was a great dream. A dream with many faces», adds Emmer. «It is difficult to find a “game” that has remained unchanged for hundreds of years, like soap bubbles». In fact, the exhibition presents itself as an interdisciplinary initiative that, parallel to the historical and artistic path, also tells of the birth of the scientific, physical and mathematical interest in perfect soap bubble models. Starting from a book by Isaac Newton, from the Oliveriana Library of Pesaro, in which the English physicist describes in detail the phenomena that are observed on the surfaces of the soap suds, to arrive at the current experiments through the aid of computer graphics. In fact, the review highlights the importance that bubbles have played in all contemporary science, and how these latest discoveries, in turn, continue to inspire contemporary artists and architects in their creations.

Gino Boccasile, manifesto Achille Banfi, 1937, Treviso, Museo nazionale Collezione Salce

The exhibition itinerary

The itinerary consists of around sixty works, loaned by the most important national and international institutions: the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, the Accademia Galleries in Venice, the National Gallery in London, the National Gallery in Washington and the Museum of Hermitage of St. Petersburg.

 

Jean Baptiste Siméon Chardin, La Lavandaia, 1730-1740, Museo dell’Ermitage, San Pietroburgo

 

The masterpieces cover a long period of time ranging from the sixteenth century with Hendrick Goltzius, passing through the seventeenth century, in which the puttos becomes more and more a contemporary child. You will have to wait for the eighteenth century to meet real genre scenes, in which the allegorical aspect almost tends to disappear, as in the young man portrayed by Fra Galgario. The presence of the bubble in nineteenth-century painting is not thinning out, important in historical Romanticism with Pelagio Palagi, then increasingly at the center of scenes of daily life or portraits; in fact Bubbles by John Everett Millais is famous, when the bubbles became the image of Pears soaps.In the twentieth century this theme is declined in an original way, opening up a new perspective: in 1964 Günter Zint decides to document in West Berlin the life of a child who, among the games of childhood, becomes a witness unaware of the dramas of history. Not even the first decades of the current century have managed to escape from soap bubbles, which become a true model for light architectures, such as the Watercube in Beijing.Symbol of the fragility and transience of human ambitions, soap bubbles have fascinated not only the generations of artists who were amazed by those plays of color that move on surfaces, for their luster and lightness, but continue to fascinate the visitors who walk through the blue halls of the National Gallery of Umbria.

 

Charles Amedée Philippe Van Loo, Soap Bubbles, 1764, National Gallery Washington

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