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The American Renaissance in Florence: A Four-Part Course with Kate Bolton-Porciatti
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Florence’s celebrated history of sculpture - from Donatello, Verrocchio, Michelangelo, and Cellini in the Renaissance to the neo-Classical sculptors of the 19th century - has made the city a magnet for subsequent generations of artists. Today, we trace the impact of this tradition on the ideologies and techniques of a coterie of American sculptors who made the city their home: Hiram Powers, whose statue The Greek Slave - with its fascinating fusion of purity and eroticism - launched him to international fame and became a powerful symbol for abolitionists and women’s rights movements; Horatio Greenough – renowned for his monumental toga-clad statue of George Washington, similarly inspired by Classical sculpture – and Thomas Ball, whose passion for music led him to sculpt portrait busts of some of Europe’s most celebrated musicians, including soprano Jenny Lind (‘the Swedish nightingale’) and the virtuoso pianist-composer Franz Liszt.
Today’s lecture explores a quartet of American painters who made Florence their home. John Singer Sargent evokes the decadence of Italy’s Gilded Age in his sensual paintings of ex-pat “glitterati” in their Florentine villas and gardens. His travel studies in watercolor are “sunshine captured and held”, while his late, sober self-portrait for the Uffizi Gallery (which hung in the famous Vasari Corridor alongside self-portraits of Italian Renaissance artists) tells a darker story. We also explore the work of American painters Frank Duveneck, Egisto Fabbri, and Elihu Vedder, whose work is infused with the light and life of rural Tuscany.
Today’s lecture revolves around American writers who were seduced by Florence’s voluptuous beauty yet at the same time haunted by its apparently corrupting influence on Puritan values: Henry James, who evokes the city and its romantic villas and cosmopolitan residents in his novels and his travel writing, and Nathaniel Hawthorn, who lived in Florence’s Villa Montauto – its ghosted “moss-grown tower” providing the stimulus for his romance The Marble Faun. We also leaf through the Florentine writings of Mark Twain and Edith Wharton’s classic text Italian Villas and their Gardens which echoes Renaissance ideals on the harmony between architecture and nature.
Many of Florence’s Renaissance palazzi and romantic hillside villas were purchased by American expatriates who filled them with art, sculpture, tapestries, and books, continuing the collecting traditions of Renaissance Florentine families. In the last lecture of this course, we visit the Acton family’s Villa La Pietra - a house museum girdled with Renaissance-style gardens - and Bernard and Mary Berenson’s Villa I Tatti - home to a substantial art collection, library, and the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. We also explore the aesthetic principles of Charles Loeser, who recreated the sober but noble atmosphere of a Florentine Renaissance palace at his villa, Torri di Gattaia. In conclusion, we reflect on the enduring contribution of north Americans to the history and culture of Florence.
Kate Bolton-Porciatti is a professor of Italian cultural history and music at the Istituto Lorenzo de'Medici in Florence, where she teaches BA and MA courses in the humanities. She also lectures at the British Institute, Florence, and at the Chigiana Music Academy in Siena. Kate has published extensively as an academic and a journalist; she is a music critic for BBC Music and a travel writer for The Daily Telegraph, UK. Before moving to Italy permanently in 2005, she was a senior producer and broadcaster for BBC Arts & Classical Music in London and has won prestigious Jerusalem and Sony Awards for her programs. She did her M.Phil. thesis in Italy, exploring the musical culture of early Renaissance Florence.
This is a four-part series held weekly and hosted on Zoom. Please check the schedule for the specific dates and times for each lecture. Need to miss a day? No problem. All participants will receive a recording within 48 hours of each event's conclusion.
Though the course is open to participants with no background about Florence and American Renaissance history, there are suggested readings for further investigation. You will receive this via email after the course's conclusion.
Each lecture is 90 minutes long with time for Q&A.
The course is $140 for 4 lectures.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.
This has been a superb series of fascinating lectures, well researched, produced and presented, as always, by Kate Bolton Porciatti. I have been introduced to many artists, collectors, and writers, some of whom were new to me, and whose work I will now seek out.
This series was outstanding in many ways: It was so interesting, particularly seeing how many Americans loved Florence and the Renaissance. Kate was the reason for this.
Kate does a terrific job of weaving all these American ex-pats together. It's been fascinating. The Anglo-American community in Florence was small. Lots of opportunities for these artists to meet and mingle. Getting an overview of the known and new- to- me artists has been fun.
Very interesting- excellent how many beautiful paintings were integrated into the presentation
Another excellent, informative & fascinating lecture setting in vivid context American writers in Florence; how they formed a tight knit community and used their surroundings, villas and friends as source material. Superbly illustrated and inspiring : my ‘must read’ book list has grown significantly longer!