JUDITH & the BALUSTER

When I was in Italy a little over five years ago to revisit some of Dennis’ favorite places and to scatter his ashes under rose bushes in Venezia, Vicenza, Firenze, Roma, and then Istanbul, I made a special point to see the original Donatello statue of Judith and Holofernes (1460) in the Hall of Lilies (Sala dei Gigli) in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. I had already seen the copy on the Piazza della Signoria, in front of the Palazzo Vecchio (not far from where Savonarola had burned books and ‘degenerate’ art in the “Bonfire of the Vanities,” and then was later hanged and burned himself).

According to Wikipedia, the statue, which depicts the assassination of the Assyrian general Holofernes by Judith, is remarkable for being one of the first Renaissance sculptures to be conceived in the round, with its four distinct faces. Quite frankly, I don’t think the sculpture is very attractive, though it is powerful. It was used as a symbol for the Florentine Republic. It had originally been commissioned by Cosimo de’Medici as decoration for the fountain in the garden of the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi. It stood in this palace together with Donatello’s David standing in the courtyard, both depicting tyrant slayers. (David was being restored in the Bargello museum when I was there four years ago.)

My interest in Judith, however, is the base. According to Rudolf Wittkower in his essay on “The Renaissance Baluster and Palladio” in Palladio and English Palladianism (1974), the first Renaissance use of the baluster was Donatello’s bronze base for this statue with symmetrical double balusters at the [three] corners. [my brother-in-law Tom pointed out to me a year ago that the statue is on a tripod pedestal, which I hadn't observed previously.] In addition, the entire bronze statue and base is raised on a single giant marble baluster, signifying the importance of the architectural motif. I mentioned this to my knowledgeable hosts in Firenze, but it was news to them. I’m sure, though, that whoever commissioned the marble baluster pedestal was aware of its significance; and it was used for both the copy outside and the original in the Sala dei Gigli.

Wittkower reported that the balustrade, as an architectural element, did not seem to be known by either the Greeks or the Romans. (So when you see the outdoor swimming pool at Hearst Castle used as a backdrop for Laurence Olivier’s villa in the movie Spartacus, the marble balustrade is clearly an anachronistic foreign element. The set designers seemed to be aware of this and used the Roman predecessor—which looks something like a British Union Jack— whenever they constructed sets from scratch.)

Giuliano da Sangallo was among the first to employ balusters in Renaissance buildings. He even used them in his pen and ink restorations of antique Roman monuments. In any case, within a few decades of Donatello’s statue, the baluster as an element in parapets, railings and staircases became ubiquitous in Renaissance and later Neoclassical architecture. Bramante used the motif in his Tempietto (1502); and his conception –adapted from Sangallo’s— later influenced balustrades of Raphael, Samicheli, Palladio and Scamozzi. Michelangelo was also influenced by Sangallo’s treatment, but then developed his own variation. He seemed to prefer the vase shaped or low center of gravity “dropped baluster” (as shown in the staircase from my workplace).

Wittkower didn’t mention any earlier predecessors of the baluster, but there seem to have been isolated examples of balustrades in several medieval and gothic buildings.

According to Wikipedia again, the earliest examples are those shown in the bas-reliefs representing Assyrian palaces, where they were employed as window balustrades. I was fascinated to notice a connection between an Assyrian source for the element in a statue depicting the beheading of an Assyrian general. Was this purely coincidence? A young architect— I used to know— thought possibly not. Many original sources seem to have disappeared over the centuries. Who knows what traditions and documents Donatello may have had access to that we seem to have lost. Perhaps they were burned a few hundred meters away in Savonarola’s “Bonfire of the Vanities.”

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Photo of staircase ballustrade is from my workplace, S.F. Customhouse.

The Grand Tour ~ UFFIZI ~ FIRENZE

Image: success.co.il/knowledge/images/Foundations-Museology-Tribuna-Uffizi-Zoffany.jpg

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We spent a few hours in the Uffizi Gallery on our own Grand Tour of Italy four years ago. It's certainly more casual today. The art isn't so crowded. But the tourists certainly are!

FIRENZE ~ L'ACACIA B&B near Santa Croce

Image:wikipedia.com

October 2009 we spent three nights at a wonderful bed and breakfast on the third floor of a 15th Century palazzo just around the corner from Santa Croce in Firenze. (It is immediately behind the mustard yellow building at the left of the photo.) Debbie, Alision and I had stayed there in 2007 and it was one of the high points of the entire holiday. Diana and her mother, Rosalia, were extraordinary hosts, as they were again four years ago. Diana even arranged a doctor's house call for my brother-in-law Tom Martin, who had picked up my horrendous cold.

While in Florence we visited the Ufizzi Gallery, the Duomo (of course) and the Accademia to see Michelangelo's David --among many other things. This was Tom's first visit to Italia.

Unhappy Coincidence: Floods in Florence ~ November 4, 1333 & 1966

Square in Florence with a white marker stone (circled in red) showing how high the Arno came. At this point the marker is more than 3 meters high.

1333 – Flood of the Arno River, causing massive damage in Florence as recorded by the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani.

1966 – Two-thirds of Florence, Italy is submerged as the Arno river floods; together with the contemporaneous flood of the Po River in northern Italy, this leads to 113 deaths, 30,000 made homeless, and the destruction of numerous Renaissance artworks and books.

November 3, 1966

• After a long period of steady rain, the Levane and La Penna dams in Valdarno began to emit more than 70,629 cubic feet (2,000.0 m³) of water per second toward Florence.
• At 2:30pm, the Civil Engineering Department reported "'an exceptional quantity of water.'"
• Cellars in the Santa Croce and San Frediano areas began to flood.
• Police received calls for assistance from villagers up the Arno valley.
• The flood's first victim, a 52 year old workman, died while trying to reach a crumbling aqueduct

November 4, 1966

• At 4:00am, engineers, fearing that the Valdarno dam would burst, discharged a mass of water that eventually reached the outskirts of Florence at a rate of 37 miles per hour.


• At 7:26am, the Lungarno delle Grazie cut off gas, electricity, and water supplies to affected areas.


• By 8:00am, army barracks were flooded.


• By 9:00am, hospital emergency generators (the only source of electrical power remaining) failed.


• Landslides obstructed roads leading to Florence, while narrow streets within city limits funneled floodwaters, increasing their height and velocity.


• By 9:45am, the Piazza del Duomo was flooded.


• The powerful waters ruptured central heating oil tanks, and the oil mixed with the water and mud, causing greater damage.


• Florence was divided in two, and officials were unable to immediately reach citizens of the city past the Piazza Michelangelo.


• At its highest, the water reached over 22 feet (6.7 m) in the Santa Croce area.


• By 8:00pm, the water began to lower.

Impact

The flood has had a lasting impact on Florence, economically and culturally. City officials and citizens were extremely unprepared for the storm and the widespread devastation that it caused. There were virtually no emergency measures in place, at least partially due to the fact that Florence is located in an area where the frequency of flooding is relatively low. In fact, approximately 90% of the city's population were completely unaware of the imminent disaster that would befall them as they were sleeping during the early hours of November 4, 1966.

Residents were set to celebrate their country's World War I victory over the Austrians on November 4, Armed Forces Day. In commemoration, businesses were closed and many of their employees were out of town for the public holiday. While many lives were likely spared as a result, the locked buildings greatly inhibited the salvaging of valuable materials from numerous institutions and shops, with the exception of a number of jewelry stores whose owners were warned by their night watchmen.

Tragically, 5,000 families were left homeless by the storm, and 6,000 stores were forced out of business. Approximately 600,000 tons of mud, rubble, and sewage severely damaged or destroyed numerous collections of the written work and fine art for which Florence is famous. In fact, it is estimated that between 3 and 4 million books/manuscripts were damaged, as well as 14,000 movable works of art.

Artist Marco Sassone, in an 1969 interview, recalled the impact of the flood on Florence's residents, "The only thing you could do was watch and be helpless. Nature was master...the women became crazy with fear. They began throwing things from the windows and screaming 'who is going to save my children?'" It was reported that 101 people lost their lives in the flood waters

• Archives of the Opera del Duomo (Archivio di Opera del Duomo): 6,000 volumes/documents and 55 illuminated manuscripts were damaged.


• Gabinetto Vieusseux Library (Biblioteca del Gabinetto Vieusseux): All 250,000 volumes were damaged, namely titles of romantic literature and Risorgimento history; submerged in water, they became swollen and distorted. Pages, separated from their text blocks, were found pressed upon the walls and ceiling of the building.


• National Library Centers of Florence (Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Firenze): Located alongside the Arno River, the National Library was cut off from the rest of the city by the flood. 1,300,000 items (or one-third of their holdings) were damaged, including prints, maps, posters, newspapers, and a majority of works in the Palatine and Magliabechi collections.


• The State Archives (Archivio di Stato): Roughly 40% of the collection was damaged, including property and financial records; birth, marriage, and death records; judicial and administrative documents; and police records, among others.

Image & Text:wikipedia.com