Florence
Flirting in 15th-century Florence
In his history of male-male sexual relations, Noel Malcolm describes how a man in Renaissance Italy would seduce a boy in the street by seizing his hat and holding it ransom
Always carry a little book with you, and preserve it with great care, said Leonardo da Vinci
Despite the digitisation of everything, many of us still choose to jot down thoughts and sketches on paper, and would be bereft without a notebook to hand
Who would be a farmer’s wife?
‘Some days I feel like I’m drowning,’ admits Helen Rebanks, caught between cooking, housework, admin, tagging lambs and the school run at the Lake District family farm
Violence and beauty combine in Siena
Siena, the jewel of Tuscan cities, was the mercantile and banking centre of medieval Europe. Bankers in Pre-Renaissance Siena preened…
Sixteen cathedrals to see before you die
There can be no clearer illustration of the central role that great cathedrals continue to play in a nation’s life…
How the quarrelsome ‘Jena set’ paved the way for Hitler
Frances Wilson describes a group of self-obsessed intellectuals united by mutual loathing in a small university town in the 1790s
Beautiful and revealing: The Three Pietàs of Michelangelo, at the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Florence, reviewed
The room is immersed in semi-darkness. Light filters down from above, glistening on polished marble as if it were flesh.…
Rescuing Elizabeth Barrett Browning from her wax-doll image
Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an ambitious, passionate, determined woman – not the sad-eyed invalid of legend, says Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
Why the Royal Academy is wrong to consider selling their precious Michelangelo
Martin Gayford explains why the Royal Academy would be wrong to sell Michelangelo’s ‘Taddei Tondo’
Foreign bodies galore: the best new crime fiction
Ghosts of the Past by Marco Vichi (Hodder, £18.99) is unashamedly nostalgic in tone. The title could not be more…
How to be a tourist in Europe
Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the…
The secrets of Dante’s marriage
Unlike Shakespeare, who kept himself out of all his works, except the Sonnets, Dante was endlessly reworking his autobiography, even…
Florence's black Medici prince: a drama worthy of Shakespeare
The life – and violent death – of a very unusual Renaissance prince has Alex von Tunzelmann enthralled
Botticelli’s jokes and the quarrelsome, creative spirit of Florence
Once, it seems, Sandro Botticelli played a trick on a neighbour. Next door was a weaver who possessed eight looms.…
Jhumpa Lahiri's new tongue
Imagine you’re an unknown young writer whose first collection of stories wins the Pulitzer prize. Your first novel is filmed,…
Coming of age in New York
I read this, Meg Rosoff’s first novel for adults (though her previous fiction, aimed at teenagers, is widely enjoyed by…
The delights and dangers of the Grand Tour
The Grand Tour usually culminated with Naples, ragamuffin capital of the Italian south, where Vesuvius offered a visual education in…
The first things you should do in Florence
The British have always been in love with Florence. First visits cannot disappoint. One friend recalls being herded around as…
Bernard Berenson and Kenneth Clark: pen friends, not true friends
Robert Cumming’s opening sentence is: ‘Kenneth Clark and Bernard Berenson first met in the summer of 1925.’ One is then…
Reimaging the lost masterpieces of antiquity
Martin Gayford visits two new surveys of Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum and Palazzo Strozzi. Reimagining what’s lost is as much of an inspiration as what remains
The hidden history of one of the greatest treasures of the early Renaissance: Florence’s Brancacci chapel
In 1439 Abraham of Souzdal, a Russian bishop visiting Florence, was in the audience in Santa Maria del Carmine for…
The brilliant neurotics of the late Renaissance
In many respects the average art-lover remains a Victorian, and the Florentine Renaissance is one area in which that is…
It’s the whisper you’ve got to listen for in Arturo Di Stefano’s paintings
One of the paintings in Arturo Di Stefano’s impressive new show at Purdy Hicks Gallery is called ‘Santa Croce’ and…
Clarissa Tan's Notebook: Why I stopped drinking petrol
Florence was in fog the day I arrived. Its buildings were bathed in white cloud, its people moved as though…
How honest was Bernard Berenson?
Sam Leith suspects that even such a distinguished connoisseur as Bernard Berenson did not always play a straight bat
