SCRIPTURES & ART: ‘And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appe.
What's on this month in Florence: UNICEF Innocenti Film Festival, L’eredità delle Donne, Jeff Koons: ‘Shine’, Fán Huā Chinese Film Festival, Fabbrica Europa, Jenny Saville, Internet Festival Pisa, Dante Pop, The wonderful vision: Dante and the Comedy in the Symbolist Imagination, Internet Festival Pisa, Floralia per Santo Spirito, International Ceramics Fair, Florence Vintage Market, Children's Lending Library, Marina Calamai, St Mark's English Church, The British Institute of Florence, Cinema Odeon Firenze, Female Arts in Florence, Firenze dei Bambini
Daniel senses my bubbling enthusiasm and invites me to tour his school, The Florence Academy of Art, along the via Aretina on the city’s outskirts. To enter is to be drawn back centuries. The 100 artist-students, of all backgrounds and ethnicities, might be dressed in 21st-century casual, but one immediately sees Botticelli, Vasari and Nelli in their figures and faces. Some seem to be adorned in 16th-century robes of hemp, palette in one hand, Mahl stick to support the brush hand in the other, a parade of fine artists floating in the natural white light.
That was a little more than a year ago. Now students are separated by plastic, painting through some odd looking-glass in order to stay safe and healthy. The plague has been in these parts before, devastating, debilitating and deadly, but the art of Florence persisted then, as it does now, while the world slowly rights itself. For the moment, the school is not a place for visitors, so Daniel, master painter, founde