2010

In 2010, the Monastery will offer new exhibitions and activities.

We wish you a Happy New Year

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Merry Christmas

As last picture, the Monastery’s Advent Calendar presented a Nativity painting from the Barroco period.

Nativity

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First painting of Leonardo

Tobias and the Angel is a painting, finished around 1470-1480, attributed to the workshop of the Italian Renaissance painter Andrea del Verrocchio.
Leonardo da Vinci was a member of Verrocchio’s studio. He may have painted some part of this work, the fish and the little dog. If it the case, this would be the first example of a painting by Leonardo ad Vinci.

Tobias and the Angel

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Winter Sports in the Monastery Sim

The snow has covered all the grass. The lake is frozen. It’s time to enjoy winter. A ski run starts at the top of the sim and goes behind the building of the Monastery. The ice of the lake is strong enough to allow skating. Have fun!

Ski run behind the Monastery

Skate on the lake

View of the frozen lake

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Two angels

Sometimes a detail of a painting is very interesting …

Rosso Fiorentino, Madonna Enthroned with Four Saints

Rosso Fiorentino, Madonna Enthroned with Four Saints (Detail)

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A stolen painting

The Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence (also known as The Adoration) is a painting from 1609 by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio .

Nativity with Saints Francis and Lawrence, 1609

The painting was stolen on October 16, 1969 from the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. It is today the most famous unrecovered stolen painting and the FBI continue to list the work on their art thefts listings site quoting its value at $20 million. Worth is a moot point as the notoriety of the masterpiece makes it unsaleable.

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Seasonal Greetings

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Ponte Sant’Angelo

Ponte Sant’Angelo, once the Aelian Bridge or Pons Aelius, meaning the Bridge of Hadrian, is a Roman bridge in Rome, completed in 134 AD by Roman Emperor Hadrian, to span the Tiber, from the city center to his newly constructed mausoleum, now the towering Castel Sant’Angelo. The bridge is faced with travertine marble and spans the Tiber with three arches.

Castel Sant'Angelo and St. Angelo and Ponte Sant'Angelo (Rome)

In times past, pilgrims used this bridge to reach St Peter’s Basilica, hence it was known also with the name of “bridge of Saint Peter” (pons Sancti Petri). In the seventh century, both the castle and the bridge took on the name Sant’Angelo, explained by a legend that an angel appeared on the roof of the castle to announce the end of the plague.
In 1669 Pope Clement IX commissioned replacements for the aging stucco angels by Raffaello da Montelupo, commissioned by Paul III. Bernini’s program, one of his last large projects, called for ten angels holding instruments of the Passion.

Angel with the lance, Domenico Guidi

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Mystical Nativity

The Mystical Nativitywas painted by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It is his only signed work, and has a very unusual iconography for a Nativity.

(Detail)

The painting is related to a chapter of the Apocalypse of Saint John, as it is explained in the greek inscription above. It was painted in 1500, in a time of troubles in Italy.

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Oculus

The Spouses Chamber is a room frescoed with illusionistic paintings by Andrea Mantegna in the Ducal Palace, Mantua, Italy. It was painted between 1465 and 1474 and commissioned by Ludovico Gonzaga, and is notable for the use of trompe l’oeil details and its oculus ceiling.

Mantegna’s ceiling presents an oculus that illusionistically opens into a blue sky, with little angels (putti) playing around a ballustrade. This was one of the earliest di sotto in sù ceiling paintings.

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