Merry Christmas

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

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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 [...]

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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 . 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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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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 [...]

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A Soul brought to Heaven

A Soul brought to Heaven 1878, William-Adolphe Bouguereau William-Adolphe Bouguereau was a French academic painter (November 30, 1825 – August 19, 1905).

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Cestello Annunciation

The Annunciation, also known as the Cestello Annunciation, is a tempera painting by Sandro Botticelli, circa 1489-1490. It is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence. The picture, commissioned in 1489, was painted for the church of the Florentine convent of Cestello in Borgo Pinti.

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Advent Calendar in the Monastery

Angels are one of the symbols of Christmas. They play different roles: annuciation to Mary, music over the poor house where Jesus is born. They are very present in the iconographic religious tradition. Their representation is also influenced in the Baroc style by the roman iconography: since this period, paintings are full of little putti [...]

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