Academy of Fine Arts, Florence, A Brief History of the Renaissance
Leonardo da Vinci taught here, and Michelangelo became famous here
Guo Jia Lu Jiayi
August in Florence is a little more lively than ever – the summer holidays are not over, the heat is gradually dissipating, and tourists are getting more and more than one day a day. The Arno River flows quietly, and the famous ancient bridge "Arno River Old Bridge" is crowded. On the north bank of the river is the Cathedral of the Hundred Flowers, built at the end of the 13th century, with a Renaissance dome that even Michelangelo marvels at, while on the south bank there are the most magnificent buildings in the city, the Pitti Palace and Piazzale Michelangelo, which faintly reveal the glory of the city. However, none of this is real Florence, and to see the true face of the city that Xu Zhimo called "Emerald", you have to wait patiently until the sun sets.
As night falls and tourists disperse, the liveliest part of the city is St. Mark's Square. Surrounded by several academies of fine arts and conservatories, the square is the most academic place in the city. Young college students ride their bicycles through the streets and lights, occasionally playing guitars and singing songs. Such literature and art is the real Florence.
Through the square, into the alley, you can see a small courtyard, many students carrying drawing boards out of the outer door of the long corridor. This is my alma mater, the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, which is the first academy of fine arts in the world, which has produced many Renaissance masters and has been the highest school of classical art in the world for more than 700 years.
A ruler who loves art
When I first came to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence seven years ago, I didn't have a good feeling about this "tattered" courtyard. The school's teaching area is not half the size of a football field, and is shaped like a courtyard in Beijing, surrounded by a three-storey teaching building painted ginger. The building is a public classroom, filled with sculptures and easels, which look disorganized. Outside the classroom on the first floor is a long corridor where basically all student activities are held.
But gradually, I discovered the secret of the courtyard: its underground is like a labyrinth, separated by many classrooms, in order to facilitate the preservation of paint, courses such as oil painting classes are often opened in these classrooms. In class, the professor often told us that although the courtyard was small, it was "unfathomable", and it took 7 centuries to become what it is today.
At the end of the 13th century, the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence was also a monastery affiliated with the Congregation of St. Luke in Florence (a fraternal organization of European painters, woodcarvers, craftsmen, etc.). At that time, Petrarch (Italian scholar, poet, known as the "father of the Renaissance"), Dante and other artists developed humanism in Florence to fight against medieval superstitious ideas, and Florence became the birthplace of the Renaissance. In 1339, under the influence of humanism, the artists of the Sanhedrin began to study in the monastery, and it was the head of the Medici family, Lorenzo I de' Medici, who really put the school on the stage of history.
The Medici family was a prominent florentine family from the 13th to the 17th century, and became the de facto ruler of Florence from the 14th century onwards. This family not only had wealth and power, but also was passionate about literature and art. In 1469, at the age of 20, Lorenzo I became the heir to the Medici family, and soon after he took office, he converted the monastery into the Medici Academy, the predecessor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, which included the best scholars, literati and artists of the time.
One day in 1489, Lorenzo I happened to see a sculpture of the Virgin Mary in the Academy, which impressed him with the elegant style of the ancient Romanesque and the vivid facial expressions of the Virgin. He inquired to the professor, and was shocked to learn that the work was written by a 14-year-old boy, so he recruited the teenager to his subordinates and let him stay in the palace to study.
Although the young man was highly talented, he occasionally made mistakes in the face of the well-informed Lorenzo I. Once, the boy was concentrating on carving an old statue of the god of agriculture, and Lorenzo I just happened to pass by, reminding: "How can an old man have all his teeth?" The teenager immediately blushed, picked up the chisel and knocked out the teeth that had been carved, and from then on he observed the characters more seriously, striving for realism, and later became a world-renowned sculptor. The teenager was the famous Michelangelo, whose most famous work, The Statue of David, is still housed in the gallery attached to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, attracting art lovers and visitors from all over the world.
In addition to Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael, who are known as the "three masters of fine arts" of the Renaissance, as well as Titian, the father of oil painting, and Botticelli, the master of the Florentine school, have all studied at the Medici Academy.
In 1562, Cosimo I, a descendant of Lorenzo I, converted the Medici Academy into a college dedicated to teaching fine arts, renamed diano College, with the 87-year-old Michelangelo as its first honorary dean. Diano College became the world's first academy of fine arts.
In 1785, the Academy was officially renamed the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, the National Academy of Fine Arts of Italy.
The Battle of the Century Between the Masters
Today's students in the academy often interact and learn from each other on weekdays, but never easily assert the quality of the work, which is very different from the Renaissance view, when people were very keen to compare works of art and artists. Even the two most famous masters, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, are unavoidably compared. Standing next to the school, the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts witnessed the century-long battle between the two masters.
Founded in the 14th century, the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts is a research institute affiliated with the school and has an architectural style similar to that of the school. The interior was gray and looked somewhat dilapidated, but in the early 16th century it was the most desirable place for artists all over Europe.
In 1500, at the height of the Renaissance, the 48-year-old Leonardo da Vinci had just finished his masterpiece The Last Supper in Milan, returned to his hometown of Florence with a reputation, and became a professor at his alma mater, the Diano Academy, and a director of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. A year later, Michelangelo, who became famous for his sculpture "Lamenting Christ", also came to the institute. Michelangelo is menacing, completely ignoring Leonardo da Vinci, who is 23 years older than him, and often satirizing Leonardo da Vinci for dressing up fancy and being corrupt. And the directors of the institute, and even the people of the whole city, are speculating, what will happen if these two masters go head-to-head?
The confrontation soon came. In 1503, the florentine municipal chamber was completed, and leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were appointed as frescoers at the same time. Leonardo da Vinci was responsible for drawing the Battle of Angeli, describing the war between Florence and Milan, and Michelangelo for the Battle of Cascina against the Republic of Pisa.
From the sketches, the two men show very different styles: da Vinci's "Battle of Angeli", in which the horses gallop and the soldiers roar, the magnificent scenes of the war are vividly displayed; while Michelangelo's "Battle of Cascina" depicts the Florentine army being raided by the Pisa army by the river, the naked sergeant muscles are stretched, and the person who looks at the painting can really feel the tension of the person in the painting. After the two sketches were exhibited, some people commented that Leonardo da Vinci painted the climax of the battle, while Michelangelo painted a momentary explosive force, more vivid. Many believe that the young Michelangelo came to the top and defeated his predecessors.
However, while sketching at the same scale, Da Vinci took back another city. In order to draw huge sketches, Da Vinci built a wooden elevator that allowed him to comfortably move up and down the wall, and finally completed the sketches smoothly; Michelangelo stopped at the sketching stage due to a shortage of tools and technology. In the end, leonardo da Vinci won the Battle of the Murals and began his work inside the Town Hall.
In 1504, Michelangelo reappeared with his new work, The Statue of David, which captured the city's attention, while Leonardo da Vinci had to give up painting after failing to try new paints on the Town Hall mural project. Once again, the competition between the two men has changed direction.
Although the last two masters left Florence one after another, their competition fueled the Renaissance. Today, when I walk in the Uffizi Gallery and pitti Palace in Florence, I see the creations left by the two masters, or in the academy, copying the Last Supper or the Statue of David with my classmates, I will relish the competitive relationship between the two people who are also friends and enemies, and marvel at their great influence on the city and on that era.
Classical schools are also fashionable
For a long time after the Renaissance, the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence was the world's leader in aesthetic art. However, with the development of modern aesthetics, the florentine Academy of Fine Arts, which advocates classics, has reached a bottleneck period. The French Higher Academy of Fine Arts, the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The United Kingdom, and the Repin Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, Russia, have successively embarked on the road of expansion and reform, which has put pressure on the Florence Academy of Fine Arts; at the end of the 19th century, the vigorous development of the new generation of art schools such as the Parsons School of Design in the United States forced it to make changes.
After World War II, modern art design became an important discipline of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence and produced a number of fashion designers, the most famous of whom was Roberto Cavalli.
In 1940, Cavalli was born into an artistic family in Florence. In the 1950s, he came to Florence to study art and design at the Academy of Fine Arts. During his time at school, he experimented with combining classical aesthetics with modern prints, and his bold designs attracted the attention of the design community. In the 1970s, Cavalli began to emerge in a gorgeous retro style, and his designs always became the topic of conversation - bold colors, sexy cuts, national prints, luxurious materials, all of which made people sigh: designers from classical academies of fine arts could create such market-oriented works. A friend in the design department told me that it was because of Cavalli that people broke the stereotype of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts, which is the reform business card of the modern Florentine Academy of Fine Arts. To this day, many students in the design department start their own learning journey by imitating his work.
Asked what I learned the most at my alma mater, Cavalli once said, "It taught me to love life, love nature, and never lose my personality." ”
It is this personality that allows true art, as well as many talented artists, in this small academy, to survive the darkness of the Middle Ages, to witness the light of the Renaissance, to experience the polishing of modern art, and finally to this day.
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