Word: medicis
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Hypnotic God. One of Donatello's greatest successors was Antonio del Pollajuolo, whom Lorenzo de Medici called "the principal master" of Florence. His writhing Hercules and Antaeus, the only surviving statuette, positively known to be his, almost cries out in agony. Wild Man on Horseback, by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello, rides with savage majesty upon a steed of extraordinary elegance. Though less renowned, Alessandro Vittoria left in his 19½-in.-high Neptune a figure of hypnotic power. There is no doubt that this small god could quell a storm with his anger...
Webster found evil more dramatically attractive than good, and his sympathetic characters are hard to play. But Beatrice Paipert (Vittoria's mother) and Bruce Heck (Francisco de Medici) speed those scenes when neither Weston nor Haskell are on stage, expressing their lines and feelings with such specificity that one doesn't long for the protagonists' re-entrance. Tom Griffin draws Marcello's decency well, another bright contrast to the diabolical setting...
...scene was 17th century Italy, and Composer Pietro Cesti (1623-69), otherwise known as Father Antonio, contributed to its splendor in flamboyant fashion. Renowned for his unfriarly frolics (a partiality toward wine and the wives of his benefactors), he was unfrocked* and dismissed from the court of the Medici in Florence for "reprehensible conduct." In more sober moods he reputedly wrote 100 operas, many of them tradition-breaking efforts that helped determine the shape of opera to come. Last week the first, and one of the best, of Cesti's works, his three-act Orontea, was back in Milan...
Callot was born to a noble family in Nancy about 1592, and after a rather turbulent childhood (he is said to have run away from home at the age of twelve to join a band of gypsies), finally landed at the court of the Medici in Florence, where he was given a studio and the privilege of eating at the page boys' table. By the time he returned to Nancy in 1621, he was a celebrated artist. By using a hard varnish on his plates, he was able to eliminate lines and create others at will. His etchings were...
...daring appointment. The Villa Medici, like its parent school, the Beaux-Arts of Paris, has never been known for its tolerance of individualism. Of all the French artists sent there, only David and Ingres stand out as painters of the first rank. Malraux's plan is to give the Villa a new vitality. "This is what I propose," he told his friend Balthus. "A second ambassador in Italy. An ambassador of French culture. I would have conferences, receptions, movement!" Balthus was delighted to accept...