Planning Almanac for 2016
With a Study Guide to Renaissance Florence
Text and Photos by Ted Spiegel
Copyright 2015 by Involvement Media, Inc.
The Ponte Vecchio spans the Arno River. Its walkway is lined with jewelry shops.
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Greetings!
or the past three decades, Marist has worked with Istituto Lorenzo
de’ Medici (LdM) in Italy. This relationship has developed into a full
partnership and afforded Marist the opportunity to open a branch campus in the heart of Florence. The campus now accommodates over 400
students each year and also serves as the hub for our highly regarded
Study Abroad Program.
Marist is currently ranked 13th in the U.S. among Master’s institutions for undergraduate study abroad participation by the International
Education Open Doors Report. With over 50 programs to choose from
in over 30 countries, more than 50 percent of all Marist students study
abroad before they graduate.
The amazing study abroad experiences enjoyed by Marist students
are showcased in our Globetrotter Magazine. Visit www.marist.edu/
international/pdfs/globetrotter_2015.pdf to read their stories.
Design and Italian Language; a Master’s degree program in Museum Studies and a Certificate in Fine Arts. Marist also offers the
Freshman Florence Experience (FFE), a unique one-year study
abroad experience for 40 qualified freshman as well as Summer
Pre-College programs for rising high school juniors and seniors.
Please revel in Florence’s rich educational and cultural traditions as you explore this planning almanac, photographed and
written by Ted Spiegel, a National Geographic photojournalist.
HIs essays about Renaissance heritage are supported by additional information and web links posted at
www.marist.edu/florence.
Best wishes for a healthy and happy holiday season.
In addition, Marist is the only U.S. degree-granting institution in
Florence and offers full four year Bachelor’s degrees in Studio Art, Art
History, Conservation Studies, Digital Media, Fashion Design, Interior
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Sean P. Kaylor
Vice President for Enrollment Management
Marist College
Professor Franco Fiesole uses Piazza Santa Maria Novella as his classroom.
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Teaching a City a Quarter at a Time
ounded in 59 BC as a Roman colony, Florence grew to become
one of Europe’s largest cities, its population reaching 60,000 by
1400. Florence’s economic and political vitality in the ensuing
two- century period known as the Renaissance was based on its
place as Europe’s most important source of woven wool. Florentine
merchants and bankers (most notably those aligned with the Medici
family) amassed great wealth. Fortunes gained became resources
expended to build and artistically endow churches for the community and palaces for their private enjoyment. Today’s Florence has
400,000 inhabitants within the city boundaries, 1.5 million in the
greater metropolitan area. Nearly 2 million tourists visit each year to
enjoy a city featuring more than 70 museums. Galleries filled with
the creativity of Florentine artists bear witness to the generosity of
their patrons.
Florence has its own unique aura. So it’s no surprise 20,000
university students from all over the world come here annually to
further their education in one of the oldest seats of higher education.
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Some of the most informative moments occur when the students
walk about the city’s palace-surrounded piazzas.
With “The Four Quarters of Florence” as his course topic,
Marist-LdM Professor Franco Fiesole uses the city as his classroom.
Rising above the Piazza Santa Maria Novella is the façade of a
church completed by architect Leon Battista Alberti in 1470.
The class will visit and learn about the built environment and
history of three more quarters—Santo Spirito, Santa Croce and
San Giovanni—all named for prominent churches and the piazzas
bearing their names. At Santo Spirito, Fiesole confides: “If I had to
live in the center of Florence, I would live here, on the south side
of the Arno. It’s less monumental, less grandiose. There are no very
important monuments except the Pitti Palace. There are craftsmen,
there is a fountain in the middle, a street market in the morning,
vegetables, clothes. It’s not a touristic market, it’s a little market
for the inhabitants of the quarter. And then on Sunday there
are crafts.”
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Inside Basilica Santa Maria Novella, a student becomes instructor.
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By Your Pupils You Are Taught
ithin the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, Professor Franco
Fiesole’s class explores art as both an enabler of veneration and the
source of aesthetic admiration. With one of his students taking on
the role of informant, the group undertakes a neck-craning exploration of the Tornabuoni Chapel, which occupies the central space
behind the main altar.
Domenico del Ghirlandaio and his workshop staff created this
chapel with financial patronage from the wealthy Tornabuoni family,
banking rivals to the Medici. Fifteenth-century Florentine buildings,
clothing and daily life served as visual resources for the frescoes. After
five years (1485-90) of applying paint to fresh plaster, Ghirlandaio
achieved a virtually journalistic presentation of two biblical cycles:
on one wall, scenes from the life of the Virgin; facing it, the life of
John the Baptist. Depictions of the four evangelists—Matthew,
Mark, Luke and John—adorn the ceiling.
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The Basilica is filled with art commissioned for the liturgical
program of the Dominican priests who have long served here. Visit
www.chiesasantamarianovella.it and click the British flag to
access English text about the history, liturgy and art encountered
there. Besides Ghirlandaio, you will learn that Giotto, Brunelleschi,
Ghiberti, Masaccio, Botticelli, Giambologna, della Robbia, Filippino Lippi and Vasari continue fulfilling their creative intentions
within these walls.
Msgr. Timothy Verdon, now a canon of Florence Cathedral,
first came to the city as an art historian. In an article written for a
Marist College conference on the issues facing religious institutions,
he observed: “It is better to see works of art in their original setting
than in the artificial context of a museum: seeing them in situ, one
grasps the intimate relationship between form and function and the
bond between art and life—especially the spiritual life of peoples,
of particular groups and of individuals—which great art normally
reflects.”
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Il Scoppio del Carro—the Explosion of the Cart—is an ancient Florentine Easter tradition.
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Tradition Preserves Florentine Heroism
lorence preserves its history through art, literature and dramatic
recreations of the city’s 2,000-year-old past. The highlight of a
Florentine Easter Sunday is the Scoppio del Carro—the explosion
of the cart in Piazza San Giovanni before the Duomo (cathedral).
This symbolic representation of the risen Christ, akin to the Easter
Candle, has its origins in the heroic act of a Florentine crusader
in 1099.
As a reward for being the first to scale the battlements of Jerusalem, Pazzino di Ranieri de’Pazzi received three flint stones found
within the Holy Sepulchre. From that time, Florence’s ceremonial
Easter-weekend fires have been ignited with these flints. Since 1765,
this cart—the Brindelione—has borne hot coals ignited by Pazzino’s
reward preserved within their reliquary at the Church of SS.
Apostoli to the Duomo. The coals are carried to the altar, where they
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ignite a dove-shaped rocket. This Colombina zips along a wire back
to the cart, where it sets off an arsenal of explosives that celebrate the
Resurrection.
Two white Tuscan oxen haul the Brindelione. Their escorts,
members of the Historic Procession of the Republic of Florence,
wear Renaissance-era costumes patterned after figures in Benozzo
Gozzoli’s Procession of the Magi, a fresco in the chapel of Palazzo
Medici Riccardi. To celebrate the Feast of San Giovanni in late June,
the entire Procession—over 500 strong—fills the playing field on
Piazza Santa Croce prior to the Calcio Storico: historic soccer. This
notoriously violent contest between the four quarters of Florence
commemorates a 1530 encounter between 27-man teams who
flaunted their bravery while the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V
besieged their city.
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Piazza Santo Spirito is the architectural anchor of one of Florence’s quarters.
Italian market umbrellas were created
for market day stalls on such piazzas.
Linguini with clam sauce, fresh flowers
and bric-a-brac await regulars. Pigeons
have bathed in this fountain for centuries
and many a competition cyclist has started
out with training wheels on this
piazza’s paving stones.
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Construction of the Canon’s Cloister, attached to the Basilica of San Lorenzo, began in 1420.
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Architectural Serenity
stride one of the oldest church sites in Florence, today’s Basilica
and Monastery of San Lorenzo, served by the Augustinian Order,
was constructed with Medici family money (Giovanni, Cosimo,
Piero and Lorenzo Medici were its patrons) and the architectural
genius of Filippo Brunelleschi and his disciple, Antonio Manetti.
The first Church of San Lorenzo, consecrated here in 393 AD, was
replaced by a new and enlarged building erected between 1045 and
1060. Following a catastrophic fire that destroyed this structure,
today’s complex was begun in 1519. As the parish church of the
Medici banking clan, who controlled Florence during the 1400s, it
became one of their largest benefactions—in essence, the family’s
chapel. Four centuries of Medici sarcophagi containing bankers and
Grand Dukes fill the Old Sacristy, the New Sacristy and the Medici
Chapel. The artwork of Michelangelo, Donatello, Fra Filippo
Lippi, Bronzino and Verrochio enhance altars, pulpits and chapels.
Michelangelo designed the Laurentian Library, accessible from this
courtyard.
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The Cloister of the Canons offered priests who served in the
Basilica of San Lorenzo a retreat from the bustling city just beyond
its walls. A breviary in hand, they would recite the Divine Office
while making devotional rounds in privacy. Marist-LdM professors
often bring their classes to this cloister to link learning to the city’s
religious heritage.
Florence is as much a city of churches as it is a city of museums.
The website www.churchesofflorence.com offers a virtual tour
of the architecture and liturgical tradition of these institutions that
inspired amazing art created to enhance worship. But a virtual tour
is not a complete experience. One student in a class that waited
through a Mass to discuss an artwork near the altar remarked to
his professor, “Seeing the Mass, we see what the art was originally
meant for.” Cloisters like San Lorenzo offer an aura—a place for
prayers seeking God’s presence.
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
An everyday “Cycle of Life” scene is played out on Via Dei Servi: music by Palestrina.
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Florence Provides Settings for Life & Literature
he streets of Florence encourage observation. Along these
outdoor museums, vignettes of life unfold, messages in stone, metal
and clay call out. Via dei Servi, just three blocks long, is anchored at
one end by the dome of the Duomo—Florence’s cathedral—and at
the other by the Piazza della Santissima Anunziata and its namesake
building, the Church of the Holy Annunciation.
In E.M. Forster’s A Room With a View, Lucy Honeychurch, the
novel’s protagonist, encounters the piazza-flanking Foundling Hospital designed by Filippo Brunelleschi and decorated by the sculptor
Andrea della Robbia. “For one ravishing moment,” Forster writes,
“Italy appeared. Lucy stood in the square of Santa Annunziatta and
saw in the living terra-cotta those divine babies whom no cheap re-
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production can ever stale. There they stood with their shining limbs
bursting from the garments of charity and their strong white arms
against circlets of heaven. Lucy thought she had never seen anything
more beautiful.”
Strolling toward the beckoning dome, one passes a dozen palaces
named for noble families. Their walls are the yield of centuries-long
tapping by hammer and chisel, their arches descended from masonry
innovation of the Etruscan era. In Italian Hours, Henry James speaks
of the unfailing charm of walking past the vast stone walls of the
Duomo, with its acres of geometrical mosaics. “In old Florence the
abiding felicity, the sense of saving sanity, of something sound and
human, predominates.”
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Florence’s neo-Renaissance Palace of Justice models for a Marist student’s photography course. The entire city offers countless resources for digital media and
multimedia authoring courses. Four-year Marist degrees in the arts can be fulfilled in Florence.
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Studying Abroad—The Modern Grand Tours
arist students are exposed to the natural endowment of one of
America’s most treasured regions—the Hudson River Valley—as
well as the cultural richness of academic centers on six continents.
More than 50 percent include overseas education in their bachelor’s
program.
Leading off the international destinations is Marist’s branch
campus in Florence, Italy: 40 students enroll annually in the
year-long Freshman Florence Experience, while some 250 Study
Abroad students enjoy a semester or two in “The birthplace of The
Renaissance.” The Marist-Lorenzo de’ Medici curriculum offers
400 courses, primarily in the humanities. Although instruction is
in English, students are encouraged to study Italian and put their
language skills to use in an ideal setting.
John Peters, dean of Marist’s International Program, sums up its
goal: “We set out to equip students with the skills that enable them
to understand what it’s like to be a local in another place.”
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By contrast to the long, deep look into the “Athens on the Arno,”
with its yield of humanistic words and images, Marist’s International
Program also offers a country-hopping Asia Study Abroad Program.
Between January and April, 15 students and course director Wesley
King visit India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, Japan, China and Tibet. Along the
way they take four or five of the following courses—Organizational
Behavior, Marketing Principles, Business Ethics, World Religions,
Modern Asia and International Business Economics. Visits with
company managers and encounters with their operations combine
with spontaneous observations of in local economies. The course
prospectus explains: “A primary focus of ASAP is to teach students
how a business positions itself in a global marketplace to be and to
remain competitive.”
For second-year student Brandon, ASAP 2015 yielded more
than a better understanding of the challenges of doing business in
Asia. “Once I went beyond the culture shock of a new country each
week, I was able to think more critically, analytically—and I learned
to manage my time better than I ever had before.”
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Professor Tom Goldpaugh finds that freshmen who take College Writing in Florence are more open to social, cultural and intellectual challenges:
“A whole new universe is just outside the classroom.”
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Learning Along with Young Michelangelo
dorned with Renaissance-themed frescoes restored by students
in the Marist-LdM conservation program, this room is home base
for first-year students studying in Florence. “Writing for College,” a
foundation course in Marist’s Core Curriculum, is basic fare: fundamentals of academic writing, documentation, pursuit of an academic
research project. But the students also have the opportunity to learn
through on-site inquiry.
In keeping with Marist’s Core Curriculum strategy, participants
in the Freshman Florence Experience, like their counterparts on
the Poughkeepsie campus, also take an intensive First Year Seminar
designed to expand their academic horizons and fuel their curiosity.
Professor Richard Lewis, an art historian, is one of the Poughkeepsie-based academics who have taught in Florence.
when, like our freshmen, Michelangelo first arrived as a young person in the birthplace of the Renaissance. Besides Michelangelo’s life
and art, we studied his times—and what times—one of the greatest
flowerings of culture in human history. Rather than reading textbooks or a biography, we read the same Florentine authors that Michelangelo would have read himself: sections from Dante’s Inferno,
Boccaccio’s description in The Decameron of the plague in Florence,
a fiery sermon by Savonarola and Machiavelli’s The Prince. As a team
project, students created customized and interactive Google maps of
the city in 1500 with an interactive, multilayered online timeline of
his life. Our course embraced the Florence branch campus’s concept
of ‘the city as classroom.’ While the class met two days a week, one
of those meetings was almost always a visit somewhere in the city.”
Lewis created an innovative seminar dubbed “Young Michelangelo’s Florence.” In his words, “We would learn what the city was like
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
On Florence’s Walls
Florence is an open history textbook. Scanning the city’s walls, one
discovers Renaissance symbolism: Dante and his Divine Comedy,
the heraldry of Pope Leo X, masons and physicians plying their
craft, the Giglio (Florence’s floral symbol), a sculptured Santa
Maria on the Loggia dei Lanzi and a mystical cherub on the
pediment of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella.
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Florence and its Heritage Sites
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
The Church of Ognissanti provides Professor Mario Bellini with Renaissance context for his art history class.
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Within the City–Limitless Resources
arist-LdM Professor Mario Bellini treats all of Florence
as a resource for his art history course. After starting one
session with a lecture aided by book illustrations, he leads
his students to a site filled with original masterpieces—the
Ognissanti (All Saints) Church.
A highlight of their visit is an extensive exploration of
Ghirlandaio’s Vespucci Family Chapel. The Vespucci were
very close to the Medici, sharing business, banking and
family ties. Their ranks included Amerigo, the great explorer
of the New World. The nearby Arno-flanking boulevard,
Lungarno Amerigo Vespucci, was named for him—as is
America. Amerigo’s pioneering voyages along South America’s eastern coast eventually led to European colonization.
By contrast, Genoa’s Christopher Columbus only reached
the Caribbean Islands.
Modern-day students of European art history are aided
by the worldwide web. Seventy-two Florentine museums
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and churches extend their welcome
at www.museumsinflorence.com.
Ognissanti is not one of them, but its
doors are open daily for visitors. You
can view the Vespucci Chapel on the
internet. Type in “Ognissanti Church”
and “Vespucci Chapel” and you’ll find
myriad websites to peruse.
Professor Bellini’s students are
treated to many overwhelming treasures during a semester. They learn that
revisiting in person or via the internet
is essential. Consider yourself invited
to one of the Medici family’s richest collections: Go to www.museumsinflorence.com, enter the Pitti Palace site and then enter the Palatina Gallery. Take
your time; there’s a lot to absorb, especially the Hall of Mars (Image 31).
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
The Mercato Nuove also is known as the Porcellino market because of its famed wild-boar fountain
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Restless Curiosity & Endless Destinations
ollege students based in Florence learn some dos and don’ts by
observing tourists: Italian high school students touching a bronze
wild boar (a Renaissance-era fountain) as they vow to return; German visitors, guidebooks in hand, searching out must-see sites.
British historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794), famed author
of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was compelled to
undertake this 12-year writing project by his own youthful travel
and study in France, Switzerland and Italy. He tapped the very same
historical reservoir that inspired the Renaissance. Gibbon enumerated those qualifications he deemed most essential to a traveler. They
aptly describe today’s effective student tourists, male and female.
“He should be endowed with an active, indefatigable vigour
of mind and body, which can seize every mode of conveyance, and
support with a careless smile every hardship of the road, the weather
or the Inn. It must stimulate him with a restless curiosity, impatient
of ease, covetous of time, and fearless of danger…. A musical ear will
multiply the pleasures of his Italian tour: but a correct and exquisite
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eye, which commands the landscape of a country, discerns the merit of a picture, and measures the proportions of a building is most
closely connected with the finer feelings of the mind, and the fleeting image shall be fixed and realized by the dexterity of the pencil…
(and most essential asset) a flexible temper which can assimilate
itself to every tone of society from the court to the cottage.”
Listening to traveling companions Eileen and Emma, Marist
students in the Freshman Florence Experience, one discovers that
their academic week—four days of study capped by three-day
weekends—facilitated extensive trips throughout Italy by train and
bus. Budget airlines took them to London, Dublin, Scotland, Paris,
Munich, Morocco, Sicily and Malta. They were tapping Gibbon’s
insights.
“It comes over you—‘Oh my gosh, we’re doing this now,’ ” says
Eileen. Equaling her enthusiasm, Emma adds: “It’s a whole year,
like WOW! It puts you ahead, makes you more aware of world
issues—able to adapt!”
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
While the Arno’s shores host history, its waters welcome kayakers and rowing crews.
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Leonardo’s Lifelong Challenge—Mastering Water
ore than meets the eye: The Arno can present itself as a playground, but for Leonardo da Vinci, a 14-year-old apprentice in the
workshop of sculptor/painter Andrea del Verrochio, the Arno in full
flood on January 12, 1466, overflowed with terror. The destructive—
and constructive—force of water fascinated him for the rest of his
life. His earliest dated drawing was a 1473 landscape view of the
Arno Valley. His notebooks (13,000 pages recording this Renaissance
man’s studies and innovations in painting, anatomy, engineering and
nature) chronicle a lifelong interest in the substance he characterizes as “sometimes sharp and sometimes strong, sometimes acid and
sometimes bitter…it changes into as many natures as are the different
places through which it passes…. Amid all the causes of the destruction of human property, it seems to me that rivers hold the foremost
place on account of their excessive and violent inundations.” The
final drawings Leonardo created before his death in 1519 depict an
imagined, world-ending deluge.
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In between those first and last drawings, Leonardo painted 15
masterpieces, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He also
carved out a career as a civil and military engineer, designing lethal
mechanisms and ingenious resources for Ludivico Sforza, Grand
Duke of Milan, and Cesare Borgia, the nefarious son of a nefarious
pope, Alexander VI.
Engineering historian R.H.G. Parry recounts that Leonardo’s
appointment as Ducal Engineer in Milan led to the monumental
task of connecting the Martesana and Naviglio canals through the
internal waterways of Milan. “He had six new locks constructed
in this internal system—most notably the lock at San Marco…his
celebrated sketches (Codex Atlanticus, folio 240) illustrated the use,
possibly for the first time, of miter gates which by virtue of forming
a vee upstream, are held tightly closed and watertight by the pressure
of the water.” This water-taming design remains in use worldwide.
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Florence’s Central Market—a culinary resource.
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The Florentine Banquet Table
s prideful as Florence is about its contribution to the world of art,
it doesn’t shrink from claiming attention for its food. A founder of
the Florentine International Antiques Fair considered it a natural development to offer a series of Renaissance-style banquets as part of the
inaugural event in 1959. Since antiques dealers thrive by being keenly
aware of painting, sculpture, tapestries and a host of other arts, they
were receptive to holding a gastronomic fair honoring the senses—
sight, sound, smell and taste. “We set our tables with all the artistry we
could summon up. We researched our dishes so that the foods were
chosen with the same care that a painter selects and mixes the colors
of his palette. To delight our ears we had minstrels singing and playing
in the background.” The offerings over five days included onion soup,
mushroom pie, stuffed chicken, wild boar ragu, partridge breasts with
truffles, saddle of veal, roasted spring lambs and suckling pigs—along
with pasta, risotto and a harvest of Tuscan vegetables and fruits.
At the 1965 Antiques Fair, an Italian Gastronomic Rhapsody
honored all of Italy’s cuisines. Although the nation was unified in
the mid-19th century, its cuisine, developed in the era of city states
and dukedoms, remains distinctly regional. That year’s dinner
featured stracotto al Barolo (wine-braised pork) from the Piedmont,
Milanese-style minestrone and tripe, baccalao (salt cod stewed with
tomatoes) from the Veneto, trenette with pesto (thin noodles in basil
sauce) from Genoa and Sicilian caponata (a marinated olive and
eggplant medley). Wines came from the entire Italian peninsula.
To this day, restaurants showcase their region’s distinct cuisine: If
you want good spaghetti with meat sauce—alla Bolognese—go to
Bologna.
The following recipes for Secondi Piatti—main dishes—complete our almanacs’ attempt to bring you, course by course, a guide
to the Tuscan table.
Recipes by Signy Spiegel
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Pollo Arrosto all’ Limone (Roast Chicken with Lemon)
Chinghiale Stufato (Wild Boar Ragu/Stew)
1 whole chicken (4-5 lbs.)
3 lemons
Several rosemary sprigs
1 tbsp. olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste
After removing giblets, heart, etc. from cavity, wash chicken and
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QMBDFJOUPDBWJUZXJUISPTFNBSZTQSJHTr4QSJOLMFGSFTISPTFNBSZ
leaves and juice from remaining lemon over chicken and place in
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add salt and pepper (about 1 tsp. salt and ½UTQQFQQFS
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350-degree oven about 90 minutes, until internal temperature reads
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before carving.
Hunting for wild boar may prove difficult; domesticated pork will do.
2½-3 lbs. pork shoulder
Lemon sauce (good warm or cold)
½ cup olive oil
1 tbsp. minced garlic
2 tbsp. flour
1 tsp. finely cut rosemary leaves
1 cup lemon juice (freshly squeezed preferable)
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stick; keep marinade for later use.
Marinade:
1 medium carrot, 1 celery stalk and 1 onion, chopped
3 plum tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped
1 tbsp. tomato paste
1 large bay leaf
3 cloves
1 cinnamon stick
2 cups hearty red wine
½ cup orange juice
1/3 cup all-purpose flour
¼ cup dark, semisweet chocolate, grated
3 tbsp. olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
1 sprig of rosemary
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deep skillet with tight-fitting lid), then brown pork with rosemary,
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appears too thin, add a little flour and simmer an additional 5 minVUFTJGUPPUIJDLBEEBMJUUMFCFFGCSPUIr4FSWFPWFSQBTUBTVDIBT
pappardelle and with a side dish of spinach (see recipe below).
Recipes by Signy Spiegel
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Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
continued...
Cacciucco alla Livornese (Tuscan Seafood Soup /Stew)
There are many variations of this popular dish, originally made from
a fisherman’s catch of the day. Whatever was not sold he brought home
for his family supper. I have settled for the version below, but feel free to
improvise, as fishermen’s wives do.
2 lbs. fillets of firm white fish like cod or monkfish
½ lb. large shrimp, peel on
½ lb. large sea scallops, cut in half
½ lb. squid, tube cut into ¼-in. rings (tentacles trimmed)
1 dozen mussels
½ cup olive oil
1 medium red onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tbsp. sage leaves, chopped fine
1 sprig rosemary
1½ tbsp. red hot pepper flakes
1 lb. fresh plum tomatoes, skinned, seeded and chopped or
1 can (28 oz.) chopped tomatoes
3 tbsp. tomato paste
1 cup dry white wine
8 oz. bottled clam juice
2 cups fish stock
White farm bread, sliced and toasted
Salt and pepper to taste
Warm olive oil in a large soup pot; saute onion and garlic over
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Let simmer for 10 minutes, then add clam juice and fish stock.
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simmer for about 5 minutes before adding scallops, shrimps and
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unopened mussels and rosemary sprig; and add salt and pepper to
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soup/stew over bread. Garnish with chopped parsley and lemon
zest.
Spinach Fiorentina (Florentine Spinach)
This is a very popular side dish (contorno) served with many different meals in Tuscan restaurants and homes.
10 oz. fresh spinach leaves
1 tbsp. butter
1 tsp. olive oil
1 tsp. lemon juice
1 garlic clove (chopped)
salt and pepper to taste
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cover until wilted, about 5 minutes, then add lemon juice, salt and
pepper before serving.
57
Recipes by Signy Spiegel
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
continued...
Osso Buco alla Milanese (Braised Veal Shanks)
A “foreign” dish found on many Florentine restaurant menus
Have a friendly butcher cut veal shanks into 2-inch slices (about.
¾-1 lb. each). This recipe calls for six portions.
2 tbsp. flour
Salt and pepper
½ cup olive oil
1 cup chopped onions
½ cup chopped carrots
½ cup chopped celery stalk
1 tsp. finely chopped garlic
1½ cup plum tomatoes (fresh or canned),
cut into small pieces
1 cup chicken or vegetable stock
½ cup dry white wine
3 bay leaves
1 tbsp. dried Italian seasoning mix
Gremolata:
3 tbsp. Italian parsley
1 tbsp. grated lemon peel (zest)
1 tsp. chopped garlic
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and reduce by simmering about 10 minutes.
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marrow, use a lobster fork. Risotto Milanese (see recipe below) is a
perfect accompaniment.
Risotto Milanese (Rice Cooked in Broth)
Yields about 3 cups cooked rice
1 cup Arborio rice
2 tbsp. olive oil
2 tbsp. butter
½ cup onion, chopped
½ cup dry white wine
3 cups vegetable or chicken stock
½ cup grated parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste
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pepper to taste.
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tomatoes, bay leaves and Italian seasoning; pour over meat. (Liquid should come halfway up the side of the meat; add more stock
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r#SJOHJOHSFEJFOUTUPBCPJMPOTUPWFUPQCFGPSFDPWFSing and putting in oven to simmer gently for about 90 minutes.
59
Visit www.marist.edu/florence for more information
Within the city’s southwestern quarter a monastery finds new use as a private villa.
Renaissance Bookshelf – Compiled by Ted Spiegel
To enhance your 500-year retro-voyage into what many consider Europe’s most
culturally productive era, tap into the literary resources offered by this annotated bibliography.
Whether you explore on the printed page alone or move on to the walkways once tread by
Leonardo and Michelangelo, access to this treasure trove will be insight-filled.
The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt, the Swiss founder of
cultural history, is available as a free download from www.gutenberg.org. Its pages will afford
you a framework for understanding the revival of antiquity, the development of neo-Platonic
Humanism, and the economic vitality that endowed the arts and sciences.
Also available at the Gutenberg site, which offers resources in the public domain, is The
Florentine Painters of the Renaissance by the seminal art critic Bernard Berenson. His decades in
Florence yielded authoritative views: “Florentine painting was pre-eminently an art formed by
great personalities. It grappled with problems of the highest interest, and offered solutions that
can never lose their value.”
To see from afar the artwork Berenson had viewed directly during his decades in
Florence, go to your nearest library and browse amongst the oversize illustrated book section.
Dewey decimal number 750.74 at the Adriance Public Library in Poughkeepsie yielded Art
Treasures of the Uffizi and Pitti Museums. A modern resource presenting both those collections is
www.museumsinflorence.com, where you can also access websites for 70 additional museums.
What else will you discover in the oversize section? New York publisher Harry N.
Abrams has generous solo presentations entitled Leonardo da Vinci: The Complete Paintings and
Michelangelo’s Drawings. Some art books present periods, i.e. Mannerism: The Painting and
Style of the Late Renaissance by Jacques Bousquet, published by Braziller.
Renaissance Humanism by Margaret L. King is an invaluable anthology available at
Amazon.com in printed and Kindle versions. Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature allows you to
preview the very informative introduction. Selections include Petrarch’s “To Posterity,” Pico
della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man” and Leonardo Bruni’s “In Praise of the City
of Florence.”
Biographical exploration should begin with Lives of the Most Eminent Painters, Sculptors
and Architects by the painter and architect Giorgio Vasari. He is credited with coining the term
rinascita (renaissance) in print. In the 1550 dedication of the work to his patron, Cosimo de’
Medici, Duke of Florence, Vasari wrote, “I think that you cannot but take pleasure in this labor
which I have undertaken, of writing down the lives, the works, the manners, and the
circumstances of all those who, finding the arts already dead, first revived them, then step by step
nourished and adorned them, and finally brought them to that height of beauty and majesty
whereon they stand at the present day.”
Another voice contemporary to the artistic growth Vasari cites can be found in the lively,
adventure-filled Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, also downloadable at the Gutenberg site.
Historians speculate that goldsmith Cellini’s inspiration was his omission from Vasari’s
compilation.
Though highly focused on the iconic structure crowning the Florence Cathedral, the
bestselling Brunelleschi’s Dome: How A Renaissance Genius Reinvented Architecture also
chronicles life in what was then one of Europe’s most important cities. Cap your biographical
readings with a novel – The Agony and the Ecstasy, dramatic enough to be made into a “bio-pic”
starring Charlton Heston as Michelangelo. The New York Times praised author Irving Stone’s sixyear effort – “he has painted the portrait of a supreme craftsman who was also one of the most
versatile artists of all time, he has also laid bare before us a cyclorama of one of the world’s most
astounding ages.”
Niccolo Machiavelli, informed by his political efforts on behalf of the Florentine
government, compiled his guide to the use of power, The Prince, while living in political exile in
the Chianti Hills of Tuscany. First distributed in 1513, it offered chapters concerned with cruelty
and clemency, a description of the methods of murder adopted by the Duke Valentino (Cesare
Borgia), as well a primer in how would-be princes could avoid being despised and hated. His
observations are still read in college government classes. This classic and the next three citations
also are available as free downloads from www.gutenberg.org.
By the time you do some hard digging into the following, you will have the intellectual
equipment to absorb an enriched, on-site Florentine Experience: The Ten Books on Architecture
by the Roman Vitruvius (ca.10 AD, rediscovered in 1412), Dante’s Divine Comedy (published in
1317 AD and required reading for Florentines to this day) and The Complete Notebooks of
Leonardo Da Vinci (compiled throughout his lifetime, 1452-1519). The latter provide the context
of lifetime learning for the Renaissance intellectual.
Buon Viaggio!