Clos Luce- Home of the Genius Leonardo da Vinci

The Residence Clos Luce, Loire Valley, France

The Residence Clos Luce is one of the most furnished in the Loire Valley. It carries the spirit of the Renaissance. From 1516 to 1519 Leonardo da Vinci lived here. This is the place where he completed his famous paintings Mona Lisa, St. Anne and St.John the Baptist. It was Francis I who ensconced Leonardo da Vinci in this mansion. 

Clos Luce Residence, Loire Valley, France

The Clos Luce residence is connected through an underground tunnel with the Chateau of Amboise, where Francis I lived. This is the last place da Vinci inhabited till his death in 1519. In the Residence you can see some of the da Vinci's inventions who are recreated according to his drafts and manifested in the garden and basement.

The Garden of Clos Luce, Loire Valley, France

What you have to see:

-the watchtower

-the insides of the mansion 

-the amazing landscapes which are not  hard to be noticed

Gardens of Clos Luce, Loire Valley, France

Residence Clos Luce, Loire Valley, France

Leonardo da Vinci

Château de Chambord – the most impressive Château in the Loire Valley

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

The royal Château de Chambord at Chambord, Loir-et-Cher, France is the largest and most popular of the Loire Châteaux. It’s also one of the most recognizable châteaux in the world because of its very distinct French Renaissance architecture which blends traditional French medieval forms with classical Renaissance structures. The design parallels are north Italian and Leonardesque.

Chambord  was built to serve as a hunting lodge for François I, who maintained his royal residences at Château de Blois and Château d’Amboise. Although the original design of the Château de Chambord is attributed, to Domenico da Cortona, some authors claim that the French Renaissance architect Philibert Delorme had a considerable role in the château's design, and others have suggested that Leonardo da Vinci may have designed it.

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

Architecture

The castles distinct French Renaissance architecture combines traditional medieval defensive structures with classical Italian aspects. It dates from the time when chateaux in the Loire no longer needed to have medieval defenses, but elements such as towers and moats were retained for their aesthetic beauty.

The main body of the castle is roughly square in shape, with a large tower in each corner. there are also two (symmetrical) wings to the castle, each also ending with a substantial tower. Bases for a possible further two towers  found at the rear, these were never developed, and remain the same height as the wall. Superlatives abound in the immense building and it is said there are more than 400 rooms, and almost as many fireplaces, along with 84 staircases. Four rectangular vaulted hallways on each floor form a cross-shape.

Among all this grandeur, the central staircase still impresses and is perhaps the architectural highlight of a visit. The stone staircase rises the height of Chambord castle, and is of a 'double helix' form. This spectacular double-helix open staircase  is the centerpiece of the château. The two helixes ascend the three floors without ever meeting, illuminated from above by a sort of light house at the highest point of the château. There are suggestions that Leonardo da Vinci may have designed the staircase, but this has not been confirmed.

Château de Chambord, famous double escalier, Loire Valley, France

The other architectural highlight must surely be the ornate roof, and the feature that makes Chateau de Chambord so instantly recognisable. The roof has often been compared with the skyline of a town.  At a glance the roof is symmetrical but look closer and you will see that is not the case - among the numerous towers, light wells and decorative features there are many variations from left to right.

The château also features 128 meters of facade, more than 800 sculpted columns and an elaborately decorated roof. When François I commissioned the construction of Chambord, he wanted it to look like the skyline of Constantinople.

Château de Chambord, panoramic view, Loire Valley, France

The result of combining medieval French architecture with highlights from the Italian renaissance might be expected to create an alarming imbalance, but in reality the two combine to create a unified whole that is one of the most notable castles in France.

The design and architecture of the château inspired William Henry Crossland for his design of what is known as the Founder's building at Royal Holloway, University of London. The Founder's building features very similar towers and layout but was built using red bricks.

The Parc de Chambord around the Château is an enormous walled game reserve – the largest in Europe - 52.5‑km² wooded. Wild boars roam freely, though red deer are the beasts you're most likely to spot as they are maintained here. You can explore on foot or by bike or boat – both rentable from the jetty where the Cosson passes alongside the main facade of the Château – and even on horseback, with mounts rented from the Centre Equestre near the Château.

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

 

History

Who exactly designed Château Chambord is a matter of controversy as we already mentioned. Yet there are proofs that during his stay at Clos Lucé near Amboise, as a guest of François, Leonardo da Vinci is responsible for the original design of the château.  

Regardless of who designed the château, in 1519 François Pombriant was ordered to begin construction of Château Chambord.The work was interrupted by The Italian War of 1521–1526 interrupted the work. In September 1526, at which point 1,800 workers were employed building the château. At the time of the death of François in 1547, the work had cost 444,070 livres. The château was built to act as a hunting lodge for Francis, however the king spent barely seven weeks there in total, comprising short hunting visits. The château wasn’t actually practical to live in, as it had been constructed with the purpose of short stays. The massive rooms, open windows and high ceilings meant heating was impractical. In this period the château was barely furnished. There had been used implements brought especially when there was a hunting event.

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

After the death of Francois I, the château was abandoned by the French Kings. Thus it was allowed to decay until King Louis XIII gave it to his brother, Gaston d'Orleans in 1639. He started restoration work. King Louis XIV furnished the royal apartments and restored the great keep. There was also added a stable of 1200 horses. That enabled the using of the château to be used as a hunting lodge. So the château was used a few weeks a year. Yet, it was abandoned in 1685.

Later, from 1725 – 1733 King Louis XV lived in Chambord. In 1745 the château was given to Maurice de Saxe as a reward to valour. He used it as a place to his military regiment. The château was abandoned again in 1750 after his death.

After that, during the Revolution, almost everything from the inside of the château – all the furnishings, the wall panellings, even floors was sold and the château stayed abandoned until Napoleon Bonaparte gave it to his subordinate, Louis Alexandre Berthier. Later Chambord was purchased for the Duke of Bordeaux who became Comte de Chambord. His grandfather tried to restore the château but both were exiled in 1830. In 1870 – 1871 Chambord was used as a field hospital during the  Franco - Prussian War.

Another attempt of restoration the château was made by the Compte de Chambord but he died in 1883. His sister’s heirs – the Ducal Family from Parma, Italy got Chambord. World War I ended any further attempts to restore it in 1914. The château got confiscated in 1915. In 1939 all the components of the art collections of the Louvre and Compiègne ( including the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo) were moved here. In 1944 a bomber crashed into the lawn of the château.

Few years after the end of World War II  began restoration work. Nowadays château de Chambord is a major tourist attraction as it is the most impressive of all the Châteaux in the Loire Valley.

Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

Château de Chambord, inside, Loire Valley, France

The gate on the entrance of Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

The gate on the entrance of Château de Chambord, Loire Valley, France

The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy- one of the most famous art museums in world

The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

 The Uffizi Gallery is one of the oldest and most famous art museums in world. It is situated in Florence, Italy. Since Florence is considered to be the birthplace of Renaissance, there are many Renaissance works and architecture. Many of them can be found in The Uffizi Gallery.

The story about the Uffizi Gallery like most of the sights in Florence is connected with the Medici Family. They were very powerful. They gave Europe popes and queens, bankers and criminals, they were very generous Maecenas and wasteful consumer of Florentine art.

The Uffizi Gallery on the inside, Florence, Italy

 The construction of the Galery started 1560.  One of the Medici Family - Cosimo I de’ Medici ordered Giorgio Vasari to build a place which will provide the magistrates offices. Alfonso Parigi and Bernardo Buontalenti continued the work of Vasari. The construction of the building ended in 1581. The offices, hence the name, represent two long structures with arcades and colonnades.

The cortile (internal courtyard) is so long and narrow, and open to the Arno River at its far end through a Doric screen that articulates the space without blocking it, that architectural historians treat it as the first regularized streetscape of Europe. Vasari, a painter as well as architect, emphasized the perspective length by the matching facades' continuous roof cornices, and unbroken cornices between storeys and the three continuous steps on which the palace-fronts stand. The niches in the piers that alternate with columns were filled with sculptures of famous artists in the 19th century.

The Palazzo degli Uffizi brought together under one roof the administrative offices, the Tribunal and the state archive (Archivio di Stato). The project that was planned by Cosimo I, Grand Duke of Tuscany to arrange that prime works of art in the Medici collections on the piano nobile was effected by Francis I of Tuscany, who commissioned from Buontalenti the famous Tribuna degli Uffizi that united a selection of the outstanding masterpieces in the collection in an ensemble that was a star attraction of the Grand Tour.

The Birth of Venus, Botticelli, The Uffizi Gallery

Over the years, further parts of the palace evolved into a display place for many of the paintings and sculpture collected by the Medici family or commissioned by them. According to Vasari, who was not only the architect of the Uffizi but also the author of Lives of the Artists, artists such as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo gathered at the Uffizi "for beauty, for work and for recreation."

In 1737 Anna Maria Luiza de Medici, the last from The Medici Family decides do give the Medici collection and the building to the city of Florence. That way was formed one of the first modern museums. 

Primavera, Botticelli, The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

The building of the gallery itself is not a special or even nice one, but this doesn’t matter. After all this is a place containing the most abundant collection of pictures, paintings, engravings of Italian authors from Renaissance, such as Giotto(The Ognissanti Madonna, Badia Polyptych), Leonardo da Vinci (The Annunciation, The Adoration of the Magi), Titian (Flora, Venus of Urbino), Botticelli ( Primavera, The Birth of Venus), Raffael (Madonna of the Goldfinch) , Caravaggio (Bacchus, The Sacrifice of Isaac, Medusa) and Michelangelo(The Doni Tondo),and many works of other artists, a lot of sculptures etc. This explains why there is always a crowds of people waiting for their turn to enter. But don’t be fool, you have to reserve tickets in advance. This is  for the best if you are about to visit the Uffizi Gallery.

The Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy

Nude Mona Lisa on show in Vinci: 5,000 Mona Lisa Works Displayed on Da Vinci muse

Mona Lisa has inspired fine artisits and pop artists to create their own Mona Lisa. Now, along with 5,000 works inspired by the original Mona Lisa, a 16th-century painting of a nude Mona Lisa once attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci went on show for the first time this past Saturday as part of a sweeping new exhibition that opened in Tuscany in Leonardo Da Vinci's home town of Vinci, near Florence in the region of Tuscany. The 5,000 works inspired by the original Mona Lisa including paintings, sculptures, etchings and new media images spanning five centuries, all on display at the Museo Ideale in Leonardo's hometown of Vinci in Tuscany for the show, the largest ever held on the mysterious muse.

Experts have succeeded in establishing that the nude Mona Lisa once belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte's uncle, Cardinal Joseph Fesch (1763-1839) - a major collector who also owned Leonardo's painting of St Jerome now in the Vatican Museums. Another nude will also go on show but investigations into its history are continuing.

Curated by Agnese Sabato and Alessandro Vezzosi under the supervision of the world's top Leonardo Da Vinci expert Carlo Pedretti, the exhibition will also reveal the latest spectacular scientific data from experts researching the original Mona Lisa housed in the Louvre in Paris.

The show is divided into two sections.

The first explores the history of the Mona Lisa, including dating problems and the identity of the smiling model, but also displays sculptures and etchings inspired by the painting from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The second section is dedicated to so-called Leonardismo and highlights how the Mona Lisa became an icon in literature, graphic design and on the internet.

WHO IS MONA LISA?

Unlike most Renaissance portraits, Leonardo's original Mona Lisa (mona is the standard Italian contraction for madonna, or ''my lady,'') bears no date or signature, nor is the name of the sitter given. These omissions, coupled with the sitter's mysterious close-lipped smile, have helped spawn endless theories about the woman's identity. Various contemporary court beauties and noblewomen have been put forward, including Isabella d'Este and Isabella Gualanda, while some have concluded that she was Leonardo's mother. Other academics argue that the sitter was one of his favourite young lovers disguised as a woman. Such theorists note that da Vinci never relinquished the painting, keeping it with him up until his death in Amboise, France in 1519.

There is in fact no evidence that da Vinci was paid for the portrait or that it was ever delivered. The Mona Lisa's strange smile has also led to endless speculation and theories, some of the most curious provided by medical experts-cum-art lovers.

One group of medical researchers has maintained that the sitter's mouth is so firmly shut because she was undergoing mercury treatment for syphilis which turned her teeth black. An American dentist has claimed that the tight-lipped expression was typical of people who have lost their front teeth, while a Danish doctor was convinced she suffered from congenital palsy which affected the left side of her face and this is why her hands are overly large. A French surgeon has also put forth his view that she was semi-paralysed, perhaps as the result of a stroke, and that this explained why one hand looks relaxed and the other tense. An Italian doctor has pointed to an alleged puffy cheek and swollen hand to claim she was suffering from a 'fatty blood' disorder.

From "Mona Lisa to the nude Gioconda" runs at the Museo Ideale in Vinci from June 13 to September 30.

For more about the inventions of Leonardo Da Vinci and video of the Rome exhibit, The Genius of Leonardo Da Vinci, click WebVisionItaly.com Leonardo Da Vinci in Rome.

Leonardo Da Vinci Self Portrait Found?

Rome, February 27 - An Italian science journalist and television presenter said Friday he may have discovered a self-portrait of Leonardo Da Vinci as a young man in Da Vinci's Codex on the Flight of Birds.

Piero Angela said he was flipping through a copy of the short manuscript written by Leonardo between 1490 and 1505 when he saw the drawing. ''I noticed that there was a drawing by Leonardo hidden between the words on the tenth page of his codex,'' he said.'' After extrapolating the red-chalk portrait with the help a graphic artist, a portrait of a Renaissance man emerged. Given the similarity, I thought that this could well be Leonardo himself''.

Angela said he compared the drawing with other portraits of Leonardo, and principally with Leonardo's famous self portrait of c. 1512-15, asking for help from a scientific investigation bureau in Rome.''The graphic artist then applied digital techniques used to age people or make them look younger, and astonishingly we found as amazing similarity - it was as if the two were brothers,'' he said. ''We also asked for the opinion of a maxillofacial surgeon, who said the two faces could well belong to the same many at different times in his life''.

Angela said the discovery ''had many exclamation marks, but very many question marks'', adding that it had not yet been possible to date the drawing. ''Thanks to other drawings present in the eight central pages of this codex, we think that Leonardo worked on these leaves between 1482 and 1489, when he was in Milan at the court of Ludovico Sforza. Then these pages were 'recycled' by the painter to write his codex''.

He stressed that the opinion of experts was still needed but said scholars to whom he had shown the drawing had told him it was an ''important discovery''. Angela will present his discovery on Saturday evening during a prime-time docu-entertainment show covering both history and science presented by his son Alberto and televised by state broadcaster RAI.

Earlier this month, a 16th-century portrait of Leonardo came to light in a hill town in Basilicata, southern Italy when a medieval historian was browsing through the collection of an aristocratic family. The oil painting shows Da Vinci in three-quarter profile and wearing a hat. Experts are investigating whether the painting could be by Cristofano dell'Altissimo, who painted another Da Vinci portrait in a similar style in the Uffizi in Florence, but have not yet ruled out the possibility that it too could be a self-portrait.

For more on Leonardo Da Vinci visit the exhibit Machines of Leonardo Da Vinci in Rome.

Butcher of Panzano Dario Cecchini - Antica Macelleria Cecchini

Dario Cecchini is known as the Butcher of Panzano, which is located in Chianti near Greve, in beautiful Tuscany.

The Cecchini family in Panzano have been the butcher's of Panzano for 600 years. For six centuries and continuing today under Dario "the Magnifico" Cecchini the Antica Macelleria Cecchini has butchered meet for the world's most famous and fed the most famous in its restaurant.

It is said Dante Aligheri loved to eat here and Leonardo da Vinci was inspired to paint the Mona Lisa after eating the meat butchered by the Cecchini family.

In his book Heat, Bill Buford observed Dario Cecchini is not just a butcher he is a Museum of Tuscany.

WebVisionItaly visited the Macelleria Cecchini and ate a very nice 'pranzo' on the Tuscan hill side. The weather was gorgeous in October and so while we give thanks and enjoy Christmas traditions with family and prepare for the New Year festivals we must include one Italy's great family traditions - Dario the Magnifico - Butcher of Panzano - in our thoughts this Christmas. Preparing wonderful lamb, Bistec Fiorentina etc etc.

Dario prepares cuts of meat in the greatest of Tuscan traditions, which date back to before the Renaissance and Medici family recipes written in books, to when recipes were shared orally from one Tuscan generation to the next. Dario learned to cut by mentoring with a family friend of his own father the butcher after he passed away. When in Chianti a visit to Dario Cecchini's Macelleria and a meal in the restaurant is a must see in Tuscany.

Click to view WebVionItaly's video interview with Dario Cecchini - Butcher of Panzano.