Art Appreciation   

Recently returned to Rome from their “captivity” in Avignon, France, and desperate to assert their role as spiritual and temporal leader of the universal Catholic Church, ruler of the Papal States, and “Pontifex Maximus,” Renaissance Popes began to rationalize, fortify, and beautify the city of Rome. But they needed a place where all of these roles could be articulated and performed. Sixtus IV built the Sistine or Great Chapel to serve these functions in its rituals, orations, and most importantly decorations. Before Michelangelo, Botticelli and other Tuscans were painting the parallel histories of Moses and Christ, lawgiver and grace giver, the portraits of Early Christian popes as prefigurations of Sixtus and his successors, and a Star filled ceiling, an invitation to contemplate the heavens as the final goal and end of a Pope’s reign. Follow the cany political gestures and deeply felt spiritual and personal themes of Sixtus as he inaugurates a great period of Papal beautification and glorification of the city of Rome, Urbis et Orbis (“for the city and the world”).

Created from the massive art collection of the House de Medici, the Uffizi Gallery is one of the most visited museums in the world. One of the most prominent Italian museums, it holds a priceless collection from the Renaissance as well as classical Ancient Rome. This program digs into the fascinating and surprising history of the building, the ancient Roman town beneath it and its archaeological secrets, and the private passageway used just for the Medici family, and it also looks into the surrounding area.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY, states: “Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) reimagined European landscape painting by portraying nature as a setting for profound spiritual and emotional encounters.” Organized to honor the 250th anniversary of Friedrich’s birth, the Met’s exhibition, Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature (Feb. 8-May 11, 2025), is the first comprehensive exhibition of the artist held in the United States. This presentation will also include works by Friedrich’s contemporaries to create a comparative experience of Friedrich’s work and the extremely influential movement of Romanticism that swept across Europe in the 19th century.

His work is often described as revolutionary, cinematic, soulful, dark... His personality, as difficult, violent, and unstable... His life was marred with fights, a murder, prison, and running for his life. All the while, he was also receiving patronage, major commissions, and creating masterpieces during a life cut short, ending in mysterious circumstances. He was profoundly influential in his day, as well as for centuries to come. This presentation will follow Caravaggio’s trail across Italy, visiting his major works in their original sites.