Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of "Italian Renaissance sculptor"

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⭐ Core Definition: Loggia dei Lanzi

The Loggia dei Lanzi, also called the Loggia della Signoria, is a building on the south corner of the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy, adjoining the Uffizi Gallery (leading to the Arno), and diagonally to the east the Palazzo della Signoria, the political center of the city. The loggia consists of three very high and wide arches open to the Piazza and on its east side to the Uffizi. The arches rest on cluster columns with Corinthian capitals. The wide arches appealed so much to the Florentines that Michelangelo proposed that they should be continued all around the Piazza della Signoria (see also Piazza Santissima Annunziata).

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Feldherrnhalle

The Feldherrnhalle ("Field Marshals' Hall") is a monumental loggia on the Odeonsplatz in Munich, Germany. Modelled after the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence, it was commissioned in 1841 by King Ludwig I of Bavaria to honour the tradition of the Bavarian Army.

In 1923, it was the site of the brief battle that ended Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch. During the Nazi era, it served as a monument commemorating the deaths of the 15 Nazis and one bystander killed during the revolt.

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Italian Renaissance sculpture

Italian Renaissance sculpture was an important part of the art of the Italian Renaissance, in the early stages arguably representing the leading edge. The example of Ancient Roman sculpture hung very heavily over it, both in terms of style and the uses to which sculpture was put. In complete contrast to painting, there were many surviving Roman sculptures around Italy, above all in Rome, and new ones were being excavated all the time, and keenly collected. Apart from a handful of major figures, especially Michelangelo and Donatello, it is today less well-known than Italian Renaissance painting, but this was not the case at the time.

Italian Renaissance sculpture was dominated by the north, above all by Florence. This was especially the case in the quattrocento (15th century), after which Rome came to equal or exceed it as a centre, though producing few sculptors itself. Major Florentine sculptors in stone included (in rough chronological order, with dates of death) Orcagna (1368), Nanni di Banco (1421), Filippo Brunelleschi (1446), Nanni di Bartolo (1451), Lorenzo Ghiberti (1455), Donatello (1466), Bernardo (1464) and his brother Antonio Rossellino (1479), Andrea del Verrocchio (1488), Antonio del Pollaiuolo (1498), Michelangelo (1564), and Jacopo Sansovino (1570). Elsewhere there was the Siennese Jacopo della Quercia (1438), from Lombardy Pietro Lombardo (1515) and his sons, Giovanni Antonio Amadeo (1522), Andrea Sansovino (1529), Vincenzo Danti (1576), Leone Leoni (1590), and Giambologna (1608, born in Flanders).

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Palazzo Vecchio

The Palazzo Vecchio (Italian pronunciation: [paˈlattso ˈvɛkkjo] "Old Palace") is the town hall of Florence, Italy. It overlooks the Piazza della Signoria, which holds a copy of Michelangelo's David statue, and the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi.

Originally called the Palazzo della Signoria, after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, this building was also known by several other names: Palazzo del Popolo, Palazzo dei Priori, and Palazzo Ducale, in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno River to the Palazzo Pitti.

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Abduction of a Sabine Woman

Abduction of a Sabine Woman (or The Rape of the Sabine) is a large and complex marble statue by the Flemish sculptor and architect Giambologna (Johannes of Boulogne). It was completed between 1579 and 1583 for Cosimo I de' Medici. Giambologna achieved widespread fame in his lifetime, and this work is often considered his masterpiece. It has been in the Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, since August 1582.

The statue is composed in the figura serpentinata style. It depicts three figures: a young man in the centre who has seemingly taken a woman from the despairing older man below him. It is ostensibly based on the "rape of the Sabine Women", a legend from the early history of Rome when the city contained relatively few women, leading to their men committing a raptio (large-scale abduction) of young women from nearby Sabina.

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Medici Lions

The Medici lions are a pair of marble sculptures of lions: one of which is Roman, dating to the 2nd century AD, and the other a 16th-century pendant. By 1598 both were placed at the Villa Medici, Rome. Since 1789 they have been displayed at the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence. The sculptures depict standing male lions with a sphere or ball under one paw, looking to the side.

Copies of the Medici lions have been made and publicly installed in over 30 other locations, and smaller versions made in a variety of media. Medici lion has become a term for this sculptural type.

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Perseus with the Head of Medusa

Perseus with the Head of Medusa is a bronze sculpture made by Benvenuto Cellini in the period 1545–1554. The sculpture stands on a square base which has bronze relief panels depicting the story of Perseus and Andromeda, similar to a predella on an altarpiece. It is located in the Loggia dei Lanzi in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, Italy. The second Florentine duke, Cosimo I de' Medici, commissioned the work with specific political connections to the other sculptural works in the piazza. When the piece was revealed to the public on 27 April 1554, Michelangelo's David, Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus, and Donatello's Judith and Holofernes were already installed in the piazza.

The subject matter of the work is the mythological story of Perseus beheading Medusa, a hideous woman-faced Gorgon whose hair had been turned to snakes; anyone who looked at her was turned to stone. Perseus stands naked except for a sash and winged sandals, triumphant on top of the body of Medusa with her head, crowned with writhing snakes, in his raised hand. Blood spews from Medusa's severed neck. The bronze sculpture, in which Medusa's head turns men to stone, is appropriately surrounded by three huge marble statues of men: Hercules, David, and later Neptune. Cellini's use of bronze in Perseus and the head of Medusa, and the motifs he used to respond to the previous sculpture in the piazza, were highly innovative. Examining the sculpture from the back, one can see a self-portrait of the sculptor Cellini on the back of Perseus's helmet.

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Loggia dei Lanzi in the context of Pasquino Group

The Pasquino Group (also known as Menelaus Carrying the Body of Patroclus or Ajax Carrying the Body of Achilles) is a group of marble sculptures that copy a Hellenistic bronze original, dating to ca. 200–150 BCE. At least fifteen Roman marble copies of this sculpture are known. Many of these marble copies have complex artistic and social histories that illustrate the degree to which improvisatory "restorations" were made to fragments of ancient Roman sculpture during the 16th and 17th centuries, in which contemporary Italian sculptors made original and often arbitrary and destructive additions in an effort to replace lost fragments of the ancient sculptures.

One of the most famous versions of the composition, though so dismembered and battered that the relationship is scarcely recognizable at first glance, is the so-called Pasquin, one of the talking statues of Rome. It was set up on a pedestal in 1501 and remains unrestored. A version of the group, probably intended to represent other Homeric figures, is part of the Sperlonga sculptures found in 1957.

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