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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) - The former principal for a Tallahassee charter school resigned after what she called a “series of miscommunications” regarding a 6th grade art class lesson that included an image of Michelanglo’s ‘David.’ The situation drew several complaints from parents, and has launched debate over the school’s policies. Tallahassee Classical School confirmed to WCTV the art lesson took place last Friday, and several parents reached out to express concerns that same day. Board Chair Barney Bishop confirmed that as part of an emergency meeting on Monday, a few days after the lesson, former principal Hope Carrasquilla was given...

Sofonisba Anguissola (1532-1625) was a well-known portraitist during the Italian Renaissance, studying with a variety of artists from the age of 14. Upon receipt of a drawing she made for him, Michelangelo informally tutored her for a couple of years. A young Van Dyck visited her the year before her death at the age of 93, and wrote that she had taught him more than all of his teachers had up till then. Lost to history in the centuries since her death, the quality of her work is becoming known again. Music is from: Early Venetian Lute Music: “O Mia...

Medici philosopher's mystery death is solved By Malcolm Moore, Rome Correspondent Last Updated: 2:35am GMT 07/02/2008 After 500 years, one of Renaissance Italy's most enduring murder mysteries has been solved by forensic scientists. Ever since Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, a mystical and mercurial philosopher at the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, suddenly became sick and died in 1494, it has been rumoured that foul play was involved. Scientists display the bones of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Pico's fame has faded, but he was a celebrated figure at the Medici court. He gained notoriety when, at the age of 23, he...

Pathetic fifth rate attempt to bastardize Michelangelo's masterpiece The Pieta into propagandizing the 'Tulsa massacre'Michelangelo's masterpiece The Pieta

It may be surprising for many to hear that a Reformation occurred in Italy. We normally use the term “Reformation” to describe the defection of Protestants from Roman obedience in places like Wittenberg, Strasbourg, Zurich, and Geneva. But surely the Italian peninsula was always loyal to the papacy? Yet Italy was also poised for gospel renewal in the opening decades of the 16th century. Waves of invasions by French and Habsburg armies, epidemic diseases such as syphilis, harvest failures, and a growing resentment toward clerical authority produced a generation of troubled hearts. And, as they did else elsewhere, reformers in...

Raphael died in Rome 500 years ago today. Rome was to have been the focal point in the global celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the death of the High Renaissance artist and architect Raphael, hosting an "unprecedented" exhibition, the greatest Raphael show the world had ever seen. The Raphael exhibition saw a boom in the purchase of pre-sale tickets, with thousands of people around the world planning a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Italy to see the groundbreaking show, featuring no less than 100 paintings by the Renaissance master, with 40 masterpieces on loan from the Uffizi in Florence. Raphael's much-anticipated...

THE MOST PROFOUND SECRETS OF THE SISTINE CHAPEL TO EVER BE REVEALED The Sistine Chapel is the premier chapel of the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, which is the official home residence of the Pope. The following presentation pulls back the curtain of the Sistine Chapel, unveiling secrets with spiritual revelations that have never been discovered and understood until now. (Read More)

As Michelangelo was finishing his famous sculpture David, a powerful patron appeared below the ladder on which he was standing and suggested that perhaps the nose was too thick. The artist came down and stood beside his patron to assess things. When the man looked away, Michelangelo quickly snatched a handful of dust and ascended again, pretending to tap his chisel and letting the dust slip between his fingers. Having altered nothing, he climbed down once more and waited for an opinion. The patron was delighted: “Oh, that’s much better! Now you’ve really brought it to life.” The anecdote is...

THE earliest-known work of art created by Michelangelo when the Italian artist was just 12 years old has been discovered. The sketch, which depicts a robed man in a chair, was identified by leading Italian Renaissance scholar Sir Timothy Clifford. Sir Clifford believes the legendary artist, who painted the Sistine Chapel ceiling and carved the statue of David in marble, created the work when he was just a young child. Describing it as “the earliest drawing efforts of a youth who would one day emerge as one of the most remarkable artists that has ever lived,” Sir Clifford thinks it...

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump are in Rome, Italy as their third stop in their first international trip as POTUS and FLOTUS. After an early morning meeting with Pope Francis, On Wednesday, the pair was photographed in St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City

How much do you know about the Sistine Chapel? Did you know, for example, that it began as a private chapel for Church elites—the “ultimate ecclesiastical man cave”? The Chapel, which attracts 5 million visitors per year, isn’t just an obligatory stop on an art history tour of Italy, it is a living history of the Church and its influences—influences that range from global, geopolitical change to petty personal feuds. This TED talk, by art historian Elizabeth Lev, outlines the evolution of the Chapel in three stages. The full talk, which Lev delivered in Geneva last December, is well...

If you believe, as Maurizio Seracini does, that Leonardo da Vinci’s greatest painting is hidden inside a wall in Florence’s city hall, then there are two essential techniques for finding it. As usual, Leonardo anticipated both of them. First, concentrate on scientific gadgetry. After spotting what seemed to be a clue to Leonardo’s painting left by another 16th-century artist, Dr. Seracini led an international team of scientists in mapping every millimeter of the wall and surrounding room with lasers, radar, ultraviolet light and infrared cameras. Once they identified the likely hiding place, they developed devices to detect the painting by...

The hunt for the "Battle of Anghiari," ...which Leonardo began in 1505 to commemorate the 15th-century Florentine victory over Milan at Anghiari, a medieval Tuscan town... unfinished when Leonardo left Florence in 1506... was given new impetus about 30 years ago, when Seracini noticed a cryptic message on a fresco in the hall by Giorgio Vasari, a 16th-century artist famed for chronicling Renaissance artists' labors. "Cerca, trova" -- "seek and you shall find" -- said the words on a tiny green flag in the "Battle of Marciano in the Chiana Valley." ...A few years ago, using radar and X-ray scans,...

A real-life Da Vinci mystery, complete with tantalizing clues and sharp art sleuths, may soon be solved, as researchers resume the search for a lost Leonardo masterpiece believed to be hidden within a wall in a Florence palace. Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli and officials in the Tuscan city announced this week they had given approval for renewed exploration in the Palazzo Vecchio, the seat of power for various Florence rulers, including the Medici family in the 16th century. There, some researchers believe, a cavity in a wall may have preserved Leonardo's unfinished painted mural of the "Battle of Anghiari" for...

Maybe Vasari fresco refers to presence of greater art behind it ROME -- "Cerca trova" ("Seek and you shall find") is the tantalizing 5-century-old message painted on a fresco in the council hall of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. Researchers now believe these cryptic words could be a clue to the location of a long-lost Leonardo da Vinci painting and are pressing local authorities to allow them to search for the masterpiece of Renaissance art. Maurizio Seracini, an Italian art researcher, first noticed the message during a survey of the hall 30 years ago, but his team lacked the technology then to...

Forget the Da Vinci Code. Dr Seracini thinks he's cracked art's biggest mystery Step by patient step, one man is drawing ever closer to the real Da Vinci mystery: tracking down the master’s greatest painting, lost for four and a half centuries. And it is hidden, he believes, in a room at the heart of political power since the Middle Ages in Florence. For art historians, finding Leonardo’s lost Battle of Anghiari is in the same league as finding the Titanic or the still lost tomb of the Ancient Egyptian architect Imhotep — as big as you can get. The...

Sculptures to be displayed at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, thought to be the only surviving bronzes by the Renaissance artist Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers will on Monday be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo. In art history terms, the attribution is sensational. Academics in Cambridge will suggest that a pair of mysterious metre-high sculptures known as the Rothschild Bronzes are by the master himself, made just after he completed David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. If correct, they are the only...

Visitors to the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel will now be able to see its world-famous frescos in a new light – 7,000 new LED lights to be exact. ... “This type of LED lighting guarantees a homogeneous lighting, which is very precise and allows us to understand the Sistine Chapel as a whole and each fresco individually, in minute detail,” says the Director of the Vatican Museums, Antonio Paolucci. The non-intrusive, energy-saving bulbs have been concealed along the edges of the ledge which runs around the chapel. Positioned to match the frescoes’ pigments, they can be adjusted to different levels. “This...

>Details: Pope Francis has for the first time allowed the Sistine Chapel to be rented out for a private corporate event, with the proceeds to go to charities working with the poor and homeless. The concert, to be performed amid the splendour of Michelangelo’s frescoes on Saturday, will be attended by a select group of about 40 high-paying tourists who have signed up to an exclusive tour of Italy organised by Porsche. But as the unprecedented deal was announced, the Vatican announced that it would limit the number of visitors allowed inside the chapel to the current total of six...