Look out for the name Ludovico Cardi known as “Il Cigoli” (1559 – 1613) over the next four years, as his 450th birthday was celebrated this past September 21, 2009, and the 400 years of his death will be commemorated in 2013. These events will take place in and near San Miniato and Cigoli, towns in the province of Pisa. That’s because the artist was born in Cigoli (and thus was given that name), although he trained in Florence under the great Mannerist painter Alessandro Allori. He spent the final years of his career in Rome. A few works remain in Tuscany though many are dispersed around the world.
On right now in San Miniato (PI): Cigoli, a painter and his land
The Diocese Museum of San Miniato (PI) is hosting a mini-exhibition dedicated to Cigoli and his student Giovanni Bilivert. The museum will be open daily (10am to 8pm) during the city’s tartufo festival (weekends of November 13-14, 21-22 and 28-29). In December, the works will be moved to the church of San Rocco in Cigoli.
The exhibition is extremely small, in that it consists of one loan painting by Cigoli (Enthroned Madonna with the archangel Michael and Peter Apostle, signed and dated 1593) from the church of S. Michael Archangel in Pianezzoli (Empoli (FI)), one by Bilivert that is normally housed upstairs in the museum, and a small bronze based on a wax anatomy sculpture by Cigoli. This small work is really worth the visit, more so perhaps than the others, because it is one of the most important expressions of anatomical studies in Florence in the sixteenth century.
The Duomo itself is of Romanesque origins though has been rennovated over the years, and so shows some medieval and renaissance elements. I find interesting that its façade incorporates maiolica bowls from the 12th century, which is not terribly common in Tuscany as far as I know. The originals of these manganese painted bowls are in cases inside the Diocese museum, which also has a pleasant little collection including a tender Lorenzo Monaco Madonna and Child, a bust attributed to Verrocchio, and other works by known artists active during the late Renaissance.
The town itself offers some charming views and good food; known for its white truffle, this can be had throughout the fall and winter season, not just during the festival.
How to get to San Miniato for this event: there is a train station for San Miniato on the Florence-Pisa train line. From there, a bus takes you to the historic center. Visitors arriving by car will have to park and take a bus (cost 2.50 euros per person, return trip).
Looking forward to further events about Cigoli…
Galileo and the cratered moon
Celebrations include a reprinting of letters (available in late December) between Cigoli and Galileo Galilei in which they discussed the ongoing debate between the mediums of painting and sculpture. In a famous letter of 1612, there is a chart of solar observations. In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius, a treatise in which he depicts the moon as full of small craters, and shaded in chiaroscuro. That same year, Cigoli started painting his fresco of the Immaculate Conception (also known as the Assumption of the Virgin) in Rome’s Santa Maria Maggiore (Pauline Chapel); he has the Virgin standing on a moon with its craters, demonstrating not only that he knew the scientist’s work well, but that the concept of the “dark side of the moon” had been accepted by the fresco’s vatican patrons.
Films and websites!
Also planned is a mini film festival that will show two films in which works by Cigoli appear. I bet you never noticed that in Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon and in Sukurov’s Russian Ark there are Cigoli’s paintings of the Adoration of the Magi and Circumcision!
Meanwhile, the superintendant of culture and vice-mayor of San Miniato, Chiara Rossi, encourages the idea of a virtual exhibition of Cigoli’s works that are distributed in the world’s major museums; this would indeed be an excellent initiative to inform the public of this lesser-known but influential artist.
