ONLY GREAT ART AND GREAT ARCHITECTURE ENDURE
Mike Priaro, P.Eng.
First uploaded July 13, 2018
Please note the following is largely adapted, and in part lifted from, the wonderful BBC documentary series Florence - Italy’s Invisible Cities being aired on PBS.
Italy has a history that reaches back over 2,500 years from the Roman Empire, through the glories of the Middle Ages, to the flowering of the Renaissance and its breathtaking achievements.
Above all, Florence reigns supreme as the place where modern western civilization was born and given life by the beating, passionate heart of Florentines.
But behind its glorious facades, so much of that invention and creativity is invisible.
The Medici (MED-itchy, not me-DEECHY) first came to Florence at the beginning of the 13th century, starting out as humble merchants, but went on to become wealthy importing raw wool from Britain, processing it, and adding value.
Florence, with a population of only 37,000 between 1427 and 1459, became the banking capital of Italy and Europe and the Medici became one of the wealthiest families in Europe. They wanted a cathedral to match.
Known as God's bankers, they fought a ruthless battle for control of the city. They did not spend money on lavish lifestyles but became patrons to some of the greatest artists in the world — Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Botticelli.
In 1436, 140 years after it was first dreamt up, Florence's dome was designed, and construction started, by Filippo Brunelleschi, recognised as the first modern engineer and the developer of linear perspective. He did not live to see its completion — 250 years before St Paul's in London. It's bigger than either St Peter's in Rome or St Paul's and, spanning 45 meters, it's still to this day the biggest brick dome in the world.
Known as the Duomo, it dominates the Tuscan countryside imprinting the unmistakable identity of Florence, the Red City, on all who see it.
What became of the Medici? Well they continued to have power until the 18th century but then their line ended. There were no more Medici heirs.
The last Medici donated the entire Medici art collection and all their possessions to the city of Florence with the proviso that, in her words, all should remain in the city for the benefit of its citizens and for the inducement of its visitors.
This family which had endured for centuries was finally brought down by time and nature.
The lives lived over those centuries, the wealth accumulated, the intrigues, the politics, the plots, the crimes, the rebellions made and put down, the power, the fame, the glory, the loves, the relationships, the births, the weddings, the children, the deaths, the joys, happiness and despair, all washed away by time and nature — but the art and architecture endure as a testament to the Medeci and the power, glory and achievement that was Florence and the Italian Renaissance.
There is no art or architecture in Calgary which will endure.
An example of Calgary’s municipal public art program, "Travelling Light" or The Big Blue Ring as Calgarians call it, was designed by a German group and is nothing but a big, empty, meaningless zero.
Every steel office tower will corrode, its rebar rusted, its columns fatigued, and its glass falling, only to be demolished and replaced by another temporary tower.
None of them create an enduring reflection for the ages of who Calgarians are and what they achieved.
The things that endure in time are not inferior structures or tweets and e-mails and jpegs and YouTube videos but great art on walls, on wooden panels, in marble and bronze, and in great architecture by great artists.
Great, enduring art commands the time of decades and centuries, demands the wealth, energy, and commitment of generations of an entire city or civilization, is created only by the greatest artists of the time, and is unfailingly supported by the most passionate and wealthy individuals and families — not civil servants on a city committee with a budget.
Calgary's municipal public art program is nothing more than a diddling about, and a waste of time and tax dollars.
Mike Priaro, P.Eng.
Calgary
403-281-2156
