This painting in the Sassetti Chapel in Santa Trinita in Florence is a very important and historical one – showing Florence and the Medici Family symbolically replacing Rome as the main City of Culture and Glory at the time!
Confirmation of the Rule, Ghirlandaio 1482-85
Person number two from the right is the Medici Banker and Patron Francesco Sassetti, and number three is Lorenzo Il Magnifico, patron of among others the great Artists Botticelli and Michelangelo. The Painting also portrays the moment in the middle background when the Franciscan Order was confirmed by the Pope Honorius III, in 1223!
I strongly think I’ll take a trip to Florence next year, lining it up with Dante’s anniversary if I can. I would love to see all this beauty. I’m hoping too that my youngest son will accompany me. That would be the icing on the top of the cake!
That sounds like a wonderful plan! There’s so much to see there, both the big famous things and thousands of little gems around every little corner, and in the hidden streets!
The big Dante cities next year are probably Florence, Ravenna and Verona – the beautiful places where he lived, and the two latter in which he also wrote the Divine Comedy!