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I-Florence by Dotflorence staff is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribuzione-Non opere derivate 2.5 Italia License.
Based on a work at www.i-florence.com
Posts Tagged ‘Museum’
Florence Crafts and Florence Art
Florence is renown for its top quality craftrnanship, handed down through centuries of tradition, and for its elegance and good taste in creation.
Typical are Florentine straw products, original articles of clothing and furnishings as well as the finest leather, known for its exquisitely refined workmanship; ceramics and glassware; wood and metal crafts, furniture and bric-a brae, in other words, a host of Florentine artisan crafts are available at convenient prices to suit all tastes and all ages. Tailoring and fashion in Florence have a particular graceful look that is totally unique, especially intimate apparel and embroideries.
Much sought after – in the city that devotes Christmas to Benvenuto Cellini - are the siIver and goldsmiths, jewelers, filigree, mosaics and precious stones.
Archaeological Museum
The 20-year-old Oscar Wilde enthuses over the Etruscans in the old Archaeological Museum when it was in the Via Faenza; from The Letters of Oscar Wilde, edited by Rupert Hart-Davis.
Then to the Etruscan Museum, which is in the suppressed monastery of San(t’) J Onofrio and most interesting. You come first to a big tomb, transplanted from Arezzo; cyclopean stonework, 
doorway with sloping jambs and oblong lintel, roof slightly conical, walls covered with wonderfully beautiful frescoes, representing first the soul in the shape of young man naked, led by a beautifully winged angel or genius to the two horsed chariot which is to convey them to Elysium – and then represents the banquet which awaits him.
The same idea of the resurrection of the soul and a state of happiness after death pervades the whole system of Etruscan art. There were also wonderful sarcophagi which I have roughly drawn for you. On the top the figure of the dead man or woman holding a plate containing the obol for paying the ferryman over Styx. Also extraordinary jars with heads and arms – funeral of course – I have drawn them. The sarcophagi are sculptured with the achievements and adventures of the dead man, mostly in basrelief which are sometimes coloured. There were some with frescoes instead of sculpture, beautifully done. Of course urns and vases of every possible shape, and all painted exquisitely.