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<DIV><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman"><A
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/arts/celebrating-a-bond-between-hungary-and-the-medicis.html?_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/07/arts/celebrating-a-bond-between-hungary-and-the-medicis.html?_r=0</A></FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 6pt; mso-line-height-alt: 13.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1"><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 20pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt'>Celebrating
a Bond Between Hungary and the Medicis<?xml:namespace prefix = "o" ns =
"urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" /><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 11.25pt"><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-no-proof: yes'><IMG
alt=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/11/07/arts/international/07inyt-morris07-span/07inyt-morris07-span-articleLarge.jpg
src="cid:523585223@07112013-15BC" width=750 height=391
v:shapes="Picture_x0020_1"></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 8pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: #333333; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"'><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; TEXT-ALIGN: right; MARGIN: 0in 0in 2.25pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 14.7pt"
align=right><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 7pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #909090; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"'>Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale, Florence<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 6pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 15.25pt"><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 9pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: #666666; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"'>The
palace of Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary, in a volume dating from
around 1490.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 1.5pt 0in; LINE-HEIGHT: 14.4pt; mso-outline-level: 6"><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: gray; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt'>By RODERICK
CONWAY MORRIS<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="BACKGROUND: white; MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt; LINE-HEIGHT: 14.4pt; mso-outline-level: 6"><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Arial","sans-serif"; COLOR: gray; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt'>Published:
November 6, 2013<o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt"><o:p> </o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt"><SPAN
style='FONT-SIZE: 11.5pt; FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; BACKGROUND: white; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%'>FLORENCE
— Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary from 1458 to 1490, formed an unusually
close relationship with Lorenzo de’ Medici, the head of the Medici clan from
1469 until his death in 1492.</SPAN></SPAN><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt"
align=center><SPAN style="mso-no-proof: yes"><IMG
alt=http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/11/07/arts/international/07inyt-morris07-inline4/07inyt-morris07-inline4-popup.jpg
src="cid:523585223@07112013-15C3" width=258 height=362
v:shapes="Picture_x0020_2"></SPAN><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black'><o:p></o:p></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt">This special bond, which made
Hungary one of the first states north of the Alps to embrace Italian Renaissance
art and thought, is the subject of an enlightening exhibition, “Matthias
Corvinus: Art and Humanism at the Court of the Hungarian King,” at the Dominican
monastery of San Marco here.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt">The exhibition, displayed in the
library, which was once one of Florence’s most important intellectual meeting
places, shows how both Lorenzo and Matthias made conscious use of expensive art
to legitimize their positions.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">The most imposing object is an intricate silk brocade
throne hanging, densely embroidered in gilded silver thread with classical
motifs including urns, eagles, cornucopias, garlands and Matthias’s coat of
arms. Designed by Antonio del Pollaiolo, this costly fabric — restored for this
exhibition — not only records the sophistication of Florence’s workshops, but
also the vast sums that Matthias was prepared to spend on Florentine products to
enhance his magnificence at home.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">The show goes on to explore the various areas of cultural
life in Hungary that were influenced by the constant comings and goings between
Florence and Matthias’s peripatetic court.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">Excavations of archaeological remains, some of them on
show here, have confirmed contemporary descriptions of the king’s efforts to
transform his palace in Buda into a Renaissance residence through architectural
additions, classical decorative elements in marble and bronze and the display of
ancient Roman finds. These projects were paralleled in Florence itself, in the
remodeling of the medieval Palazzo Vecchio in the city’s central
square.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">Matthias’s marriage in 1476 to Beatrice of Aragon, the
daughter of King Ferdinand of Naples, brought another wave of Italian artists
and intellectuals to Hungary. Many of them were Florentines, including Francesco
Bandini, a close associate of the famous Florentine humanist Marsilio Ficino,
and the architect Chimenti Camicia. Some fine examples of classically inspired
sculpture survive from this time, among them a beautiful portrait bust of
Beatrice at the age of about 18 by Francesco Laurana, an exceptional loan from
the Frick Collection in New York.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">Matthias’s most ambitious and expensive humanist project
of all was the amassing of a library of illuminated works to rival, even to
surpass, any in Italy — many dazzling examples of which are on show here. Almost
all of these were manufactured in Florence, giving long-term employment to
scores of scribes and illuminators. When the king died suddenly in 1490, work
abruptly ceased on these commissions, as witnessed here by an only partly
illuminated volume of the never-to-be-completed, three-volume “Matthias Corvinus
Bible.” Some of the codices on show, left unfinished in Florence, were completed
at Medici expense and ended up in their libraries.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody"><STRONG><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'>LOOKING
EAST</SPAN></STRONG><SPAN class=apple-converted-space><B><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt'> </SPAN></B></SPAN>Meanwhile,
an exhibition at Palazzo Strozzi revisits the Russian avant-garde. In 1995 Italy
was the scene of a groundbreaking exhibition, “Paul Gauguin and the Russian
Avant-garde,” at the Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara. Works by Gauguin,
originally bought by the pre-Soviet collectors of post-impressionism Mikhail and
Ivan Morozov and Sergei Shchukin, were shown with pieces by Russian artists
influenced by these imports.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">“The Russian Avant-garde, Siberia and the East” at
Palazzo Strozzi, returns to this subject, but this time seeking to demonstrate
that Russian painting and sculpture of this period owed as much, if not more, to
the artists’ encounters with works from Central Asia, Siberia and a wide range
of Eastern countries.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">The exhibition is arranged around themes, including
“Exotic Sources: From Greece to Siam,” “The Far East,” and “Gestures and
Rituals,” and it contains works by, among others, Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail
Larionov, who were featured in the 1995 Ferrara show, as well as anonymous
traditional Central Asian and Siberian pieces.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">Dostoyevsky’s assertion that “a Russian is not only a
European, but also an Asian” is quoted in the catalog and this sense of duality
is a recurring theme. But the exhibition fails to convince that Russian artists
of the first three decades or so of the 20th century had a greater knowledge or
understanding of Eastern art than their Western brothers and sisters. Indeed,
also quoted in the catalog is a pertinent observation by the art historian
Dmitri Sarabianov: “Despite the fact that Russian space had reached the borders
of Japan and China, Orientalist tendencies entered our art from the West in a
very roundabout way.”<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody">While even the talented Natalia Goncharova in mystical
mode may have declared herself closer to the East than the West, her paintings
on show here manifest the palpable influence of Gauguin, Matisse and Cézanne,
and the Asian objets d’art in her “Still-life with a Chinese Print” and
“Still-life with Sculpture” are attractive decorative devices rather than
evidence of a deep affinity with the arts of the East.<o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="WORD-SPACING: 0px; MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px"
itemprop="articleBody"><STRONG><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'>Matthias
Corvinus: Art and Humanism at the Court of the Hungarian
King.</SPAN></STRONG>Museo di San Marco, Florence.<SPAN
class=apple-converted-space><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt'> </SPAN></SPAN><EM><SPAN
style='FONT-FAMILY: "Georgia","serif"; COLOR: black; LINE-HEIGHT: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi'>Through
Jan. 6.</SPAN></EM><o:p></o:p></P>
<P class=MsoNormal
style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 8pt"><o:p> </o:p></P></DIV></BODY></HTML>