| « Previous | Home | Next » | abbazia di monte oliveto maggiore 07 August, 2007 |
 photo: david lindley a little bit of digging around reveals yesterday's shot to be of the abbazia di monte oliveto maggiore, the mother house of the olivetian - or white benedictine - monks, an order founded in 1313. set up to recapture the simplicity of the original benedictine lifestyle, the first monks were a pretty amazing people: during the black death they went out in pairs to tend to the sick and dying in all the sienese towns. amazingly (perhaps miraculously?), not one single one of them died as a result of this exposure to the plague. this shot is a detail of a remarkable fresco cycle that runs around the walls of the cloisters dedicated to the life of st. benedict. the cycle was begun by luca signorelli in 1497 and completed by a painter called il sodoma between 1505 and 1508. il sodoma (real name antonio bazzi) was an interesting chap: the nickname being rumoured to be because 'he was always surrounded by young men, in whose company he took great pleasure'; however sodoma himself boasted in letters of 3 wives and 30 children! unfortunately i'm not entirely certain which painter created this particular image; i'd like to think it was a portrait of one of sodoma's long-suffering 'wives'. | |
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Posted by davidlindley Archived under: tuscany |
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