Santa Croce in Pink: Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments
Santa Croce in Pink: Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments is a 2013 guidebook edited by Linda Falcone and published through the Advancing Women Artists Foundation (AWA) and Opera Santa Croce by Adriano Antonioletti Boratto Editori. It provides an overview of the historical women buried in Florence’s Franciscan church of Santa Croce. Contributing authors include Giulia Bagioli, Jane Fortune, Donata Grossoni and Paola Vojnovic. It features 14 women and discusses their commemorative monuments within the Santa Croce Complex. (See chapter list below).
Description
Santa Croce in Pink:Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments spotlights burial monuments of the artists, princesses, pious women and patronesses whose lives and works enriched Santa Croce’s identity from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It provides the story of nuns like Suor Maria Celeste, Galileo’s daughter whose correspondence with her father provides insight on the scientist and Umiliana de’ Cerchi, a thirteenth-century noblewoman turned tertiary nun. The book discusses several princesses including Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, the lover of Italian poet Vittorio Alfieri, and Charlotte Bonaparte, whose cultural salon was a mainstay for Florentine elites in the 1800s. It also sheds light on women artists from various fields including improvisational poet Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici—one of Italy’s most celebrated improvisational poets and nineteenth-century sculptress Félicie de Fauveau whose monument to West Indian poet Luisa De Favreau can be found in Santa Croce’s upper loggia. Eighteenth-century portraitist Ida Botti Scifoni, who was the protégé and interior decorator for Mathilde Bonaparte and Russian magnate Anatoly Demidoff, also has a chapter in the book as does opera star Virginia de Blasis, whose marble monument by Luigi Pampaloni (1837) is in the Santa Croce ‘Gallery of Funeral Monuments’. The book highlights the contributions of women active in the fields of healthcare and culture, like Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing and Rosa Vendramin, who, in the mid-nineteenth century, played a role in rediscovering Michelangelo Buonarroti’s artistic legacy at the Casa Buonarroti.
Chapter List
Umiliana de’ Cerchi. A Leading Franciscan Tertiary
Vaggia Manfredi. A Patroness Driven by Faith
Suor Maria Celeste. An Exquisite Mind
Rosina Vendramin. In Memory of Michelangelo
Florence Nightingale. The Lady with the Lamp
Louise of Stolberg-Gedern. Alfieri’s Beloved Countess
Charlotte Bonaparte. Worthy of her Name
Zofia Czartoryskich Zamoyska, Sophia Kickich Cieszkowska, Aleksandra Moszczenska. Polish Exiles in Santa Croce
Emilia Toscanelli Peruzzi. A Supporter of the Resurgence
Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici. Improvised Virtuosity
Félicie de Fauveau. Artistic Passion and Political Exile
Ida Botti Scifoni. The Princess and the Paintress
Virginia de Blasis. Diva of the Opera
Description
Santa Croce in Pink:Untold Stories of Women and their Monuments spotlights burial monuments of the artists, princesses, pious women and patronesses whose lives and works enriched Santa Croce’s identity from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. It provides the story of nuns like Suor Maria Celeste, Galileo’s daughter whose correspondence with her father provides insight on the scientist and Umiliana de’ Cerchi, a thirteenth-century noblewoman turned tertiary nun. The book discusses several princesses including Louise of Stolberg-Gedern, the lover of Italian poet Vittorio Alfieri, and Charlotte Bonaparte, whose cultural salon was a mainstay for Florentine elites in the 1800s. It also sheds light on women artists from various fields including improvisational poet Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici—one of Italy’s most celebrated improvisational poets and nineteenth-century sculptress Félicie de Fauveau whose monument to West Indian poet Luisa De Favreau can be found in Santa Croce’s upper loggia. Eighteenth-century portraitist Ida Botti Scifoni, who was the protégé and interior decorator for Mathilde Bonaparte and Russian magnate Anatoly Demidoff, also has a chapter in the book as does opera star Virginia de Blasis, whose marble monument by Luigi Pampaloni (1837) is in the Santa Croce ‘Gallery of Funeral Monuments’. The book highlights the contributions of women active in the fields of healthcare and culture, like Florence Nightingale, founder of modern nursing and Rosa Vendramin, who, in the mid-nineteenth century, played a role in rediscovering Michelangelo Buonarroti’s artistic legacy at the Casa Buonarroti.
Chapter List
Umiliana de’ Cerchi. A Leading Franciscan Tertiary
Vaggia Manfredi. A Patroness Driven by Faith
Suor Maria Celeste. An Exquisite Mind
Rosina Vendramin. In Memory of Michelangelo
Florence Nightingale. The Lady with the Lamp
Louise of Stolberg-Gedern. Alfieri’s Beloved Countess
Charlotte Bonaparte. Worthy of her Name
Zofia Czartoryskich Zamoyska, Sophia Kickich Cieszkowska, Aleksandra Moszczenska. Polish Exiles in Santa Croce
Emilia Toscanelli Peruzzi. A Supporter of the Resurgence
Fortunata Sulgher Fantastici. Improvised Virtuosity
Félicie de Fauveau. Artistic Passion and Political Exile
Ida Botti Scifoni. The Princess and the Paintress
Virginia de Blasis. Diva of the Opera
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