Giotto to Signorelli Artists’ visions of heaven (and hell) in the heart of Italy

Study Tour Overview

According to Giorgio Vasari, the seeds of the Renaissance were sown when Giotto di Bondone broke with the Byzantine tradition prevailing in thirteenth-century Italian art, developing a revolutionary naturalism in place of the hidebound severity of mediaeval artists. Giotto’s treatment of line and volume, the Vasarian story continues, led directly to Masaccio, Michelangelo, and Raphael, and to Florence becoming the acknowledged centre of the artistic world. Vasari’s biased account has been steadily unpicked by art historians over the centuries, but Giotto’s radiant brilliance has never been in question. His medium was fresco, and he left examples of his genius all over central Italy, including a cycle narrating the life of St Francis on the walls of the monumental basilica in Assisi. Giotto’s successors were inspired to works of an equal stature, from Piero della Francesca’s breathtaking Legend of the True Cross in Arezzo to Pinturicchio’s jewel-like Baglioni Chapel at Spello and the serenity of Perugino’s Collegio del Cambio in Perugia. Perhaps the finest of all is the overwhelming vision of the Last Judgement in Orvieto by Luca Signorelli, the last great artist to work primarily in fresco form. These artistic delights are matched by some of the most entrancing landscapes Italy can offer. Here are the cypress trees and olive groves and slate-red hill towns of the Italophile’s imagination. The tour stays in Cortona, Signorelli’s home, near the Tuscan-Umbrian border, a gorgeous base for exploring this timeless crucible of Renaissance art.

Programme Details

Day 1	Morning flight with British Airways from London Heathrow to Pisa. Transfer by coach to Cortona whose handsome centre has barely changed since the Renaissance when it was annexed to Florence.
Day 2	Coach excursion to Assisi, dominated by the grandiose basilica of S. Francesco – a seemingly incongruous memorial to a man who preached and lived a simple life. Yet, the place is one of intense spirituality, greatly enhanced by the frescoes of  Cimabue, Giotto, Simone Martini and the Lorenzetti brothers – all contributing to making this greatest of late mediaeval shrines one of the most splendid monuments of Italian art. After lunch, continue to the delightful mediaeval town of Spello where the elaborate murals by Pinturicchio provide a wonderful complement to the morning’s more austere Trecento monumentality.
Day 3	Follow the Piero trail in the upper Tiber valley: In the painter’s home town of San Sepolcro we will visit the Museo Civico to see his earliest work, the Madonna della Misericordia, and his haunting fresco of the Resurrection. After lunch, continue to Monterchi to admire the fresco of Piero’s Madonna del Parto, the only representation of a pregnant Mother of God in Renaissance art.
Day 4	Full-day excursion to Perugia, in the seventh century BC one of the twelve city-states of Ancient Etruria and now capital of Umbria.  To this day the Etruscan walls encircle a historic city centre overflowing with artistic treasures. Manifestations of civic pride range from the monumental Fontana Maggiore by Nicola and Giovanni Pisano to the Collegio del Cambio with Perugino’s graceful frescoes. The Galleria Nazionale houses Piero della Francesca’s sensational Polyptych of St. Anthony, as well as works by Fra Angelico and Pinturicchio. After lunch visits will include the fifth-century church of S.Angelo and the oratory of San Severo, containing Raphael’s early fresco of the Holy Trinity and Saints.
Day 5	Half-day coach excursion to Arezzo, home town of the eleventh-century Benedictine monk Guido d’Arezzo, inventor of modern musical notation, the fourteenth-century poet Petrarch, and the sixteenth-century art historian Giorgio Vasari. Our stroll through the town will take us to the cathedral and the pieve with an early polyptych by Pietro Lorenzetti, and past Vasari’s house. Highlight of our visit will be Piero della Francesca’s fresco cycle of the Legend of the True Cross in the church of S.Francesco, a milestones of Quattrocento painting. In the afternoon return to Cortona for some free time.
Day 6	Full-day excursion to Orvieto whose historic centre is precariously placed on the flat summit of a steep tufa cliff and is nowadays reached by funicular. We will visit the spectacular fourteenth-century cathedral, with magnificent fourteenth-century reliefs on the façade and superlative late Quattrocento frescoes by Luca Signorelli inside. The Museo dell’Opera del Duomo is home to works by Coppo di Marcovaldo, Simone Martini and Andrea Pisano. An afternoon walk will include the 1000-year-old church of San Giovenale, embellished with thirteenth-century murals.
Day 7	Depart Cortona by coach for Todi and its great High Renaissance landmark, the pilgrimage church of S.Maria della Consolazione. After lunch, continue to Rome’s Fiumicino airport for a late afternoon flight back to London Heathrow, scheduled to land at c. 8.30pm.