02 May Tha cardinal Portugal and its florentine tomb in San Miniato al Monte
In one of the first rooms in the Uffizi Gallery dedicated to the Renaissance period, there is one of the finest paintings of the Florentine 15th century is exhibited. This is the altarpiece from the chapel of Cardinal Portugal, Iacopo di Lusitania, located in the church of San Miniato a Monte in Florence. Placed as it is within the Uffizi Gallery, it loses much of its value and spiritual meaning for which it was conceived. In fact, the painting shows three saints aligned, one next to the other, standing on a terrace of admirable workmanship. The flooring is decorated with slabs of hard stones and polychrome marbles, composed in geometric shapes according to the characteristic style of the early Christian period and told to the cosmatesca. Moreover, it is bounded by a bronze grid made of intertwined cords that let us glimpse the landscape that opens in the background, set according to the bird’s perspective view, typical of the Florentine Renaissance. But what is the identity of these three saints and what is their simultaneous and so composed presence due to? … follows.